Chapter Text
Chris Bean woke the second his alarm clicked on at 6:00 exactly.
It was the last day of shows, and he needed to be up and ready for whatever the day was going to throw at him. He’d learnt the hard way that what tended to be thrown at him were fire extinguishers and falling sandbags, so it was best to be prepared.
They were closing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, which wasn’t his first choice of play – far too absurdist and surreal for his tastes – but the cast had insisted it was the best of the options. So there they were, after a week of running the show.
Technically the call time was for 12:00 but Chris felt there was still extra work to be done, mostly sorting through accident reports and burning complaint letters. After eating a quick breakfast, Chris was in the theatre by 8:00. A perfectly reasonable time: he even got to watch the sun struggle its way into the dismal Cornley sky before burying himself in paperwork.
Trevor was already at the theatre, since after every show something always ended up horribly broken, and he was the only one who could fix it. Even when they were working with the BBC, Trevor had ended up doing much of the prop and set work, mostly because the BBC executives hated them with a passion and refused to help more than strictly necessary.
“Good morning, Trevor,” Chris said, poking his head into the workshop.
“Hey, Chris.” The stage manager was perched on a stool, Red Bull in hand, staring at the mess of broken props in front of him.
“Make sure to fix that barrel,” Chris said, surveying the wreck. “We can’t have it breaking open again like last night.”
“Yeah, I think the front row all got splinters.”
“I hope they don’t sue,” Chris said, suddenly struck by a vision of a lawsuit to have to deal with. Again.
“They should know better than sitting in the front row at our shows,” Trevor laughed.
“I do wish you wouldn’t laugh about our company failures. It was your construction that exploded, after all.”
“Right. Yeah.”
Feeling distinctly like he’d put his foot in his mouth, Chris hurried to his office.
He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel when the cast joked about their terrible luck. It was better that they were being casual about it than when they all threatened to quit – or worse, actually staged a coup – but Chris had never been able to see their terrible productions as anything but a devastating failure. There was nothing to joke about when half the cast ended up in A&E and the set was destroyed. They didn’t know all the long months Chris spent haggling with theatres to let them use their spaces with their terrible history, nor the tickets he’d had to reimburse at his own expense since the company had not a penny to spare. Instead of striving to be better to prevent the kinds of mistakes that meant no one in Cornley respected their work, the society just laughed about it! As if it didn’t even matter.
So Chris dove into his paperwork head down and eyes closed, as if that would stop his company, his life’s dream, from falling apart around him. All the work he put in only for the society to forget lines, mess up props, and make utter fools of themselves. It sometimes felt like there was nothing he could do about it, but he refused to accept that. If Chris gave up or treated it all like a joke, like the rest of them, there was no point even coming in.
When he’d started, he hadn’t given a single damn about any of them. In fact, he hated them all more than anyone else he’d ever had to work with. Unfortunately, after countless years working together, they’d all grown on him. Like a fungus. Or a parasite. Chris longed for the days when the society had all been nothing but tools to tell a story, instead of people he cared about the feelings and concerns of. If that made him a terrible person, so be it. It certainly made him a better director, and that was really all he had going for him.
By 12:00 only Jonathan, Vanessa, and Annie had arrived. This, unfortunately, was to be expected. That didn’t mean it didn’t grate more and more on Chris’ nerves every minute that ticked by. Sandra and Max were only nine minutes late, at which point he started a warmup with everyone present.
Once Robert and Dennis arrived, 23 minutes late, Chris was ready to lose his mind. The only thing stopping him from going fully mad was the routine of a notes session. These could take multiple hours, if he actually gave all the notes he had, so Chris restrained himself to those he deemed were exclusively actors’ faults. He’d sent Trevor his notes by email last night.
Despite the society’s insistence that he was ‘a dictator’, Chris thought his notes were actually quite lenient. He didn’t want to be demoralising, after all. What really got under his skin, though, was having to give the same notes multiple times in a row. He refused to compromise on his vision and no stubborn (or stupid) actor was going to be what made him.
After notes Chris was ready for a final dedicated half hour of emails before he had to start getting in the right mindset for the show, when he was interrupted by Trevor waiting in his office. This wasn’t unusual, as director and stage manager they had to work very closely together, and often spent hours together discussing the shows. And other things, on occasion. Chris hated the thought of making small talk with someone he was supposed to have a professional relationship with, but he supposed it was normal to make friends with your colleagues. Not that he and Trevor were friends. Though, he supposed, he wouldn’t mind if they were.
“Hey, Chris,” Trevor said. “Want a granola bar?”
“No thank you.”
