Source A: The curtain that would not move

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

By seven o’clock, the hall was full, but backstage time had stopped. We could hear the audience settling: a cough, a programme snapped shut, then a restless ripple of talk. I stood beside the curtain with a tray of paper cups, trying to look useful. The stage manager checked her watch for the fourth time. Somewhere above us, a cable clicked against a pulley.

“Ready?” she whispered. Nobody answered. We had practised the opening so often that every pause seemed to have acquired its own weight. Then the lights dimmed. The room’s murmur folded into silence, and the curtain began to move.

It travelled a hand’s breadth and stopped.

For a second, nobody backstage moved. The stage manager pulled the cord again. The curtain shuddered, as if reconsidering, then held fast. From the hall came one uncertain laugh. I put down the cups. The actors were waiting in the dark, lined up behind the trapped fabric; the audience was waiting in the light. Between them, the curtain had become a wall.

The stage manager looked at me. I had spent the afternoon carrying props and avoiding anything that involved a ladder. Now she pointed to the narrow gap above the wings. I climbed, feeling the heat of the lamps on my face, and reached for the loose cord. Below, the actors began their first line without the curtain. Their voices crossed the stage and struck the audience, who answered with a burst of applause.

The cord slipped through my fingers. I caught it on the second try and pulled. The curtain rose unevenly, then gathered speed. Faces appeared, then the painted street, then the whole bright scene. The applause did not stop; it changed, making room for the actors’ words.

I climbed down after the opening scene had begun. The cups were still where I had left them. I took one, though it had gone cold, and watched from the wings. Until that evening, I had thought the audience came to see the people on stage. I understood now that, for a moment, they had been watching all of us.