Text 1: Thirty-five seconds to clear the stage, by Cerys Morgan

An original contemporary online feature.

On performance days, I arrive at the theatre at 3.15 in the afternoon, although the curtain does not rise until 7.30. My first job is to check every object on the props table. A missing letter or an empty glass can bring an entire scene to a halt, so each item has its own labelled space.

Backstage is less impressive than the audience might imagine. Six of us share a windowless corridor barely wide enough for two people to pass. Cases of equipment are stacked against the walls, and by the middle of the performance the heat from the electric stage lamps has reached us. We dress entirely in black so that the audience will not notice us if a door opens at the wrong moment.

During the show, instructions come through my headset. For the biggest scene change, I have thirty-five seconds to push a heavy dining table across the stage, collect two chairs and disappear before the lights come up. I perform that change eight times a week. Last month, another crew member dropped a metal tray and an actor almost slipped on it. For the rest of the scene, we stood in silence, expecting the stage manager to be furious.

We do not leave when the actors take their final bow. Everything has to be returned to its starting place for the next performance, so I rarely finish before 11.15. It is tiring work, but the crew become close. We share sandwiches on the stairs between scenes, and when a difficult performance goes smoothly, we celebrate as if the applause were for us.

Text 2: Edwin's first week at the theatre

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Text 2 is a letter written in the 1880s by a young theatre assistant to his older brother.

Dear Samuel,

You wished to know how I fare in my new employment. I report to the stage door each afternoon and seldom reach my bed before midnight. Before the company arrives, we drag the painted scenery from the store and fix it in its proper place. Some pieces are so broad that four men must turn them together without striking the lamps.

The space behind the curtain is narrow, dusty and full of ropes. When all the lamps are burning, the heat is fierce and the smoke catches in my throat. We must nevertheless remain perfectly quiet, for the audience is only a few feet away on the other side of the cloth.

Mr Vale, the stage manager, permits no delay. One ring of his bell tells us to prepare and two rings order us to move. At other times, his instructions are whispered along the line from one assistant to the next. On Tuesday I mistook the signal and carried a bench on before the actors had finished their conversation. Mr Vale called me a blockhead, though fortunately the audience appeared to think the bench belonged there.

The work is hard upon the arms, and there is much waiting in darkness followed by sudden rushing about. Yet the other hands have treated me kindly. At the interval we drink tea beside the scenery and repeat the actors' grandest speeches to make one another laugh. When the curtain fell last night and the whole house applauded, I confess I felt proud of my small part in it.

Your affectionate brother,

Edwin