He Picked the Play, Then Hid Behind the Curtain

In autumn 1964 a ninth grader arrived at St. Stephen’s School in Rome, joined the drama club and proposed George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man. The club, to his alarm, agreed.

Then came auditions. He looked at the rehearsal schedule, at his Latin, at the basketball team, which was losing by scores like 86 to 4 and needed every player it could get, and he did not audition. He offered to help in another way. The club made him prompter.

The prompter sits out of sight with the script and feeds a line to anyone who loses one. His post was behind an old velvet curtain at the side of the stage, which held decades of Roman dust in every fold.

He sneezed. Then he sneezed again. The prompter’s job is done well only if nobody notices it, and he made sure everybody noticed it, by sneezing.

So for six weeks of rehearsals the cast performed Shaw to the occasional muffled explosion from stage left. He learned the play backwards. He also learned the exact moment the curtain would get him.

On the night, an actor lost a line. For one long second the hall heard nothing but the radiators. He leaned forward and gave it, quietly and correctly. It was the one prompt of his entire school theatrical career, and it worked.

I recognise the type, because I am married to it. My husband does not perform. He organises. At our children’s school in Brussels he volunteered for the Christmas play in a strictly backstage role, which he described as “logistics”, and which turned out to mean holding a torch.

He was positioned behind the side curtain with the script and the torch, and told to shine it on anyone who forgot their words. The youngest, a sheep, forgot hers in the second scene. He shone the torch directly into her face. She stopped, blinked into the light, and said, to the whole hall: “Daddy, I can’t see.”

It was the biggest laugh of the night. The real star, a very small Joseph, never recovered his dignity.

The St. Stephen’s prompter at least stayed hidden. My husband has been asked to help again next year, in a more senior capacity. He will be in charge of the curtain.

The youngest has asked for it to be cleaned first.