Page 114 of Everything's Coming Up Rosie

Booker and I burst through the scene shop door and onto the stage.

It’s raining.

Inside the building.

Which is impossible. My brain is having trouble reconciling what I’m seeing when I hear Arthur’s voice from above me.

He’s in the rafters, near one of the fly lines, and the few people who had already arrived for rehearsal are running around, covering their heads and calling out for help. Who they’re calling for, I’m not sure.

“Rosie!” Arthur hollers at me from up above. “We’ve had a flyaway!”

It takes a second for me to access this term, but when my mind finally finds the definition, I flash hot with panic.

In a theatre with a fly system—rigging and ropes and counterweights to fly in set pieces, backdrops, or lights—a flyaway is when the counterweights become unbalanced, sending either the heavy steel bar that the pieces are hung from careening to the ceiling, or the opposite, where a set piece comes crashing to the stage floor.

I wipe the smelly, brown sprinkler water from my face and look. There’s no line on the stage, so it must’ve shot toward the ceiling.

Arthur calls out again. “One of the brakes failed—the line snapped a sprinkler head up here. Go find the shutoff valve!”

“The shutoff valve? Where is that?”

“Scene shop, left corner! The fire department is on their way!”

I’m frozen. I’m watching in horror as the sprinkler system is dumping hundreds of gallons of water on our set. On the stage. On me.

“Rosie!Go!”

I snap into focus. I do as I’m told, racing into the scene shop, wide-eyed and frantic, looking for and quickly finding the shutoff valve, which is, of course, locked behind a fence with a chain and a padlock.

I let out a frustrated groan.

All I can hear is water and the violent monotonous blaring of the alarm.

I desperately look around and find a five-foot length of pipe, and start to pry back the fence where the chain joins it.

Booker comes in behind me, grabs the pipe, and we both pull it open enough where I can reach in and pound the shutoff button.

The alarm continues to blare, and the water slows to a dripping halt. Booker looks at me and says something like, “You good? You okay?” but I don’t answer. He leaves, running back to the stage.

I stand, shaking. Then I start to whimper.

I drop the pipe with a clang, and slowly, apprehensively, move out of the scene shop toward the stage.

I’m immediately hit with a dank, musty, wet smell. There is still water coming from above, but as I look up, I realize it’s not coming from the sprinklers anymore.

It’s the curtains, now sopping wet with brown water. They’re dripping in steady streams, slowly starting to lower. The brakes on the lines are straining under the hundreds of gallons of added water weight.

Pools of water are everywhere on the stage, and I can see where some are starting to soak into the wood floor and the storage room beneath.

Where all of the costumes, props, and set pieces are stored.

I...

I can’t...

I see Booker move over to the set pieces, most of which were stored on the stage or in the wings. He begins to assess the damage.

Arthur is down from the rafters, and he rushes toward me.

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