The foyer after the curtain

An original imagined literary non-fiction-style account of leaving a theatre in rain.

The play ended in sunshine. Outside the theatre, the weather had declined to follow the script.

We gathered beneath the foyer lights while rain filled the doorway with silver strings. A woman shook an umbrella which opened like a wounded insect and immediately folded one leg beneath itself. Two people consulted a phone with the grave concentration of navigators, although the pavement was six steps away.

For two hours, we had watched characters make irreversible decisions. Now the audience found itself defeated by a wet coat. Nobody wished to be the first to step out and confirm that the evening continued beyond the applause.

The room changed as we waited. Strangers who had carefully avoided one another's elbows began discussing routes home. A man offered half his umbrella to someone whose elaborate hat had become a practical concern. The actors were somewhere behind us, removing their invented troubles; we were assembling a small company of our own.

At last a group moved towards the doors. I followed the bright back of a yellow raincoat through the water and into the ordinary street. Our exit had no final line. A bus hissed, someone laughed, and the curtain of rain closed untidily behind us.

Examine the methods the writer uses to make the audience’s departure seem like another performance.