I stared up in horror as the stage light screeched and began to lean down, aiming directly at me now…I froze. SNAP! The sound of my mother’s scream rang out from the audience…lights out…
-3 Months ago-

I had finally gotten the role I was looking for, the leading role. The play was called “Sounds Off”, it was being run by the Delaware Company of Theater in a theater that could’ve held no more than two hundred people. It didn’t matter. I was going to be center stage with all two hundred pairs of eyes on me...

Rehearsals started the following Monday, seven o’clock sharp. I hesitantly crept into the back of the theater and sat down in the front row, two seats from where the stage manager was sitting, sipping his coffee. He greeted me with a mutual nod as he studied his script and continued mindlessly sipping his coffee. I nervously looked around the room, studying anything and everything that caught my eye, the sound booth, the lights, the labyrinth of ropes backstage, anything that looked interesting.

The doors bursted open as the director stormed in. He was a tall, lanky man who looked to be in his mid to late thirties. He rushed to his chair and began typing away on his laptop. Clack, clack clack clack, clack.

The rest of the cast members shuffled in hurriedly, followed by the understudies, who all seemed to have a mutually gloomy look about them.
-Rehearsals Began-

For the next month we fell into this routine, creap, burst, scuttle, shuffle, we began on “Act One”, the debut of my acting career. Since I was the lead, I needed to be there every step of the way, it was exhausting, but it was worth it. All I could think about was show night, when I would finally be center stage in front of a real audience.
The stage manager was quick to keep me on track. “Stand here!”, “Go over there!”, “Faster!”, “Slower!”, “Enunciate!”, “Pay attention!”. He barked orders at me, but I didn’t care, as long as I would be center stage on show night.
Rehearsals continued on throughout the next few months every day, Monday – Friday. We all struggled to leap through the hoops and rings the tyrannical stage manager had thrown at us, the director always seemed to be clacking away at his keyboard, nodding every so often, informing us that everything was to his likings.
The last month of rehearsals we started getting into costume. Both men and women were crowding in the dressing rooms, shimmying into tight costumes, plastering on make up by the pounds, and taming their hair-do’s and hair-don’ts. The light and sound crews were bickering outside the dressing rooms about what cues happened when, so-on-and-so-forth while the director continued to clack away at his laptop and the stage manager, eye brows furrowed, studied his notes from the previous rehearsals.
-Show Night-

I broke out in a nervous sweat.
“Tonight’s the night!” I thought.

Everyone reassured me that it was just stage fright and that it was a “good thing” to be nervous. I slipped into my costume and headed to make up to get painted, poked, passed and prodded just like before.

I could hear the audience members conversing in their seats, caught no words of actual English, just a collective mumbling of gibberish. I scanned the audience for my family, and there they were, sitting front row, everything was going perfectly. I waved to my mom anxiously before disappearing behind the giant red curtains concealing the stage from the audience’s eyes.

The play was about to start.
“Here we go, just like we practiced” I told myself.

I walked nervously to center stage and began my dialogue.
“Good evening ladies and gentleman, welcome to the D-“
I stared up in horror as the stage light screeched and began to lean down, aiming directly at me now…I froze. SNAP! The sound of my mother’s scream rang out from the audience as the light fell down, barreling straight for my head…lights out…