A Horror Show: From Behind the Curtain and into the Spotlight

By Molly Richards (she/her)

I must say my experience in the realm of theatre is limited at best, save for the odd few high school musicals. Cue the music! Let’s take a stroll down the rabbit hole of my high school theatre experience. As a preface, or an opening monologue if you will, I’m not a drama student, nor an actor. In fact, I’ve never been on stage in a musical per say, but we’ll get to that drama soon enough.

The annual high school musical seemed to be the ‘be all end all’ for the theatre kids, and fair enough. It was their time to shine, I can respect that. I, however, preferred to stay off the stage. Despite a decade-long ballet, hip-hop, and jazz background, my singing voice was hardly Tony award winning. Instead, I scurried around backstage. I worked makeup department, hair, costumes and finally mic leader. The latter lead to probably the most traumatising theatre experiences I now find comfort laughing about.

Not to delay the point, I will touch on my other roles before I get to the main event. Hair and make-up were stressful but, dare I say, a lot of fun. All the cast, many of them my friends, passed through the makeup chair every show night. I got to skip school, go to the afterparty, and chat all day before making over the cast in, let’s face it, nightmare inducing makeup. The overdrawn features under the stage lights made sense but the contour and eyebrows were a hilarious jump-scare in the daylight.

Costumes were even more chaotic. If someone misplaced their sparkly headband, the whole operation descended into madness before the relief of finding the offending headband seconds later on someone else’s head. Sure, it was chaos, but it produced many of my favourite high school experiences. I didn’t feel the looming pressure of going up on stage, I skipped the gruelling rehearsals, and I had no lines to learn. Certainly, a welcomed break from my ballet productions, it’s good to know what goes on behind the curtain.

Mic leader in my final year wasn’t quiet the experience I expected. I had to manage something I frankly had no experience managing. I had an assistant, a term I use loosely, that had less of a clue than me. All I had to do was make sure each cast member got their mic when they needed it, returned it when they didn’t, and change the batteries. Simple. That’s what I thought too, boy was I wrong.

It seems my meticulous schedule worked for the most part in ensuring everyone had a mic when necessary. What I didn’t consider was a faulty mic. That went down like a stone in water and once again chaos ensued. By the third night, I thought everything had been ironed out. I had managed to keep my assistant busy from annoying me every five seconds, and I stood side stage. It was the final party scene too, the big and sparkly dance number. Everyone backstage was watching from the wings to celebrate when the shit hit the fan.

The mic stopped mid-song. My friend who thankfully, despite this stunt, has remained my best friend (15 years this year), had her mic cut out mid-solo. The comms went nuts and the fear I felt in that moment isn’t something I ever want to experience again. I was going to have to go on stage. The tech guy came rushing up behind me with a replacement headset and handed it to me. Safe to say I was pissed. It was going so well. Five years I manged to stay off that stage just for this poetic buzzer beater to take me off the bench. The ordeal lasted max thirty seconds but frankly felt like a year.

I was well over it at that point. Much like the rest of the cast and crew, we were exhausted. My assistant wasn’t much help, my ears were ringing, and the show tunes had played a loop in my brain for weeks. That night I would be able to equally celebrate an achievement of survival and mourn the end of such a great experience. The show must go on, so I bit the bullet and stepped on stage. My face stormy and the all-black attire I wore stood in blaring contrast to the bright and sparkly scene on stage. I surely looked out of place, and I felt it. It was almost comical. Everyone kept dancing, my friend kept singing, and I tried not to look in the audience’s eyes. The lights blinded me, and I marched off. I swear you could have heard my heart thumping.

My friends backstage couldn’t help but laugh and at the time I couldn’t help laughing either. It was simultaneously the most traumatic and hilarious moment of my life. In hindsight, I should have sashayed or at least danced on with something, but all my dance experience flew out the window. I should have pretended I was meant to appear out of the wings, with some sort of comical slide. Play the role of some grumpy dancing witch character with the gift of sound. I don’t know, but it wasn’t the end of the world. In that moment I learned the hard way that the show must go on.