Centre Stage: A Novel

performance. ‘In fact, why don’t I just do that?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘We haven’t got a show. That was a disgrace! You forgot your lines, you forgot the songs, you didn’t know when you were coming on and you made mistakes in the dances.’ She glared round at us all with her flashing lion-like eyes. ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Just tell me why?’
    I looked at the floor, feeling awful. I wasn’t the only one. All around me, people were crossing their arms and going red.
    The silence lengthened and lengthened. At long last Claire sighed and sat back down. ‘OK,’ she said, sounding suddenly weary. ‘Let’s have the notes. I warn you, we may be here for some time.’
    Claire was right. The notes took an hour and a half. She went through the play scene by scene telling us everything we had got wrong and everything she wanted to change. Afterwards we had lunch and then she made us run through each scene over and over again. We didn’t finish until eight o’clock.
    ‘I want you here at nine tomorrow morning,’ she told us grimly. ‘We’re going to go through this play again and again until it’s right.’
    The next two days flew by. I’d never worked so hard in my life. When I wasn’t acting I was dancing. I got up in the morning and practised, and before I went to bed at night I practised. I even dreamt about practising when I was asleep. But you know the most unfair thing of all? I didn’t get any better. In fact, it began to seem like the more I concentrated and the harder I tried, the worse I got.
    ‘Come on, Sophie,’ Dizzy urged on Wednesday afternoon as I stumbled through a few steps. ‘You were dancing better than this a week ago.’
    I wanted to scream. How could I have been better a week ago? And it wasn’t just my dancing that was getting worse.
    ‘Sophie,’ Claire said, shaking her head after I’d acted out a scene. ‘What’s happened to you? That was nowhere near good enough. You were really tense and wooden. You have to be more natural.’
    So my dancing was useless and now so was my acting. And it was just three days until the first performance… Great. Just great.
    Harriet rang when I got home that night. ‘How’s it going?’
    ‘Don’t ask,’ I sighed. ‘It’s a total nightmare. It’s going to be a disaster — I’m going to be a disaster.’
    ‘You won’t,’ Harriet said.
    ‘Want to bet?’ I said miserably. I swallowed and tried to think about something else. ‘Anyway, how are you?’
    ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ve been practising for the quiz competition. You are still coming, aren’t you?’
    Quiz night. Help! I’d forgotten all about it. It was on Friday evening after school. We were supposed to be having a dress rehearsal then but Claire hadn’t told us which team would be needed for it yet. ‘Um… I hope so,’ I replied. ‘But, well, I might not be able to.’
    ‘Oh, Sophie!’ Harriet exclaimed. ‘I really want you to be there.’
    ‘And I want to come,’ I told her. ‘But there’s a dress rehearsal that night and if I’m needed I’ll have to go to that.’
    Harriet was silent for a moment. ‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘But try and come — please.’
    ‘I will,’ I promised. ‘I really will.’
    The next day it was the start of the technical rehearsal. It felt odd not going to Clawson Academy any more but going into the real theatre instead. I arrived at nine o’clock with the rest of the blue team. The red team had been called for three in the afternoon. We would go home then and they would stay until nine o’clock in the evening.
    Backstage was a hive of activity. There seemed to be hundreds of people all dashing about, carrying costumes, hammering bits of scenery, carrying huge metal lights around and plugging in wires.
    Velda was waiting by the stage to usher us all downstairs. ‘Come on, quickly now. You must keep out of the stage crew’s way.’
    We went downstairs to the green room, and Velda explained what to expect. ‘The technical rehearsal is a run-through for the technicians,’ she told us, her voice strict. ‘That’s the lighting people, sound people, stage crew who move the scenery, and the stage management. The reason you’re here is so that you can run through any bits of your scenes which have anything technical happening in them. There will be a lot of starting and stopping and waiting around and you’re going to need to be very patient. Tempers will be short so if you don’t want to be