Go Back Home
I have two pieces I've written about my time as a theatre technician. The first is kind of a puzzle poem - you're supposed to try to figure out what "The Thing" is, and what "I" am! I promise to tell you at the bottom of the page, just in case you can't figure it out all by yourself. :-)
The second piece is a story. A very strange story about me and my occasionally frightening hunches. Or is it just "women's intuition"?
A Theater Puzzle Poem
A Very Weird Day at the Office
I rise above in wings of muted light
flying high on coiled springs
by my design you exist
I bring you forth with senses reeling
blinded by my mind
this small reality
this darkened palette
my workshop of life
without me you are nothing
formless searching
I am a voice in the darkness
waiting for your readiness
awaiting your needy cry
I pause a beat and make you wait
wanting revelation
you are words of wonder
a life with no beginning
and without end
hidden in the draperies of thought
imprisoned in unfinished pine
black book black clothes
I control your world
set against a backdrop
of purest white I make my magic
and set you free
September 28, 1995
Can't wait for the answers to the puzzle?
One of those times was a few years back, when someone had predicted that the New
Madrid fault was going to give way and tear apart the Mississippi Valley on October 9th
or some such. It just happened to be within a day of the predicted date, in the morning,
that we were all standing on stage at the loading door, which is on the far upstage wall.
As usual, we were all standing around joking and cutting up waiting for the truck to get
there. Suddenly, the entire stage jumped and shook, as if the building had just been hit.
Plaster dropped off of the walls in clouds of dust, and sprinkles of dust and chunks of
mortar fell the nearly 60 feet to the stage from the overhead grid. This stunned us so that
we all just stood there for several seconds. Our first thought was that the truck we had
been waiting for had hit the building. This happens sometimes when the drivers aren't very
experienced, and try to use mirrors only while backing down the alley. No big deal. We
opened the loading door to give the driver some shit about his driving, and...no truck.
Well, that threw us for a minute. Then somebody mentioned the earthquake prediction.
Hmmm. We started looking around a little more closely. We discovered a crack in the
upstage wall running from the top right corner of the loading door, up into the darkness of
the fly space. Not your little crack either, I'm talking your jumbo sized crack. You
couldn't quite see outside through it, but almost. The house (for you non-theatre folks,
that's what the auditorium where the paying crowd sits is called) had suffered not quite as
badly. Just a little plaster had fallen off of an already water damaged wall. We also found
that the years of dust and sparkles between the boards of the stage floor had been jarred
loose.
Then the Technical Director and I went down to the Green Room, which in this particular
theatre is directly beneath the stage. As we started down the stairs, I started getting this
really weird feeling, like I ought to run. The one you get in dark alleys when you're
sure someone is waiting for you behind that box with a knife... As we got to the first
landing the feeling got stronger - my heart was racing, I was sweating, and I thought for
sure I was going to die. The TD turned around to see why I had stopped. When he
looked at me, he said in a shocked voice, "Geez, hon, are you ok?" No, I replied, I'm not.
I'm scared shitless, but I don't know why! After admitting my fear, I realised that I could
at least make it to the bottom of the stairs, so we went on down. After a thorough
investigation of the Green Room and boiler room, we found only that the outside wall of
the boiler room, the same wall the loading door is in, was also cracked. We decided that it
must have been a quake after all, and damn ain't it strange that that kook's prediction came
true? Meanwhile, I was still having that strange "I'm gonna die" feeling. We went on with
our day, the truck finally arriving almost an hour and a half late.
At dinner break, most everyone had left the building, and the TD and I were on our way
out. And it happened again. The stage shook, the curtains waved, and a muffled booming
noise filled the air, along with more plaster dust. Intense visions filled my mind. Flames!
Flames licking at the curtains, popping lenses in the lights like popcorn, stage boards
warping in the heat, cables curling like Christmas ribbons...I must have looked like a deer
in a spotlight. I froze. Then I ran. Out into the alley. I was safe there. The TD stayed
inside, to investigate. I felt like a complete idiot, afraid to go into the building I loved,
where my best friend was risking (I was positive) certain death. I was starting to panic. I
couldn't - I just couldn't go back in! And he hadn't come out. I had nearly reached the
decision to step up to the door, and by God, go back in, when he came out. He had found
nothing. No further damage, other than the plaster from the house wall, which had a
tendency to fall if you walked too close to it. So we went on to dinner. At dinner I told
him I was feeling weird, but didn't elaborate. I just said I would be glad when the day was
over.
We finished our load in, and agreed that we would all be back at the theatre at 8:00am to
set up and focus for the evening show. I hung back with the TD, helped him lock up, and
then insisted that he sit with me for a few minutes in the control room. I told him
everything I had felt during the day, the creepiness, the raised hackles, the flames in my
mind, and waited for him to laugh at me and tell me to go home and get some sleep.
Instead, he interrogated me. When, where, how, why did I get these feelings today. Well,
when - after each time the stage shook. Where - on stage, mostly. It wasn't so bad out
front. Worse in the Green Room. How, why - how the hell do I know? And why are
you asking? Aren't I just a silly girl being afraid of the unknown? He replied simply that
he had known me too long to dismiss my "feelings". He was going to go back downstairs
to investigate further, but I asked him, I begged him to please not do that right now. If
the building is still standing in the morning, we'll know I'm just a jerk afraid of shadows,
and no one will have to know. He agreed, and we went home for the evening.
Next morning promptly (well, mostly) at 8:00am, we gathered on stage. The road crew
were late, as usual, so we had some time. The TD asked me if I was still having strange
feelings, and I told him that yes, I was still a little weirded out. He asked if I wanted to
go look around with him. No f*ing way! He took Spot Op 1 with him to look around
downstairs, and it must have been just as they got to the bottom of the stairs, that horrible
feeling washed over me again. I'm a coward. I ran. Down the stage stairs and out into
the house. The moment I hit the house floor, it happened for a third time. The stage
shook. I watched the lights hanging from their pipes sway dangerously. And a scream
tore up the stairs to the stage. Spot Op 1 was screaming. Oh. My. God. I didn't know
what to do. Responsibility got the better of my fear, and I ran back up on stage. At the
same time, SO1 and TD came up the back stairs. They weren't running. Or screaming.
Now I was terribly confused, and the weird feeling I had had was inexplicably gone. Now
I just felt like a complete idiot. Then I smelled the burning hair. The TD explained:
Apparently the gas feed line to the boiler developed a crack at a joint in the pipe. Gas was
not getting to the pilot. There is an automatic shut off, so that if there is no gas, the pilot
shuts down, and turns off the valve. After some length of time, the valve opens, and the
pilot tries to light. In this case, however, the gas was not getting to the valve because it
was seeping out into the (closed) room. Each time the pilot would try to light, it was
unsuccessful, and would shut down again. Until the gas got deep enough in the room to
ignite...and explode. This final time, the TD and SO1 had opened the door to the boiler
room just as the pilot tried to light. A wave of flame 18 inches high had crashed out of the
room, licking around their feet, and singeing the hair on TD's legs. Lucky for SO1, she
had her very, very long hair tied up, or that could have been a disaster. TD turned off the
gas where it entered the building, and my feeling, and the danger, disappeared.
October 26, 1995