Back in my 20s I joined a local amateur theatre company, not because I loved acting, but because I liked the backstage stuff: set design and construction, lights, sound, special effects. I did some acting, though I was by no means God's gift to the acting world, and did some directing. But mostly I worked backstage (literally) at a particular theatre company, partnering with someone to run lights and sound. I worked on dozens of shows over an eight-year period, and, as you might imagine, I have a lot of stories about the odd characters and situations that cropped up.
Here are two:
During one show, my friend Elliott and I were backstage running the lightboard, a huge, primitive box that featured giant levers to control each channel of lights. We rented it for every show, and it took two people to carry it up the stairs to the second-floor stage. Our "sound system," a stereo receiver and two tape decks (this was awhile ago) was on a rickety table next to it.
The light/sound area was just behind the flats that made up the scenery, so with the actors only a few feet away (and the audience not much farther) the light/sound crew had to be quiet. This was normally not a problem with Elliott, since he spoke very little, but one particular performance he had a hard time keeping silent.
No doubt the wisps of smoke he noticed coming out of the lightboard had something to do with it. The wisps became more substantial, and we commenced a furious, albeit almost silent, argument. Should we tell someone? Should we stop the show? Was the thing about to catch fire? Was it just overheating? Was the smoke normal? Had either of us ever seen any smoke before? Should we err on the side of caution, since the theatre was a 100-year-old firetrap?
And the show was going so well, too.
As we gestured and hissed at each other, the smoke stopped, never to reappear. The next day we returned the lightboard to the rental company for a replacement. "Oh yeah," the guy said. "That one smokes sometimes. It's never caught on fire."
The second story began with a cache of LSD that my friend Glenn's brother-in-law left in his freezer during a visit, promising to return for it in a few weeks. Noticing that there were over 100 hits of acid in the package, Glenn was quite sure his brother-in-law wouldn't miss one.
By this time the theatre's backstage had been reconfigured, and lights and sound were in opposite corners. The lightboard was now next to a set of stairs that actors used to go between the stage and the dressing room. The sound equipment was on the other side of backstage, beside the stage manager's area. Typically, the light operator was alone.
One night, just before show time, Glenn apparently dropped a hit of acid and then came to the theatre, ready to run the lights (I was running sound). The show had very few light cues, so it was boring for the light guy, but tons of sound cues. I was busy, Glenn wasn't.
Midway through the second act, cuing up a sound effect with headphones and peering at the script for my next cue, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped and turned around to be confronted by Glenn, his face contorted by fear.
"Monsters," he whispered a little too loudly. "There are monsters coming up the stairs."
I looked at him. Even in the dark of backstage I could see his eyes. They were almost whirling like pinwheels. Yes, the LSD had kicked in big time.
Knowing Glenn had no light cues for awhile and, in a pinch, I could run both lights and sound for the rest of the act, I told him to sit tight until I played my next sound cue, and then I'd help him. He stood stiff as a board until I could take off my headphones and gently guide him back to the lightboard.
There didn't appear to be any monsters.
Glenn insisted the monsters were coming up the stairs from the dressing room. I hadn't recalled seeing any monsters in the dressing room — just actors — and I was at a loss until I had a thought: "Glenn, what do monsters that creep around in the dark fear the most?" "Uhh, I don't know." "Light, Glenn, light. They're scared of light and they run away." "Yeah, okay, I guess so."
I gave him my flashlight and told him to be ready to flick it on any time he saw anything coming up the stairs. "Make sure you flick it right at them," I told him, hoping that the audience wouldn't notice the flashes of light from backstage.
That seemed to satisfy Glenn, and the rest of the show passed without incident. After the show, a couple of cast members were asking Glenn why he'd shined his flashlight at them every time they came up the stairs from the dressing room to get ready to go onstage.
Glenn stared at them blankly. "Monsters," I helpfully explained. "Glenn was keeping the monsters away."
It must have worked. There hasn't been a monster since.
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