Rigging

A The cartridge on the Slopbox: one screen at a time of sloping planks and ladders, and a thrower at the top. The Understudy is taking an encore nobody asked for, and Props, who has stopped listening, is striking the set from the top of the backstage scaffold: sandbags come rolling down the planks, dropping from each to the next and sometimes down a ladder, and Cue sends the apprentice, who is crew, up to say so. The way up is jump or climb: a sandbag is jumped where the planks are far enough apart, and timed past where they are not. A broom from the prop basket sweeps them for a while, and Ms Quill’s programmes, blown about the scaffold, are worth picking up.

Four screens, each its own trouble: the planks, where the bags roll; the scenery dock, where painted flats slide across gaps and Props throws papier-mâché rocks that bounce, with curtain moths about; the rope lifts, ridden up one side and down the other while sandbags drop straight down the shafts; and the chocks, where every chock pulled from the planks leaves a gap, and the last one tips the top of the scaffold. Props slides down with it, takes a bow, and nobody claps, which the usher is relieved about. Then the encore goes round again, faster. A Slopaganda poster is pasted on the back wall of the dock. Like everything else here, it was made by a machine.