Waiting in the Wings

On the call sheet she was WOMAN WITH PRAM #3. Props would hand her one and the assistant director would tell her exactly when to cross the aisle. No too fast, not too slow, eyes fixed on a middle distance no one else could see. It was only a supermarket commercial, a morning filler job before she had to dash across town for the show’s opening night of The Last Magnolia. Jade had no doubt that she would do it flawlessly. That was what she did. Move like a shadow in other people’s stories.

Between takes she stood beneath rigged lights and let the warmth touch her face. The crew stepped around her whilst leads spoke in loud confident voices. The assistant director, pony-tailed and twitching with deadlines, jabbed a finger at her. “Blend into the scene. Don’t pull focus, don’t look at the talent. Got it?”

“Got it,” Jade said, smiling to show she understood, whilst secretly raging inside. She’d learned how to lean into invisibility. Earth-toned clothing on her days off, soft-soled trainers so her footsteps went unnoticed, clear nail polish, hair pinned back, a face devoid of makeup. She had perfected the art of fading out, dimming her own light.

Her phone buzzed, jolting her out of her reverie.

Ruth (Stage Mgr): “URGENT. Call me.”

Jade: “On set. Can’t talk.”

Ruth: “Lead out. Fever. Understudy grounded in Bali, flights cancelled, bloody volcanic ash. We need you!”

Jade stared until the words blurred. She was ensemble in the theatre show, no more than a breath at the edge of scenes. She had one line that used to be two, trimmed down to “Yes, miss.” The lead, Sophie, had a quiet brilliance in rehearsals, the rare gift of treating attention as though it were her first language. The idea of stepping into her role was laughable.

“Quiet, please!” the assistant director shouted. “Background ready… and action!”

Jade moved on cue, hands light on the pram handle, pretending to be a person whose shopping list mattered.

Between takes, she texted: “You’ve got others surely more qualified?”

Silence. In that pause she heard her mum’s voice from a kitchen thirty years away: “What makes you think you’re good enough? You were never built for the centre of things. For goodness sakes, Jade!”

Her dad’s half-laugh: “Don’t be daft, love.” He said it so often it clung like a nickname; soft on the surface, sharp underneath. By the time she was grown, daft and dopey had settled into her very being, proof enough he’d never really believed she was capable of more either.

Ruth: “Not others who know the show. You’ve been there every night. You run lines in the corridor when you think no one’s listening. Please.”

The assistant director’s laser pointer of attention swung back. “Jade, is it? Woman with pram. When the guy drops the cereal, give us a laugh. Not too big. You’re not a scene-stealer.”

“I can laugh like no one’s watching?” she said, the sarcasm slipping out before she could stop it. He grinned, unfazed, as if the world bent naturally to his version of things anyway.

During the break, Jade took her coffee to the shade of a truck and stared at the foam. She tried to imagine her mouth forming the heroine’s lines in The Last Magnolia, the way Sophie had done it; shoulders open, voice steady, the room becoming a kind of magnet. Jade had watched from the wings and from the back row and from the shadow behind a pillar when she wasn’t supposed to be watching at all. She knew every word and every breath.

“Jade?” Charlie, another extra, slid down beside her. Dear kind, sweet Charlie. “You okay? You look like a person who’s just been told they won a house but it’s in the middle of nowhere and also haunted.”

“The theatre wants me to go on as the lead,” she said, as she burst into incredulous laughter. “Sophie’s sick. Understudy’s stuck in bloody Bali!”

His eyes lit up, a gentle smile following. “That’s… great,” he said, the slight pause carrying more belief in her than she could find for herself.

“I’m just an extra!”, she replied.

“Extra’s know everything,” he said. “Background gets the best view.”

Her phone buzzed again.

Ruth: “Half three call. Curtain up at seven. We’ll run what we can. You don’t have to be perfect. We just need your courage.”

She could hear her mum’s snort and see the eye roll. “Oh, please. Courage is for people with thicker skin than you Jade! You bruise walking past a door.”

Her dad would laugh, not with conviction but with habit, leaving her mum’s words unchallenged. He wasn’t cruel, just a man of his time. Men were meant to be hard, stoic, unshakable. Yet as he got older, Jade often caught him tearing up at the silliest things: a sad song on the radio, or the closing scene of some soppy rom-com. He was an empath at heart, though he never knew how to wear that softness openly. Instead, he masked it with teasing and nicknames.

