Behind the velvet

An original literary non-fiction-style account of standing backstage before a theatre curtain is opened.

From the seats, the curtain had always seemed like a smooth promise. Backstage, it was a heavy arrangement of folds, dark in the hollows and almost red where a work light reached its edge. The bottom lay close to the floor. A small piece of thread had caught on a splinter beside my shoe.

Beyond it, the audience assembled in fragments of sound. A laugh arrived without its beginning. A programme cracked, a seat folded, somebody asked a question too quietly for an answer to reach me. The curtain made these ordinary noises seem to come from another kind of room, although the distance between us was only a few steps.

A stagehand crossed behind me carrying a chair. He moved as if the curtain were simply another wall to work beside. I tried to keep equally still, but the velvet shifted slightly in the air from the open backstage door. Its slow movement made my own breathing seem abrupt. The tiny caught thread remained where it was.

Then a narrow line of light appeared at the centre. The folds began travelling sideways, and the audience ceased to be an unseen collection of sounds. Faces arrived in rows. The curtain gathered at the edge, no longer a promise or a barrier, but a thick dark weight with a job just completed.

How does the writer use language to present the curtain's effect on the space before and as it opens?