“Your loss,” he said, taking a bite out of the granola bar. “Hey, you know the cast party we’re doing after closing?” Speaking while eating was a habit Chris would usually kick someone out of his office for, but he found he didn’t mind it so much with Trevor. He found it appallingly charming, in fact. He’d need to budget time to analyse that.
“Yes, of course,” Chris replied. “I’m not sure why we’re insisting on doing it, since the show is bound to be a catastrophe.”
“Maybe this one’s a success.” No one had ever said anything they believed in less, and Chris could tell.
“An object in motion stays in motion,” Chris said. “The Cornley Drama Society is in a hurtling downward motion, and I’m just waiting for the crash.”
“Wow,” Trevor said, finishing his granola bar. “Well, I was gonna invite you to the pub after the cast party, but maybe you’d rather be depressing all night.”
“What, you’re all going to the pub?”
“Nah, it would just be me. And you, if you’re not too busy being miserable.”
Chris was silent for a moment, calculating his response. Trevor was asking him out for drinks – and apparently only him. For no reason but that he wanted to spend time with him. Which was new. They’d spent time together before, of course, but always in meetings or other professional engagements. Chris had never spent time with Trevor socially. He found he would quite like to try.
“Well,” he said. “That sounds… agreeable.”
“‘Agreeable’?”
“Yes.”
“Well I’m glad it’s ‘agreeable’.” Chris would be worried that he was being mocked, but there was a small smile on Trevor’s lips, and his posture was loose. Good signs. “Would the Old Setter be ‘agreeable’?”
Not typically Chris’ type of establishment, but some concessions had to be made when beginning a friendship. “Of course.”
“Great.” They lingered in silence that Chris didn’t know how to fill for a moment, before Trevor spoke again. He felt he’d missed some kind of chance, though for what he wasn’t sure. “Now go do your actor thing. ‘Get in the zone’.”
“Yes,” Chris said. He was out of his depth, on uneven footing. His impulse was to gain ground by reinstating his power over Trevor, but instead he smiled and said: “Wouldn’t want to be distracted during the show.”
“God knows what would go wrong then.”
Chris all but fled his own office, which was ridiculous.
“That was an utter catastrophe,” Chris said to the gathered company. “First, Max, you cannot lose the coin! Nor can you then all but mug our audience for a replacement. And you most certainly cannot do this twice. Second, all the Hamlet characters, you simply must learn your cue lines. We cannot have you entering during the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern scenes, it ruins the whole conceit of the show. There is no point in Rosencrantz lamenting that he’s trapped in the narrative if the narrative doesn’t even know what it's supposed to be doing.” Once the involved parties seemed appropriately contrite, he carried on: “Third, Dennis, I beg of you to learn your lines. I know they’re long, but you have very few of them. If you can’t do this now, you’ll never get a chance to have a bigger role again. Already no one but me would think of casting you, but you make me regret it too. At this point, I wish you would write them all on your hand because we simply cannot have Hamlet improvising the lines to one of the most famous plays in history!”
“Roddelsfield and Guildengarb is the most famous play in history?” Dennis asked, stupidly.
“No, Hamlet is!” Chris was aware he was fraying and being unreasonable, but he’d had a very trying few hours and it was taking all his power to not lose his temper completely and destroy something. “All of you, take your break, eat some food, run your lines. In two hours we are closing this show forever. I beg of you, do not make it a calamity.”
Chris watched the actors leave, forcing himself to breathe as evenly as possible. He ran a hand through his hair and pulled just enough to hurt, jolting his thoughts back into place. It was fine. There was no way the final show could be worse than any of the others, at least. Maybe that was just a baseless hope. He needed it not to be worse than the others. If closing night went okay, he deemed that the show wasn’t a complete failure. It had been a while since he’d had a show that wasn’t a complete failure.
Berating the company was more stressful than anything, but it had to be done. If Chris wasn’t there to keep them in line and tell them when they’d completely gone off the deep end, the shows would fall to ruin. Not that they held up much better with his critique. But Chris didn’t actually like being the villain, the one yelling at the people who were ostensibly his friends. Especially since the coup, knowing that they could and would replace him. Not with Robert again, he was sure they’d learnt their lesson, but who knew who else they could get to do his job.
“Chris?” Suddenly Trevor was standing there beside him, and he had to stop himself from flinching.
“Ah, Trevor, good to see you,” he said, actively regaining his composure. “I have notes for you, too.”
“Don’t give a shit about your notes, is your shoulder okay?”
“My shoulder?” Of course Chris knew what he was talking about. During Max’s monologue as Rosencrantz he’d pounded so emphatically on the floor that part of the stage had given way, leaving him hanging by only Chris’ grasp. “I think you ought to be more worried about Max’s.”