And then there was the hospital room. Lemon-clean and way too bright, his hand uncharacteristically warm in hers. For the first time in her life he looked at her fully and whispered “I called you dopey so you wouldn’t get hurt. Terrible plan. The worst.

You grew up careful instead of brave.” He then tried to form the word sorry, but it slipped away before it could reach her. The nurse told her she could stay as long as she liked, and so she did, until the corridor emptied and it was finally time to say goodbye.

She had not forgiven him. Not then. But now, sitting with her coffee, the memory softened into forgiveness. She set her coffee cup down, stood up suddenly and said, “I have to go.”

By the time the commercial wrapped, the city was tipping towards early afternoon. Jade handed back her pram, waved goodbye to Charlie and crossed town to the theatre.

The theatre smelled of dust and stale applause. Boxes of programmes stacked in the foyer, Sophie’s poster glowing in the glass case. The Last Magnolia, in swirled serif. At first Jade had thought the play was over the top; now she couldn’t tell where the drama ended and her own truth began.

Ruth met her at the stage door, headset skewed. “You in?”

“Against my better judgement,” Jade said.

“Your judgement’s been trained by a mum who could wilt a fern with one eyebrow,” she laughed.

Jade gave a helpless half-laugh. “She always said, ‘Don’t get ideas above your station,’ as if stations were fixed.”

“They’re not,” Ruth said. “They’re platforms. You board the train or you don’t. Come on.”

They laid out a simple dress, a cardigan with tired elbows, and a locket that felt warm in her hand. Wardrobe fussed with her hair. She was ready for the dress re-hearsal.

They ran the first act. Jade tripped over lines and apologised.

The director, Crispin, slender, tense, wearing a scarf even though it was summer, kept flinching.

“We need projection,” he said. “We need urgency. The house won’t carry you if you don’t carry yourself.”

“Be kind,” Ruth said, not whispering.

Turning to Jade he clipped, “You can do this. I have not yet decided whether you will or not, but you can.”

He left on his own cue, trailing scarf and impatience.

“Crispin’s dad was a barrister,” Ruth offered in his defence. “For what it’s worth, the poor sod grew up being cross-examined over breakfast.”

They ran the second act. She started to let the words carry their own weight, leaning into the character instead of forcing it.

“How much do I need to be perfect?” Jade asked, when they paused to grab a quick sandwich.

“Not at all,” Ruth said. “You need to be true.”

Crispin passed, eating a carrot stick like a cigar. “At least get the cues,” he murmured.

Back on stage, Jade felt the weight of it all pressing in.

“When my dad was dying, he said that he called me dopey to keep me safe,” she told Ruth suddenly. “He thought small was safe. So, he hurt me a little every day. Practical, he called it.”

“People do the worst things because they’re practical,” Ruth said gently. “Today, you don’t owe anyone.”

“Not even the audience?”

“Especially not the audience. You owe the story. And a story doesn’t want perfection. It wants to be believed.”

By half-six the foyer filled with chatter. A woman in pearls sniffed, “I hear the lead’s sick,” disappointment in her tone.

Backstage, Jade stared at her reflection. Not a famous face, but a useful one: cheerful at a coffee cart, tired at a bus stop. Now it had to show the weight of all she’d never said.

She touched the locket. It felt like cool metal now, warmth gone.

“Places,” Ruth called.

Jade stepped into the wing. The smell of dust and anticipation rose up from the floorboards and filled her lungs.

The first lines passed. Crossing for the third, her foot clipped a spike. She caught herself. The audience noticed, and a ripple of discomfort passed, silence taut, until she pulled it back.

Her mum’s voice cut across her thoughts: “Who do you think you are? Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

Jade set the next line firmly, not borrowed from Sophie but her own, as if spoken to a closed door. Then something shifted.

Crispin had wanted projection, but what she found was centre; thoughts placed directly on words, carried by space itself, feeling into the moment.

Next the emotional speech. She didn’t cry. The refusal to cry did the work. The hush was so deep she could hear her heartbeat. When the speech ended, an old man coughed to stifle his emotion, embarrassed, as his body betrayed him.

