The Last Cue

Text 1: The Quiet House, by Elin Morris

An original short story extract.

The performance was due to begin in six minutes. In the control booth, Tamsin pressed the playback key and watched the progress bar refuse to move. The silence that followed was not the silence of an empty theatre: below her, the stage crew were waiting, and beyond the curtains two hundred people were finding their seats.

She tried the file again. Then again. The screen returned the same small message: FILE NOT FOUND. On the desk, the cue sheet lay open at the opening scene, its neat columns suddenly looking like a set of instructions for a machine that no longer existed. Tamsin searched the backup drive, the old laptop, the drawer where spare memory cards went to die. Nothing.

A click came through her headset. ‘Places in two,’ said the stage manager. Tamsin looked at the red light above the auditorium entrance. It had been steady all evening, but now it seemed to pulse, counting down. She lifted the microphone. For a moment, she could hear only her own breathing. Then she pressed the talk button and said, ‘Standing by.’

Below, the house lights dimmed and the audience became quiet. Tamsin stared at the blank screen, where the missing opening music should have been, and understood that when the curtain rose, somebody would have to make a beginning.

How does the writer convey Tamsin’s growing anxiety through language and structure, and what does the closing sentence suggest about the performance’s beginning?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.