Source A: The black screen

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

I had forty-three lighting cues and a pencil mark beside the one which always worried me. The storm scene required a rapid change, followed by darkness and a single lamp on the actor’s face. At rehearsal, I had pressed the wrong button once. Tonight I passed that moment correctly. I allowed myself one small breath of satisfaction, and the screen went black.

Not the stage. The stage remained blue, with an actor standing in a doorway which was meant to become morning. The console in front of me showed nothing. I touched the edge of the screen as though a surface could be persuaded by attention. Beyond the control-room glass, the audience laughed at a line which had no connection to my situation. For a second I resented them for continuing to enjoy the play.

I knew there was an agreed response for a console failure. I had seen it demonstrated. The difficulty was finding that knowledge inside the noise my thoughts were making. Every button looked like a possible beginning, and I wanted to press one simply to prove that my hands were not idle. I put them on my knees instead. The blue stage was wrong, but it was not improved by adding an unplanned instruction which nobody could explain.

My supervisor stood at the other end of the room, speaking on the headset. I said her name. She turned, looked at the screen and asked exactly what had happened. I wanted to give her a cause. All I had was a sequence: the correct cue, the breath, the blank display. I described that. She nodded and directed me to the marked backup controls. Her voice was ordinary. I had never valued an ordinary voice so much.

The first change was slow. It did not create the morning we had rehearsed, but it let the actors be seen and allowed the scene to continue. I heard a chair move in the audience. Someone coughed. None of those sounds told me whether anyone had noticed the problem. I kept wanting an answer to that question, though it had no useful place in the work still in front of us.

We completed the act using the agreed simplified settings. At the interval, I found that the pencil had snapped in my hand. I did not remember picking it up again. The console was still blank, and another act remained. My supervisor asked me to read back the next sequence. I looked at the printed sheet rather than the dead screen and began with the first number.

Source B: From 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place — Aron Ralston

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 10–11).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about how people think and act under sudden pressure.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.