By Act Two, one moment struck hard: the heroine on a bus, convinced the world had a shape she might one day fit into. “I thought I’d get off at the next stop and begin,” she said, and Jade felt that every time she hadn’t begun anything.

The final scene arrived. Jade crossed to the centre chair, resting her hands on it.

“You made me small so the world wouldn’t need to,” she said. “You thought you were the only mouth that could hurt me. Do you know what it is to live with your own echo, and how long it takes before you find your voice in it?”

The dad, soft-jawed, kind-eyed, replied: “I thought I was building a wall around you. Turns out I built a wall inside of you.”

Jade looked at him and, just for a breath, the two of them were not characters but a man at the end of his life and a woman in the middle of hers, both of them noticing how tired they suddenly felt.

“I’m going to tear that wall down now,” she said. “You can help if you like, but it will come down either way.”

She shifted the chair slightly. Later Crispin would say it opened a channel to Row H. She was only making space for now to land without breaking.

When the lights went dark, the applause arrived politely at first. Then the sound thickened and rose to a crescendo sending warmth enough to radiate in. The actors’ hands were on her shoulders, Crispin clapping in a way that surprised even him. Ruth’s arms around her like a belt.

Jade bowed. People stood.

In the green room, they ate supermarket cake with plastic forks. Someone shoved a glass of cheap bubbly at her.

“Drink it,” Ruth said. “Stage management insists.”

Crispin approached, scarf undone as if his throat wanted more room. “Who knew you had that inside you?” he said, meaning it as a compliment and failing.

“I did,” said Claire, one of the chorus, mouth full of cake. “We all did.”

Jade’s phone buzzed.

Mum: “Heard you were on. Your aunt went. Said it was very emotional. Don’t get ahead of yourself. One performance is not a career.”

She let the pull to explain, pass.

Another message, unknown number: “Saw you tonight. Assistant director for twenty years. You’ve got the edges and the centre, rare. Regional drama needs a lead. Ordinary until she speaks. Auditions Monday. I can put you forward?”

Her chest didn’t explode. It expanded.

And a third message, from a number saved as Dad’s Nurse. The text was short: “We found a letter in your dad’s belongings that he asked to be posted if he didn’t get a chance. It’s late coming back from admin. I’m sending you a photo of it now.”

Jade closed her eyes and steadied her breath. She nodded to herself. The photo came through. The letter was three lines. His handwriting, careful as always, the d’s looped like musical notes.

Jade,

I was wrong to make you small to keep you safe. It made me feel necessary. You never needed my permission to be big. I loved the bigness every time it escaped you.

Dad.

She read it twice, carefully, as if the words were pills and she mustn’t take too many at once.

“Bad news?” Ruth said, noticing the air around her shift.

“Good news late,” Jade said.

“Good news counts whenever it arrives,” Ruth said. “It doesn’t go off.”

They sat in the mess of paper cups and sugar crumbs and let the adrenaline settle. The crew told filthy stories until everyone laughed. It was the kind of laughter that leaves the body rinsed out and feeling brand new again.

Jade walked home. The night was cool against her skin. A woman in a red coat smiled at her phone. A man carried supermarket flowers for someone waiting at home. She had always loved people best at a distance.

Her phone buzzed again.

Charlie: “How did it go?”

Jade: “I pulled focus.”

He sent back a sticker of a gold star, bright and daft and kind.

At home Jade opened her laptop. She deleted the humble line at the top of her CV, ‘Happy to support as background or chorus’, and instead typed: Actor. Then, grinning, Actor, lead and ensemble.

Another message, this time from Ruth: “Tomorrow’s evening show at seven. Sophie still out. You in?”

Jade: “I’m in.”

That night in her dreams, she was back on the bus. The bell rang for the next stop, and this time she rose without hesitation, steady and certain. She stepped down into a street that seemed to brighten beneath her feet, as if it had been waiting for her to claim it. The door hissed shut, the bus rolled on, and she kept walking, head held high. Not hidden, not small, but carrying herself as though the light she’d dimmed for years had finally broken free. The night didn’t swallow her; it lifted her, carrying her forward into something new and wonderful.