A Shot in the Shadows

Tape

The rehearsal room is a mess when Zac shows up. Mr. Harding is frowning at the floor, a roll of neon tape in one hand and a a tape measure in the other.

"Kids, could you be quiet please?" he calls. The little kids all quieten down b, pulling out their homework. The teenagers are slightly less studious, breaking out into quieter conversations or using their phones. All the adults are seated at the table reading their scripts.

Zac walks up to Mr. Harding: he's been in and out of tech crews a few times, and though he's never helped set up a rehearsal process, he thinks he knows what Mr. Harding is trying to achieve.

"Do you need help?" Zac asks.

Mr. Harding looks up at him briefly before returning his gaze to the floor. "Go over to the table and ask Connor to give you the sheet I passed to him."

"Zac looks over at the table. He knows a few of the adults, like Adrianna, Leah, Austin, just from seeing them around the theatre or being in shows with them. He doesn't know which one Connor is.

After slowly striding towards the table, Zac just comes to a stop behind one of the chairs and says, "Who has Mr. Harding's piece of paper?"

A dark-skinned man holds up a sheet, not bothering to look up from his libretto. "Thanks, dude," Zac says. His words go unacknowledged.

Mr. Harding barely looks at him when he's handed the paper. "Do you need anything else?" he asks.

Mr. Harding looks at the sheet, looks at the floor, then at the tape measure in his hand. "No, I'm good," he says. "Hey, guys?"

Zac takes a step back, wishing that people would learn not to shout when there's someone next to them: he still has a scab on the back of his neck and isn't keen on obtaining any more injuries.

"I need the ensemble to go down the hall," Mr. Harding says. "You guys are going to be starting on choreography today. I know I may have promised some of you we'd play a game, but I've wasted time trying to mark out the floor, so we'll save the warmup games for tomorrow. I know it's Monday, I know you're tired. Just bear with me please. Understudies... Paige, Alice... Flynn, stay. Everyone else, you have ten seconds to leave."

Mr. Harding furiously rubs between his eyes as the remaining cast gathers in a circle around him. "Here's the deal," he says. "We're going to be doing blocking today. I know, that's not what we had planned. But we need to start now so we can focus on other things. And, both of our pianists are out sick, so everyone's on their own vocally today. The writers are also working out some kinks by my request, and so they'll be popping in later today with some mild changes."

Mr. Harding sends Zac to go check in with the office to double check that they haven't been able to find a pianist. By the time Zac walks to the other end of the theater and back, stopping to get a bottle of water, Mr. Harding has already arranged Hayley in the center of the room. Zac sits down on the sidelines, watching as Mr. Harding cuts Hayley short in the middle of her second line to shift her a few feet to the right. It takes Mr. Harding a full half an hour to coordinate the other kids in the opening number, for a sequence that only lasts five minutes. Mr. Harding has out a pink pen, drawing squares, circles and lines on peoples scripts before having them start over.

It takes forty-five minutes for Annie to make her entrance, ten minutes for their director to coordinate the few adults into place, and a grand hour and fifty minutes before Zac is hauled out of his chair, shown the tape markings representing the stage, and being told how he should bump into Annie on her way "offstage".

They don't make it halfway through the show before their time is up. The ensemble returns, with faces flushed from exercise, and Zac is trying really hard not to focus on them shuffling into the room. He hasn't been through a blocking like this before, never been corrected every several seconds instead of the director waiting for the end of the scene to point out errors. It's wearing his patience thin, Zac thinks, sprinting across the room to drop into a crouch next to Annie for what feels like the millionth time.