The Tales of Tarya, Books 1-3

Chapter 12 - Stage Fright-1

Stage FrightUberto brought in their lunch basket and the players crowded together, sharing out slabs of meat, bread, and cheese. After the extravagance of the sugarplums, this food was surprisingly ordinary. Mina tried to ask what had happened with the harpist, but Uberto silenced her.

Music from beyond the stage told them the entertainment had resumed. They ate quickly, licking the last of the repast from their fingers, then began hastily donning costumes. Once they were dressed, Dario passed out the masks while Uberto spoke.

‘Today we will play Love, the greatest of all stories. I think a traditional canovaccio best, given the current mood amongst the Council. The Tale of the Foolish Suitors. Mina, set the scene, describing Isabella’s beauty before she appears. Introduce each new character as he comes to press his suit. When the Inamorati find each other, speak of the power of love, but after that stay silent!’

The music had changed while Uberto spoke, another act beginning.

Mama Tina spoke urgently. ‘Jal, Isabella, Mina. Quickly, your faces. I’ll do Mina’s hair, Lisette, you do Isabella’s.’

Mina, with her practice mask in her hand, looked at Mama Tina in confusion. ‘My … face?’

Uberto walked across and seized the mask from her. ‘I told you at the vigil, no mask,’ he said, then turned and hurried the men from the room, ordering them to prepare the stage.

Mina stood completely still, staring at the now closed door. ‘I didn’t think you meant …’ she finally managed to stammer, but Uberto was gone.

Lisette found an extra chair for Mina, who looked at the greasy face make-up with dismay. She’d always played with a borrowed mask. She felt a lurch of fear at the thought of playing without one. Maybe Uberto was right; maybe it made no difference to her ability to reach Tarya, but she feared facing the audience without the mask’s impassive persona to hide behind.

Copying the others, Mina smeared on white base paint, drawing a firm line at her chin and around the edge of her face. Now, in the mirror, her face looked blank, waiting for a new self to emerge. Jal and Isabella painted on rouged circles for cheeks and the little red heart beauty spots that showed their characters lived only for love.

‘What do I do?’ Mina asked, uncertain what look to convey. Like the masks, the Inamorati face make-up was the same show after show, and year after year, signalling their identity to the audience. Mama Tina had already finished Mina’s hair, a simple, very neat braid at the back. She reached for the black paint and with practiced hands used the slightly sticky substance to elongate and enlarge Mina’s eyes. She drew in new, thinner eyebrows. Next she rouged Mina’s lips, following their natural shape rather than creating the exaggerated cupid bow Isabella and Jal wore.

‘That’s it,’ Mama Tina said, turning Mina toward her. ‘Simple. We don’t need any symbols or exaggerations. Your costume tells the audience what they need to know. Uberto and I discussed leaving off the make-up entirely, but that would make you too different from the others. This will do.’

Her hands gently turned Mina so she saw herself in the mirror. She didn’t recognise the girl staring at her with wide, exotic eyes and generous red lips. The white paint blurred her features so she wore a mask after all. She couldn’t stop looking at the stranger in the mirror who sat in her place.

‘Is that me?’ she asked, her voice low. Behind her Mama Tina nodded, her hands still on Mina’s shoulders. Mina shuddered, frightened by the blank face. She felt herself slip and knew in a minute she would disappear into Tarya. No wonder the players used masks, when even the semblance of a mask was powerful enough for her to reach a different reality.

Isabella’s high, tinkling laugh pulled her back. ‘Look at you,’ she exclaimed, her own make-up complete, ‘fascinated by your player self! It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, to don the face? You’re you, yet not. I still remember the first time I did my face. It was very freeing, yet nobody’s ever restrained me!’ She giggled and glanced sideways at Jal, then continued. ‘It’s not the same with masks. You know you’re taking on part of something else. But the white face … it’s like finding part of you that’s blank, to shape how you want. There’s a moment before you transform, onstage, when you feel it’s possible to be anything …’ Isabella giggled. ‘I can’t possibly explain it. Perhaps you’ll experience it.’

She fell silent as applause drifted back from beyond the curtain.

‘Is that us?’ she asked, and her easy laughter was gone.

Uberto leaned through the doorway, his mask in his hand. ‘There is a story teller, then us. Quickly, places.’

Everyone crowded together in the wings, masks in hand. A muffled voice filtered through the green velvet curtains. Waiting to take up her position centre stage, Mina was suddenly pushed aside by Roberto, who pulled the curtain back from the stage arch a little. The speaker’s voice was louder now. Mina realised it was the story teller who had briefly shared their wagon, the one who had spoken to Uberto about her. Sensing the power in his words, she wished she could hear his tale more clearly. She wondered whether he had finally removed his cloak, revealing his face.

Roberto let the curtain fall again and the mesmerising voice became a distant murmur. Then suddenly the voice finished. There was a long, long silence, then the audience erupted.

To Mina, the sound was frighteningly like the angry men who had attacked them on their journey to Aurea. Her whole body suddenly felt cold. What was she doing? She was crazy to think she could play in front of the king and queen, all the nobles, and the greatest artisans in the land. Story tellers who could weave wonder with their words, musicians who could make grief palpable, players who could transport their audience into other lives … she was a fool to imagine she could do this. And what if she brought part of Tarya into this world, as she had sometimes felt she might be able to? Would she be taken away, like the harpist?

