He sat there. There was nothing really left to do this act, just to sit around, thinking. He had thunked for about twenty minutes, when the clink of glasses and a drunken shush made his thinking break come to an end. The clinking came from Bill and Ted, the unfortunately named co-stagehands. Murray threw a sheep at them, tutted, and began looking at the small and fuzzy stage monitor.
‘Sorry,’ Bill whispered, ‘here’s your half,’ as he gave Murray his diminutive half pint glass, filled with cider. ‘Don’t matter anyway, only bloody tech.’
‘This is why it matters,’ Murray growled, removing the headset, allowing Bill and Ted to hear the irate shouting of the director.
‘He is a bit of a twat though, ain’t he?’ Ted whispered.
‘Well yea, but we’re stuck with him for the rest of the week I’m afraid,’
Murray sighed, playing idly with his role of Gaffer tape. ‘Where’s Mike?’ he asked, realising that their venerable leader had not yet returned from the drinks run with Bill and Ted.
‘New barmaid,’ and with these words, Murray hit his head down on the desk. Can we do the next change without him?’ Murray’s muffled whisper come from the desk top.
‘Yep, but we’ll need the sound guy…’ Murray’s head hit the desk again.
‘Send a runner up, lets not let the director in on this one,’ Murray muttered.
‘Who though? I hate that bloody ladder’, Bill said, as he looked towards the distant sound booth.
Ted grabbed a passing child chorus member, as he was going on.
‘You’re not need onstage are you?’ Ted asked.
‘I was meant to be catching…’ There was a crash onstage, as Murray took off the headset to avoid being deafened.
‘Well, run up to the sound booth, and get Ian, there’s a good lad’, Bill said to the Gavroche like character.
He scampered up the ladder to the sound booth.
In the booth, however, Ian was getting to grips with the sound equipment, whilst Dave, the follow spot engineer, looked on in horror.
‘Fuck! Only one fucking button fucking works!’ he shouted at the vast array of knobs, switches and slidy things. ‘Stupid fuckers’, he grumbled, and mumbled an obscenity in Welsh.
‘Give it a good slap and move on, just like I do with these bastards,’ Dave suggested, as he attempted to follow the lead actress, as she fell, instead of being caught by an impish male chorus member.
‘Daft cow’, Dave muttered, as he switched off the spot, and walked over to Ian. ‘Drop a few Qs and then slag off the equipment to he on high. That’s what I always do’, Dave suggested, as he poked the console with a nail.
‘I’m a fully trained sound engineer, I’ve got a degree, why the fuck am I working with this shitty company, with this fucking bollocks arsing equipment?’ he despaired.
‘Cos the work has been taken by everyone else, bastards’, Dave suggested, as the truant child popped into the booth from the ladder.
‘Excuse me’, he squeaked.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ Ian growled, poking at random buttons.
‘Sorry, the man, Murray, said he needs you for the next change, something about Mike and a new barmaid’, the young chorus member said, playing with his cravat.
‘Stupid wanker. I’ll be back in a while Dave, watch me Qs and the headset, its only the tech for fucks sake’, Ian growled, shooed the chorus member out of the way and descended the ladder.
The backstage area was in turmoil, however, as one of the lords’ hats had disappeared, causing a miniature inquisition to occur.
The lord, Matt, and his entourage, several young shepherds and 2 other lords were convinced that the hat had been stolen by the young milkmaid, Susan, for use in her ensemble costume. A claim she denied, vehemently. These claims and counter claims were causing a great deal of noise very much unwanted by the backstage team. The queen of the gods was attempting to keep order, to not much success, and as Murray began walking over, the lords had started a scuffle with the guardsman that had taken the milkmaid’s side. Murray ran over, dropping off his headset, yanking Bill and Ted over with him. Murray set Ted on the guardsman, and Bill on the lords.
Murray then signalled to the hat above the monitor, Matt walked over to it, smiled and gave a thumbs up sign. Murray then gave the lords and guardsman a dirty look, and mouthed a "thanks" to the queen of the gods, Judy. She then smiled, and dashed off to get onstage to get ready for the next song, the finale of the first act.
Ian appeared from the top of the ladder, dropped down, and walked over to Murray, Bill and Ted. Murray was deep in hushed conversation with the lighting box, and the co-ordinator therein, Jenny.
‘I don’t give a toss, get that blackout as soon as you can’, whispered Murray.
‘Fine, when I get time, then I’ll get it done, oh shit, blackout, tabs, spot, bollocks’, she exclaimed, as the cast streamed off via the wings.
‘Get out of my bloody way you annoying shepherd’, Ted muttered as he dragged on a large bath tub.
Ian followed with a small bookcase and sherry bottle. Bill and Murray were dragging off a pair of ground rails, as the apparent thousands of cast members crowded the wings, searching for props, chatting and generally getting in the way.
Ian grabbed a falling flat on his way out, and threw a foam brick at the lord who kicked it. The lord turned around.
‘Got a problem sunshine?’ he shouted at Ian.
‘I have actually, jumped up pricks like you, who always treat the set like shit, and always fuck up my sounds Qs!’ he added, ‘twat’.
