Men Like Macbeth

Virgil had risen above the actors.

The air was cooler up in the fly space. Musty, metallic, muted. Macbeth (Michael) was stumbling over his lines below.

Virgil had wanted to be an actor. Now he had loftier goals.

His thin arms trembled as he reached for the batten above him to steady himself. His entire body swayed with his every movement like a bough of a half-felled tree despite four crew members below holding the base of the lift steady. The cold batten provided no assurance in his slick grip, as it was suspended in the fly space with steel cords and moved with him.

His breath came fast and tight, beating against his bound chest. One hand clenches around the crescent wrench clipped to his belt loop.

"Ready to focus," He called down and prayed silently that the curtains ate the crack in his voice before it reached the ground.

"Great." The lights flash on around him and suddenly the space warmed up. "Gabrielle, let’s drop the angle on that one down to where I'm standing."

Virgil gritted his teeth. "It's Virgil," He corrected.

"Right, sorry Virgil. You know I have a hard time remembering," said Mrs. Darcy. Michael paused in his lines. Virgil felt eyes on him though he wouldn’t dare look down.

"Sure," He replied pretending he didn’t feel like a cornered animal, white-hot adrenaline stinging through him, scared and angry in equal measure.

Mrs. Darcy was the director, and set designer, and master electrician, and prop master, and pretty much every other job that Leeland High School theater needed to run smoothly. She had a lot on her mind. Virgil would blame her for her mistakes anyway.

Inch by inch he reached for the clamp holding the Leko to the batten. Virgil had put a lot of effort into memorizing all the names of the different types of lights only for Mrs. Darcy to call them all "that one". 

Holding the light steady with one hand he desperately tried to get his wrench to adhere to the bolt holding the light at an angle. A ringing filled his ears from the shaking of his wrench striking the fastenings. 

"Can we move you to the next one?" Asked the crew from below.

"Not yet! It’s stuck," He lied. Finally, he made contact and wrenched furiously. The faster he got this done the faster he could get down. The faster he could ensure no one knew he was scared at all. 

When that light was done he felt a bite in his nose running up to the corner of his eyes. God, not tears in front of the entire theater. He had only managed to run off to the one gender-neutral bathroom in the entire school to let out hot tears when the cast list had dropped where he had proceeded to punch the wall just to see what all the hype was about.

He would have to jump from the lift to make it this time. At least no one could make out his face in the shadow above the stage lights.

"Done," He called down.

"Moving you!" The crew cried. And Virgil’s stomach lurched sideways. He snatched his hands from the batten and slapped them onto the railings of the lift.

‘Technically’, according to, like, OSHA, or whatever, he was supposed to descend all the way before the four stabilizers were lifted and he was wheeled to the side. However, according to Mrs. Darcy "nobody does that" and "it’s more efficient to move while the lift is up".

Virgil presumed her experience on this matter came from whatever low-budget community theater kicked her out and forced her to work at a public school's drama department. As a result, Virgil clung for his life to the railing and prayed nobody tripped while moving him.

One sudden jolt had Virgil seeing the entire lift tip over in his mind's eye ending in his limbs splatterd across the house seating.

"Hey fucking take it easy down there!" he shouted.

"Virgil, language!"

"Yeah, Veej, fuck off!" came the answering crow from below. Stupid nickname. Mrs. Darcy's sigh was audible probably even to the squirrels that regularly died in the ceiling.

"Why don’t you come up here and I can shake you around and see how you like it?"

He instantly regretted opening his mouth because of course the next push they put their whole weight into shoving the lift. He bites his tongue and iron wells up in his mouth. Ow.

"Children enough. Stop there, that light will be for Michael’s soliloquy.”

Virgil frowned. Michael began to practice the soliloquy off to the side. The special thing about Michael was that when he said things with his full chest, he made them real and true. Even if they weren’t.

Told by an idiot, signifying nothing, and so on.