“I’ve already asked him and gave him an ice pack,” Trevor said. He had his hands on his hips and a small furrow between his brows. Bad signs. “I’m asking about yours because I’m not an idiot, and I know you caught him with your bad arm.”
Chris did not like having a ‘bad arm’. He knew injuries were common in theatre, especially in their company, but Chris tried very hard not to think about the incident that led to his. After all the time he’d spent in hospital and physical therapy, he thought he very much deserved to have two perfectly good arms, and no reason to cower at loud bangs.
“I’m alright, thank you,” he said. He was mostly telling the truth. His shoulder hurt, but no more than he was used to, so there was no point harping on it.
Trevor gave him a wary look, but he was a busy man and he couldn’t waste too much time doting on the cast. “Fine. But take it easy, yeah?”
“Of course. Now about those notes…”
“Yeah, giant bloody hole in the floor to fix, I’m on it.”
“And the barrel?”
“That fucking barrel—” Trevor cut himself off, one hand balled up in rage. Trevor’s temper rose quickly, crackling like a flame. He had a talent for swallowing it down that Chris had never learnt. “I’ll get to it if I can.”
“It’s just that Jonathan got stuck, this time.”
“I am aware of that, Chris. I’ll deal with it if I can. The floor takes priority.”
“It’s closing night, we can’t have an actor stuck in a barrel, especially not the Player.”
“If I had more help I could do it all and hang the bloody moon but it’s just me,” Trevor snapped, stepping up to Chris. “So you get what you get.”
“Maybe if you didn’t chase all your helpers away—” Wrong thing to say.
“I chase them away? Not the mad actors? Not the lunatic director? Not the curse on our damn company?”
“‘Lunatic’?”
“You’re difficult. I’m used to it. They’re not.”
“Right. ‘Used to it.’”
“Chris, now—”
“Go fix the floor. And the barrel. And, while you’re doing your job, you can fix the costumes in the players’ chest. The cheap Halloween costumes are simply not what we are going for with this show.”
“I don’t know, you all look like clowns from where I’m standing,” Trevor said, stalking off. Getting the last word. How frustrating.
Even more agitated than he had been before, Chris started pacing. He found that pacing was as good a way as any for him to let out stress, at least in public. That terrible bundle of stress and anger and frustration curled in his chest, and he didn’t know how to let it out. A good part of him wanted to start screaming and never stop, but of course he couldn’t do that. So he paced.
It felt impossible, not snapping and ruining things. He’d yelled at the cast, even though he hadn’t really meant to, and he’d yelled at Trevor. Over and over again, he did this. He’d tried to build up friendships, something he could have and hold and keep, but eventually he’d lash out and lose them. It was a horrible habit, and one he wasn’t sure he could do much about. He found no one listened to him if he didn’t fight and claw for their attention.
Things never went well when he fought with Trevor. It was like pulling the pin and throwing a hand grenade straight at the closing night show. And every time he argued with Trevor he felt terrible, which was complicated and hard to deal with. He hated feelings that were complicated and hard to deal with. He had a hard enough time labelling ‘happy’ and ‘sad’, there was no need to make it more difficult.
Once he’d paced enough that he was starting to get dizzy, he went to his office to grab the sandwich he’d packed for dinner. Blessedly, he didn’t run into anyone else. Chris needed, for a brief moment, to be alone.
The final show was fast approaching, and Chris could only pray he’d not completely mucked it up with Trevor. They’d have the cast party, and from there he didn’t quite know how to navigate asking if Trevor still wanted to go for a pint with him. Well, if the show went too poorly, they wouldn’t have to party at all. Then he wouldn’t even have the problem.
Chris’ head was killing him. He hadn’t meant to yell at the cast the way he had after the closing show, but it was getting hard to think and after that catastrophe he wasn’t sure what else he could’ve done. The set had quite literally fallen down on top of him. It couldn’t get much worse than that, really.
And so yet another CDS production ended with a trip to A&E. It was only himself, Max, and Dennis this time though, which was something of an accomplishment. Max’s shoulder had in fact been injured in his time hanging off the side of the stage, and Dennis had managed to get snapped up in the parasol Hamlet was supposed to hide behind, and had spent the end of the play hopping around like a loon, which rather ruined the serious effect. As for himself, Chris was fairly sure he’d ended up with another concussion.
The trip to A&E passed in something of a blur, which was probably due to the concussion. He got all the usual warnings from the doctors (how to rest; when to return to regular life; how, with his medical history he should really endeavour not to get another concussion because he was running real risks of complications) before being sent off on his way.
