Read the following extract.

On my first morning backstage, I watched the ceiling instead of the people. Above the empty theatre, metal bridges crossed the darkness and cables disappeared into it. A wooden doorway, part of the evening’s set, hung several metres above the stage. From where I stood, it seemed to be held up by nothing more substantial than black thread.

The crew arrived without ceremony. They clipped radios to their belts, pulled on gloves and spread a row of tools across a narrow table. There were no speeches and no last-minute displays of confidence. Sana, the head rigger, looked at a printed checklist and said, “Check, call, move.”

The others repeated the words back to her.

I stepped away from the stage.

At first, their language made me more nervous. They spoke in numbers, abbreviated instructions and names for equipment I could not identify. “Line twelve ready.” “Brake holding.” “Clear below.” Each phrase seemed too small for the weight above us. I wanted fuller explanations, preferably delivered from the safety of the pavement outside.

But the crew never acted on a single voice. One person called an instruction; another confirmed it; a third watched the stage. Before anything moved, Sana looked along the line of faces and waited. Only when every answer had returned did she lift her hand.

The doorway rose.

It did not swing or shudder. It travelled upwards so evenly that, for a moment, it appeared to become lighter. The ropes tightened into straight lines. A crew member named Joel walked beneath the edge of the stage, watching not the doorway but the people controlling it. When Sana lowered her hand, the movement stopped at once.

By mid-morning, repetition had begun to replace mystery. Check, call, move. The same three steps preceded a painted wall, a hanging lamp and a long platform. The crew’s voices remained level whether the object was small or large. Nobody filled the pauses with jokes. Nobody guessed.

Then the platform halted halfway down.

A sharp scrape crossed the stage. My shoulders rose before I could stop them. The crew froze, but their stillness was not confusion. Joel called, “Hold.” Sana repeated it. Every hand remained where it was.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Those seconds felt enormous to me. Sana asked for one line to be eased and another to remain fixed. Joel knelt at the edge of the stage and shone a torch into the gap. He found that a loose strip of painted canvas had folded against the platform. It was freed, checked and tied back. Only then did Sana return to the beginning.

“Check, call, move.”

This time, when the platform descended, I noticed the signals rather than the height. A hand lifted. A voice answered. Eyes moved from the ropes to the stage and back again. The platform settled onto its marks with a soft wooden knock.

Near the end of the session, Sana asked me to stand beside the table and read the next item from the checklist. My voice sounded louder than I intended. She waited while the confirmations travelled around the stage, then nodded for me to continue.

The final piece was the doorway I had seen hanging in the darkness. As it came down, I stayed where I was. Its shadow passed over the floor, and the cables remained taut above it. For the first time that morning, I stopped looking at the ceiling.