Virgil wished he could say Michael sucked at acting. But even from up here, his voice is lonesome and braying. Every word was spoken low, like a secret regret. He is more than a walking shadow. He’s the candle flame. Virgil flickers against the ceiling above him, stuck behind the light.

He dares to flick his eyes down and is nearly blinded by how bright Michael is when lit up on stage.

Whatever. Focus.

He could do this. He wasn’t an actor anymore, he was a stage electrician.

This light needed to be moved to the left on the batten to a spot marked with blue tape. The change could have been made on the ground by flying the battens down, but if Virgil was already going to be up there focusing lights, why not also have him support the weight of heavy equipment from twenty feet in the air?

He struggled with his wrench again, getting it caught in the safety wire that would catch the lamp if the clamp failed. The metal-on-metal screech of the clamp sliding against the batten was nearly enough to make him step backward, but his trembling calves wouldn’t let him.

He tried to focus on the motions.

On the muscle memory he didn’t yet have.

Hold. Tighten, tighten. (Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.) Sweat on the rubbery grip of the wrench. Loosen to angle the light. Heat sweeping into his face. Tighten, tighten. One hand always on something solid even for two-handed tasks. Twist the barrel and somewhere below the beam narrows. A call from below of “perfect”. A small swell of pride. Desperately fiddling with the carabiner attached to the safety wire to get it to look back around the batten properly.

“It’s easier with both hands, Gab- Sorry-Virgil.”

“Oh yeah,” he replies, as though it hadn’t occurred to him. He slapped his hand back down to the railing three times before he could make it rise above his head where it felt like he had no balance.

Quickly, while looking at a fixed point in the back of the theater he fumbled the clip shut. “All set.”

***

Weeks ago, Virgil and Michael stood in the circle of Michael’s half-finished laundry, and random math worksheets as the sun set on the horseshoe above his front door. They practiced like this before auditions every year, even before Virgil was Virgil.

He’d been cast before, but this was different.

“You’re all set.” And Michael spoke like it was real. Like it was fucking prophecy. “You’re going to get cast.”

Virgil stared furiously at the copy of Macbeth in his hands trying to memorize everything he could. “But as a guy? Will I get cast as a guy?” It was his last chance. The last production of senior year. And then college where he doubted he would have time for hobbies.

“Well, they’re not going to cast you as Lady Macbeth. Bloody hands are not your style.” Virgil had let the feeling of Michael’s warm hand on his shoulder carry him all the way through the audition.

“Right. Because I definitely have more in common with a guy like Macbeth.”

Turns out Michael had lied. So later Virgil lied too and said he preferred to do crew and didn’t look Michael in the eye for weeks. He volunteered for electrics when the list of roles was opened up. Maybe he could learn everyone’s lines while hanging lights and they’d make him a surprise understudy.

*** 

By the time Virgil had focused the remaining lights, he had lost count and also lost all sense of himself except that he suspected he had heart palpitations and a stomach ache. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He couldn’t feel his knees. He didn’t even realize he was white-knuckling the railing of the lift until he had accordioned all the way back to the ground. If he was a cartoon character he would have kissed the floor.

He collapsed in a seat for the rest of rehearsals trying and failing to get through sheets of integral practice.

Mostly, his time was occupied by dully flicking his eyes up to watch Michael on stage. He wasn’t in costume yet. None of them were. It was mostly a full run, sans a couple scenes because the witches had their last field hockey game of the season to attend.

Virgil couldn’t wait to watch Michael die in the end.

Virgil would have also made a good Macduff.

Rehearsal ended at nine with a “good work everyone” from Mrs. Darcy that sounded more like a “let’s call it quits for the night”. She trudged away, her big teacher tote weighing down her left shoulder till she was practically walking at a 45 degree angle.

Virgil dragged his feet packing up. Going home meant more homework under the wary eyes of his parents who seemed to think he was a flight risk or that he’d start shoving every surgery ever into his cheeks like an evil trans chipmunk if he was left unwatched. Weirdos.

Michael was still sitting on the stage, staring at his script with both hands. Virgil was sure there’d be sweat stains on the paper later.