The lord made a jump for Ian’s throat, only to land flat on his face, due to the intervening foot of the princess of the gods, Charlotte, who then grabbed the lord, and pulled him to the changing rooms. Having given him a swift kick up the hind quarters she turned to face Murray. ‘Please keep your sound men under control, he’ll be fuming all night now’, she said, pointing to the lord.
‘Just tell him next time the sound crew will be drunker’, Ted suggested, as he carried another flat off.
‘Yea, I’ll try it’, she said with the bitter venom of contempt, as she flicked her hair extensions and moved off for a costume change.
Ian, Bill and Ted and Murray finished the change, after Murray lightly twatted Ian with a small bit of 2 by 4.
Ian disappeared off up the ladder, to his refuge among the useless equipment and his soul mate, Dave.
Bill and Ted then wandered off back to the pub to return the empties, and retrieve their venerable leader, Mike, from the trap of his own drunken optimism.
Murray sat on his lonesome, his headset his only friend. He continued thinking, like he had from the beginning of the first act.

He had always been thinking, since he got into the business, way back when. He had been young and dull, not many friends, not much to do. Soon he found that, irrationally, he enjoyed life backstage. Like many of his comrades, he had begun as a luvvie. He regretted doing it as much as he had, it nearly sent him mad, he totally changed when he hid backstage. The backstage him was the true him. He was still dull, but now no-one knew. Soon he was the lighting guy at school, the willing volunteer at local theatre groups, and it soon spiralled out of control, and he ended up with a degree in technical theatre and a dead end job for a no-hope theatre company in a the nastier part of London.
The people were nice though, but the luvvies were insufferable. Many a pole he’d dropped, child kicked and truncheon swung, they were the bits of the day that made it all worthwhile. No girlfriend, of course, when would he have had time? Didn’t stop him lusting after the occasional leading lady and ballet dancer. Nothing ever happened of course, the sporadically coy smile from him, but that was always as far as it went, he never even spoke to them. He had good friends, but only in the theatre, Bill and Ted, Jenny, Rhea and Anna, Mike, Ian and Dave. The guys who he went to uni with had disappeared, a couple to Germany, a few to America, the odd one in Scotland. Whilst he was stuck here, a few miles from the same university he had spent his 3 years of student life. He wanted out of this place, but he would still be here when he was 70.
He heard the unmistakable opening of the door from the outside world, and therefore the pub, and went to go and fetch Mike, who was being carried by Bill and Ted. Mike was dripping with a mixture of bitter, blood and mace. He carried a broken pint glass, a bar towel and a handful of broken fingers.
‘Get him to the lobby, you’ve got 20 minutes until the next change,’ Murray whispered to Bill.
‘Will do, but we are gonna need another guy for the next change. We can’t use Ian again though, the cast is threatening a revolt if they see his, and I quote "scrawny weasel features" down here again,’ Bill pointed out.
‘Oh fuck it…we’ll do it ourselves’, Murray sighed. Bill and Ted pulled Mike into the lobby, and began to clean him up. Murray sat and decided to just chill out for a while, put his mind to rest, but there was no such luck for him. A young chorus member, she couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, came up to him, pulled at his sleeve, snivelling.
‘What’s wrong, littlun?’ Murray whispered, bending down to talk to her.
‘I’ve missed my cue, they’re all going to shout at me. I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I couldn’t hear anything,’ the girl burst into tears.
‘Shhh, don’t worry about it, its only the tech, it doesn’t matter that much. I remember what I was always told, "no-one is going to die if you mess up". Just remember that and go and act your socks off,’ Murray whispered to her. She seemed perfectly satisfied with this, smiled a cherubic smile and skipped off to go and miss another cue.
He’d been that young when he had started. It had dominated his early life. Not exactly a social child, even at drama he was quite. He was an actor to begin with, but then realised that there were more important things to be in the theatre, namely being a stage manager. It turned into his dream job slightly after he had made important choices about his life. This made him fight even harder to become one. Now he was one, and he knew that was all he was going to be for the rest of his life. He didn’t mind. From the typing in the office, to the calling of cues, he loved it all. He wasn’t as limber has he had been in his youth though, and left the climbing more to Bill and Ted. He had had the nickname "Stage Monkey" due to his predisposition to climbing around on gantries, ladders and any other high structures that were around, be they scaffold or set. He never understood why though. He hated heights. And I’m talking really hating heights. He couldn’t stand bridges, or first storeys roofs. A totally unsafe gantry walk way suspended above a stage with no hand rails carrying a bubble machine was fine though. Whilst Murray was sitting in his usual between crisis melancholy, Ian and Dave were sitting around waiting for something to happen.
‘There goes another cue’
‘Yup’
‘That were one of yours’
‘You never, that was yours’
‘Well we’ll just have to see who the director swears at next’
A high pitched squeal came from the discarded headset.
‘I heard "welsh tosser", must be you’
‘Nah, that was "wanking light", must be you’
‘Well fine then…that was one of yours just now’
This went on for the rest of the act, as they worked their way through a bottle of whiskey. The mounting alcohol count from the performance was not unusual, and was part of the problem of being between two pubs.
In the lobby, alcohol was the cause of all their problems, as they began to clean up the now comatose Mike.

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