Uberto stood just behind her. Mina turned to him.

‘Uberto … Uberto … I can’t … I just …’

Silence had fallen behind the curtain again. Harlequin stared at her from behind his mask, his face impassive, his eyes mercurial as always. Uberto was gone. This figure in his chequered costume was a stranger to her.

‘You must play,’ he said, and pointed to the centre of the stage. His voice was quiet but commanding. All the other players stared at Mina now. As narrator, she always took the stage first. Every member of the troupe had disappeared behind leather or paint, so she only saw the faces of strangers. She sensed anger behind their masks. She looked around urgently for Mama Tina, panic building. Only brown leather and white paint looked back at her. The grotesque, exaggerated features of the masks created ominous shadows in the half-light behind the curtain.

Mina felt her throat constrict. She was trapped in a shadow world with beings who meant her harm. What had happened to her friends, her family? A figure took a step forward, then another figure, and another. She backed away, truly frightened now. Then the tallest figure removed his mask, and Dario stood there, the spell broken. Gently he took her hand and held it to his chest. It took her a second to realise he was showing her how fast his heart was beating.

‘It’s just stage fright, Mina. We all have it. Use the energy to play. You’re brilliant, and you’ll take this audience where they’ve never been before.’

Mina nodded, and he lifted her hand and kissed it. Smiling at her, he donned his mask again, and Dario was gone. Inscrutable faces surrounded her once more, but they seemed less menacing now she knew Dario, at least, was on her side.

Harlequin’s voice broke through her fear. ‘The playing must go on. Quick, child, begin.’

Behind the curtain, the urgent discontent of the large crowd was growing. Mina straightened her back. Looking at the circle of players, remembering that behind these distancing masks were her friends, she took the deepest breath she could.

‘May the world open to you all!’ she said, and her voice was strong.

‘World to you,’ the others responded, and Mina turned and parted the curtains in the centre of the stage. People were muttering, some talking loudly. A few were starting to stand up as their patience expired. Mina stood waiting as people slowly realised she was there. The muttering ceased, the artisans resumed their seats. She paused a fraction longer, mainly to stop her own heart from pounding, then opened her mouth and let the story tumble from her.

‘Love makes fools of us all,’ she said, and her voice carried across the ballroom.

‘Even when we know, in our secret heart, that we act the fool, we do not stop, for love is the prize we all hope to win. And is it not wondrous, that although some may never be loved, all may love? But to be loved, beyond all judgment, with a love that will give everything it is, that is the dream that drives all our seeking in this life.’

Her fear gone, Mina began her story in earnest. Behind her the green curtains parted at her opening words. She walked from the centre of the stage to take up her place at stage right.

‘Let me take you to a beautiful city, a city where everyone cares so much for beauty that they have placed exquisite mosaics upon the walls.’

As Mina described her first sight of the splendour of Aurea, she was transported to the Plain of Seas with the breathtaking ease that had been hers at the gates of the royal city. Free of her practice mask, she found herself able to create with immense ease. Images flowed through her thoughts, and words flowed from her mouth. Her gift for telling tales was freed, finally and completely. Tarya was hers to command.

Mina’s words conjured buildings all around her, some decorated as were those in Aurea, but others tiled with pictures from her memory or from the hidden places in her thoughts. She saw the children’s tree from Andon; a blue and white jar in her old home, crazed with lines where it had been broken and repaired; a bonfire in a dark night. She was in a maze of decorated edifices and she’d taken the audience with her. As the stage was revealed by the opening curtain, their collective gasp told her they weren’t seeing the simple set, but a series of buildings going back endlessly from the front of the stage. She had brought her vision out of Tarya and onto the stage. Even the two buildings of the players’ set had become tiled and grand. Isabella stood on a balcony at stage left.

‘In this glorious city lived a maiden of astonishing beauty, a beauty so rare even the sun seemed less radiant, and the moon a dull coin in the dark sky when Eularia appeared.’

Mina ceased her descriptions and let Isabella begin her sighs and declamations about love, transforming into a sweet young maiden. As the other players joined in, the canovaccio began in earnest.

Harlequin, ever vigilant for opportunity, observed all the men of the city pining for the maiden Eularia and offered to help each of them win her.

‘A small fee, a mere pittance,’ he would say, dancing around each character. Once they had paid, he would flatter them and encourage them to play up their particular qualities to win her.

‘Eularia is a great follower of fashion,’ he declared to Dario’s ridiculously dressed Il Capitano, who proceeded to strut foolishly before the girl and the audience, seeking their admiration, and constantly blowing a bright orange feather dangling from his huge hat out of his face. To Il Dottore, fat and pompous, Harlequin suggested Eularia was a great reader of books, so that the old man, unrecognisable as Vincenzo, droned on and on about his great knowledge, unaware Harlequin was aping his mincing walk behind him as Eularia tried not to laugh in his face. At Harlequin’s prompting, Ciro’s Pantalone rattled the great gold chain around his neck and made conspicuous show of his enormous purse, temporarily catching the Inamorata’s interest.