“I’m never gonna learn all these,” Michael groaned pressing his nose into the words. “Why can’t they all be like tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in— that’s like fifty percent ‘tomorrow’ and twenty percent ‘and’, that’s easy.”

Virgil rolled his eyes and climbed onto the stage. His muscles still shook. “Come on, don’t tell me you’re gonna back out now. We’re literally two weeks out from show.”

Michael glared over the edge of his script. “I know I can’t quit now. I also know I’m probably going to make a fool of myself in my last show of high school.”

“Urgg,” Virgil flopped over onto his back probably picking up all sorts of stage filth in the process. “You’re so boring and self deprecating. You sounded fine from what I could hear from up there. At least, for the lines you had memorized.” The lights he had focused were off, but still dangled and swayed with whatever musty ventilation the auditorium got.

“Look, Virgil… I really am sorry you didn’t get the part you wanted in this play.”

Virgil snorted turning his face back to the house. “It’s whatever, I have other things to worry about now, like making sure people can actually see you when you act.”

Michael kicked a leg out in Virgil’s direction but wasn’t close enough to hit. “Why didn’t you just say you were scared of heights?”

Virgil snapped upright. “What?! Am not.”

“Dude. You were so pale when you came down from the lift. I thought you were going to fucking pass out.”

Virgil sputtered. “I’m literally fine.”

“Sure.”

“Shut the fuck up.” The shame Virgil had been swallowing all day rose like bile to bite at his teeth. I’ll literally climb back up there right now.” The lift was locked up already, and the key was with Mrs. Darcy. But there was always the catwalk. The gate to the catwalk stairs—gridded metal that spiraled to the heavens and intertwined with all sorts of lighting rigs—was also locked, but that could be jumped easily.

The theater rang with the impact of his landing.

Michael was standing now but hadn’t followed. Still on the little blue ‘X’ of blocking tape that marked one of his many speeches.

He was staring at Virgil incredulously. “You don’t have anything to prove! This isn’t like acting, no one’s gonna laugh at you if your hands shook a bit while focusing a light. You’re still Virgil. And technically you still got cast,” Michael shouted from the stage.

Virgil stomped up the stairs in a dizzying circle and paused to shout back, “Yeah, as a fucking woman.” It would have been better to not be cast at all.

“You’re an actor, it doesn’t have to mean anything. I’m not a murderer or king of Scotland!”

Virgil is halfway up, and his heart is sling-shotting between his throat and his stomach. He stops and looks out at Michael. “But it does mean that they couldn’t imagine me as anything other than a woman. They would never cast you as Lady Macbeth. Because they could imagine you as a king, as a general, as Macbeth.” Virgil rattles the railing for emphasis and above him metal creaks and groans.

Michael’s face twists in the distance, and he finally steps closer. “Don’t say that in here.”

He realizes he’d actually never heard Michael say the name of his character outside of rehearsal. Laughter tears itself from Virgil’s mouth. “Superstitious much? Don’t be a pussy, Macbeth.”

Michael’s face reddens. “It’s- it doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, I don’t want to poke a curse,” he hisses.

Anger and satisfaction proved to be a potent cocktail, one Virgil swallows greedily. He wanted to see Michael scared. “Say it. I dare you.”

“No, I’m not-”

“Why didn’t you just say you were scared of curses?” Virgil mimicked in a nasally voice. “Do you know what it took for me to go up there? To put myself on the line like that after the cast list proved that everyone sees everything I am as some kind of joke? And you’re scared to say a fucking name? A name of a character—the titular character you’re playing? Don’t be a fucking scaredass.”

Michael is gritting his teeth.

“Say it!” Virgil shakes the railing again.

“Fine, God! Macbeth!”

Virgil laughs this time with true humor. When Michael says things it’s like they’re real. It’s like they’re prophecy.

But nothing happens.

“Macbeth,” Virgil shouts back down at him and sticky painted metal is cold in his grip. “Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth.”

A twang rings out from above. A light finds its blocking and lands exactly where it was meant to be.