Text 1: The people behind the curtain, by Marcus Llewellyn

An original contemporary magazine feature.

At seven twenty-nine, the stage is an elegant drawing room. At seven thirty, the curtain falls and twelve people rush into the space as if responding to an alarm. The walls split apart, a chandelier flies upwards and the carpet disappears through a doorway. Forty-two seconds later, the curtain rises on a railway station. The audience applauds the actors. Behind the scenery, nobody has time to notice.

I am watching from the prompt corner beside Nina Shah, the stage manager of a touring production that visits a different theatre each week. In front of her are two screens, a script crowded with pencil marks and a row of switches. She wears a headset through which the departments receive her instructions. ‘Stand by lights. Stand by sound. Stand by train.’ Her voice is quiet enough for a library.

The train is not a train. It is a painted carriage pushed by four stage crew while sound pours from hidden speakers and strips of light race across the windows. Nina waits until an actor lifts a suitcase, then says, ‘Go.’ Wheels turn, light moves and steam rises together. A second too soon would expose the trick; a second too late would leave the actor standing on an apparently motionless platform.

Touring makes everything harder. On Monday morning, the crew unloads eight lorries of scenery into an unfamiliar building. By the evening, every platform, cable and moving wall must be fitted into a space whose doors, ceiling and floor are never quite where the plans promised. Leo, the technical manager, calls it ‘solving the same puzzle after somebody has changed the shape of all the pieces’.

There is little room for error. Heavy scenery moves in darkness only centimetres from performers. Before each show, the crew checks every rope, brake and marked position. When a sensor on the drawing-room wall fails, Leo stops the rehearsal. Twenty people wait while he tests it twice. He refuses to be hurried. ‘A show can be late,’ he says. ‘A wall cannot be unsafe.’

The performance ends at ten fifteen, but the crew’s night does not. The set must be taken apart, labelled and packed for the next town. By two in the morning, the stage is bare. The magical rooms have vanished into black boxes on the backs of lorries, and the people who made them are sweeping the floor.

Text 2: Beyond the painted moon, by Clara Whitcombe

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

In this article, written in 1891, a journalist watches a performance from behind the stage of a busy theatre.

From the stalls, a theatre appears to be a place of music, colour and graceful movement. Behind the stage, I found a kingdom of ropes, ladders and urgent whispers, ruled not by the celebrated performers but by Mr Cobb, the master carpenter.

Mr Cobb stationed me beside a wooden pillar and ordered me not to move from it unless the building caught fire. This seemed excessive until a forest began travelling sideways past my nose. Six men in shirtsleeves pushed the painted trees into position while others hauled upon ropes above us. Each man knew his path. They crossed and turned in the gloom without collision, like the wheels inside a watch.

The scene was a moonlit garden. The moon itself was a disc of linen illuminated from behind, and its gentle rise required two boys, a rope and much fierce whispering. At the signal, a stagehand scattered metal dust before a lamp to produce a silver shimmer upon the lake. The audience sighed at the beauty of it. The man with the dust sneezed.

The calmest person was Mr Cobb. While everyone else appeared to be one loose bootlace away from disaster, he stood with his arms folded and gave orders no louder than conversation. When a rope caught, he pointed once. Two men freed it, the garden wall reached its place, and the actor on the other side continued speaking without knowing how nearly his entrance had been blocked.

Not all dangers could be treated so lightly. Rows of gas flames illuminated the stage, close to canvas, timber and curtains. A stagehand patrolled with a wet blanket and watched them with what I first thought was unnecessary suspicion. Mr Cobb told me that scenery had caught fire during the previous winter. The flames were beaten out before the audience understood why the orchestra had stopped.

At the final curtain, the leading lady received flowers and was called before the cheering crowd three times. Behind her, the stagehands were already lowering the moon and carrying away the garden. None appeared offended by the lack of applause. ‘If they see us,’ Mr Cobb said, ‘we have done it badly.’

I left by the stage door among men carrying coils of rope and pots of paint. Above the entrance was a coloured poster bearing the faces of the actors. It contained no picture of Mr Cobb, although I had seen enough to know that the evening rested securely upon his folded arms.

Both of these texts are about watching theatre workers during a performance.

Compare:

• what the writers say about the pressures and difficulties of working behind the stage
• how the writers present the teamwork that creates the performance

You must use the text to support your comments and make it clear which text you are referring to.