Day 23 of my drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

Amateur Dramatics

The curtain fell, the crowd roared their approval. Later, in the bar, everyone clustered round the cast.

"That was amazing!"

"You were so good!"

"That scene in act two..."

Everyone agreed that it was the best production the company had ever done. The scenery, the costumes, the lighting... Everything had been perfect.

"I must admit," said Jim from behind the bar, "I was a bit worried at the start of the month. But it's amazing how it always comes together in time."

"Oh, Caroline always comes up trumps!"

"She lives for this place."

Backstage, Caroline slumped into a chair, exhausted.

Today, I’ve been down at my local amateur theatre all day, building the set for the upcoming production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. For the avoidance of doubt, I should state that I am 100% not the Caroline of this story - I am very much an occasional volunteer.

Whenever I go to help with a “get in” (setting up the stage and set for an upcoming production), I am staggered by the amount of work that goes into each show. I’m also usually vaguely terrified that it won’t all get done in time. Today, we built the basic outline of the set from flats - but there is more building to do, and one of the doors doesn’t currently fit in the doorframe, and nothing has been painted, and someone has to improvise some extra backing because the cyc* isn’t quite wide enough, and build a custom block to fill in that odd shape where the set extends off the stage, and locate some more 2-by-8s to fill in the gap above the French doors, and dress the doors with… I dunno, something, because they look a bit stark…

Caroline** will sort it all out. Somehow.

And this is all against the backdrop of leaks. During the pandemic, the theatre roof went from “we should probably…” to “we really should…” to “drop everything now, new roof!” It has been extremely wet in London this weekend, and despite professional roofers having already done quite a lot of work to make everything watertight, we are still at the “holy shit, more buckets” stage.

Now is not a great time for arts funding. Support your local theatre. Hell, if you don’t have one, support my local theatre. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens on 4th November.

*if nothing else, hanging out in theatres is great for your vocabulary. Todays’ new word: cyclorama.

**names changed to protect the guilty