Illyria by Elizabeth Hand

teeth and gestured at him to shut up. I was doing my
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    best not to look at anyone. I stood just offstage and stared resolutely at the ropes and suspended weights that held backdrops and curtains in place. I'd peeked out earlier and seen the audience, and now I could hear them, along with the excited whispers and muffled laughter of the other actors around me. I felt so sick I thought I might pass out. I wanted to pass out, even though that would mean the show would be canceled.
    I no longer cared. The horror I felt every time I looked at the stage, that brightly lit array of furniture and fake shrubs and cardboard scenery, was so intense it overpowered any other emotion.
    "Hey, Maddy. You ready?" One of the boys who handled the curtains looked at me in concern. I nodded. "You sure?"
    I took a step backward and knocked against the sand-filled canister that was a safeguard against fires; then bent and vomited into it.
    "Uh, guess not." The boy grimaced. He pushed the can out of the way and grabbed one of the ropes. A minute later I heard the stage manager's voice.
    "Places, everyone."
    I wiped my mouth and looked across the stage. In the shadows stood Rogan, clad in his loose white Pierrot tunic and pantaloons, his feet bare, hair a loose halo around a ghostly face. He was singing to himself, soundlessly, staring at the stage floor and moving as though he saw his reflection there and danced with it. After a moment he glanced up and saw me. Very slowly he raised his fingers to his lips and kissed them, then extended his hand to me, palm forward. His head sank to his breast as though he had fallen asleep, so all I saw was that cloud of fiery hair.
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    "... lights and-- curtain?
    I waited, mouth dry, through Orsino's opening scene, the welcoming wave of laughter as he paced the stage with a golf club and knocked over the plastic geraniums, one by one. He seemed less lovesick than drug addled.
    But the scene worked, just as it had in rehearsal. Better, even.
    And faster. Before I could blink, Orsino exited, giddy from the scattered applause that followed him. The lights darkened to red and indigo. Someone shook a thunder sheet. A spotlight flickered. The Captain walked on, a tall blond jock who looked like a rock star in his pseudo-naval costume, along with two sailors. They took their places front and center and gazed expectantly at me in the wings. I drew a shuddering breath and raked my fingers through my hair, then stumbled on to fall at the Captain's feet and gaze up at him imploringly.
    "What country, friends, is this?"
    "This is Illyria, lady." The Captain looked past me, to where Rogan stood offstage.
    "And what should I do in Illyria?" I turned to stare at my cousin, and began to cry. "My brother, he is in Elysium ..."
    I recall almost nothing else of my performance, though I remembered all my lines, all my entrances. People applauded when I walked offstage. They laughed at the right places. I took my pratfalls during my duel with Sir Andrew and praised the countess so that the very babbling gossip of the air cried out "Olivia."
    But it was like being stone-cold drunk in a darkened room. Only when Rogan was on did the stage suddenly seem to shake and blaze, as though lightning struck it: his flaming hair, his white costume
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    irradiated by the followspots, his bare feet kicking up a shining haze of dust and rouge and face powder that followed him like a bright shadow. When he first opened his mouth and sang I heard a gasp go through the audience, as though everyone had at the same instant touched a burning wire.
    Then the house fell silent.
    It was as though I were alone in the attic. Only now, the toy theater had grown to the size of a real one. I watched my cousin, his slender form pacing in front of the footlights, the scrim behind him backlit so I could see the faintest suggestion of tree limbs and the outlines of a wrecked ship, the moon rising above distant mountains, and the blue shadows of the other actors.