Trevor, who’d driven the lot of them to the hospital and was sitting in the waiting room, looking ridiculously unfazed amongst worried families and injured people. He sat up when Chris walked up to him, snapping to attention like he’d been electrocuted. God, it was upsetting to realise how people reacted to his presence.
“I’ll drive you home,” Trevor said. They had hardly spoken since arguing after the matinee, but he still insisted on being reliable. Chris found this very hard to manage; were they arguing, or not? Sometimes it was obvious: messages left on set pieces and rudely worded notes in workspaces, but sometimes Chris had absolutely no clue where he stood with Trevor.
“What about Max and Dennis?”
“I’ll get someone else to rescue them,” Trevor said. “You need to get home.”
Chris wordlessly followed and let himself be loaded into Trevor’s van. They’d given him a painkiller, but either it hadn’t kicked in or he’d developed some horrible tolerance, because his head was still pounding in agony. His stomach rolled as the engine started up, and he pressed his face against the cool glass of the window.
“You alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“I can wait a moment if you’re feeling ill.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Right.” Trevor cut the engine, and they waited in silence. Chris couldn’t even begin to guess how long they sat like that. He wanted to close his eyes and never open them again.
“How are Max and Dennis?” he asked, more out of a discomfort with silence than anything else.
“Max is fine, he just needs a bit of rest and a sling,” Trevor said. “Dennis broke something – a wrist, I think? But he’ll be alright. Jonathan says he’s fine too, he just got a cut.”
“When he kicked my head in, you mean?” Chris forced himself to open his eyes and pull himself off the window. He couldn’t be seen like that.
“When he got stuck in the barrel and some wood accidentally hit you.”
“So it’s your fault, then.”
“Come again?”
“Jonathan got stuck in your prop, and had to kick himself free.”
“It’s no one’s fault, Chris,” Trevor said. His knuckles were tight around the steering wheel. “Accidents happen. People get hurt. Don’t go pointing fingers.”
“Right, because they’d all be pointed at you.”
“What?”
“Well, all the things that break? It was your job to build them. And all the missing or switched up props? It’s your job to make sure they’re in the right places. The only things that go wrong that aren’t your fault are when actors forget their lines, but if the rest of the show wasn’t a calamity, no one would even notice those!”
“What the fuck, mate?”
“I’m not your mate, Trevor, I’m your boss.”
“No the fuck you aren’t.”
“Just drive the car.”
The engine juddered back on, and they drove in silence to Chris’ flat. Some horrid part of him felt relieved now that Trevor was scowling. Now, at least, he knew exactly where he stood: out of favour.
“You need me to come up with you?” Trevor asked once they’d parked outside his building.
“No,” Chris said, fumbling with the door handle. “Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow for the get out.”
“What? No, you’ll be resting tomorrow.”
Chris walked away, ignoring Trevor’s instruction. After all, he was his boss. There was no need for him to listen to him.
Letting himself fall onto his bed, Chris shut his eyes. What a terrible day.
Maybe his perspective on what constituted a terrible day was skewed. He’d spent the past decade working with the same company, and almost every night of that time he’d fallen onto his bed and thought “What a terrible day.” That was, if he even managed to get home at night. With his workload, it was a miracle he got any sleep at all.
It would be easier if he had any help at all, but of course the actors were useless and as much as Trevor insisted he was helping, he certainly had no talent for paperwork. Or the written word, really. Running a local drama society wasn’t something people were supposed to do alone, Chris was fairly sure, and they certainly weren’t supposed to do it while the society itself fought them tooth and claw over every single thing.
Countless years of his life, spent fighting with the people who were supposed to be his friends to get even a modicum of respect, all while his work fell apart around him. All for what? To wind up in his flat, concussed and alone when they should’ve been celebrating a job well done. Fighting with Trevor when he should’ve been getting drinks with him.
Maybe he needed a change. He had an architecture degree, he could always go get what his parents would consider a respectable job.
No, that was ridiculous. His CV meant he’d never be able to get a good job and either way, he loved theatre too much to ever quit. But really, he needed a change. He wasn’t sure he could continue like this for much longer, with a company that didn’t listen to him and shows that did nothing but fail.
Chris took another painkiller, hoping that would keep the concussion at bay until he fell asleep, at least. Tomorrow he’d do the strike, probably with only Trevor and Annie, since no one else ever showed up to help, and the world would make more sense. As for now, Chris just wanted some rest.
He fell asleep immediately, too exhausted to put his clothes away properly or take a shower. Hopefully a good night’s sleep would clear things up.
Chris Bean woke the second his alarm clicked on at 6:00 exactly.