The Spotlight is Unforgiving
"Did you see her?" The perfect, accent-free diction of Zarzuela was almost baffling. In Eyeline's opinion, it marked the white pegasus as a foreigner far more certainly than any kind of broken speech.
He took a step back from the curtain and turned to his companion shaking his head. "No, she isn't out there. Are you sure you heard the boss saying she would come?" He raised his hoof to adjust his cravat. "I've acted in front of the Princess before, and whenever she came to the theater you could see it hours before. I have yet to spot guards or sycophants."
"I am sure. And this time it will be different. He said that it would be the new Princess. Princess Luna."
His hoof froze. "Princess Luna? Nopony has seen her outside the palace yet." A grin played on his muzzle. "Well, if that isn't a momentous opportunity for our little company." He glanced over to the curtain. "If she comes. I would have expected journalists."
Zarzuela leaned forward and whispered, "She's already here, but it is a secret. The boss knew it because he had to keep the secondary entrance free and allow guard inspections. Bottle Screw had to shift the lights so as to not call attention to the balcony. He told me that when she arrived through the backstage she seemed wary of all the equipment. Like she was in a haunted mansion."
"So it's true. She has been exiled for a thousand years." He rubbed his chin, then cursed under his breath while adjusting his beard again. "Heh, that will make for an interesting audience."
Act I
Bright Light opened his eyes and threw the blanket away. He rolled over, yawned and landed on the floor of the bedroom. He shook his head, yawned, and then smiled. It was Hearth's Warming Eve, it was time to prepare the decorations, to set the tree up, to sing the carols. He stretched his neck, cracked his joints and turned back to his wife, still sleeping in their bed.
There was so much to do, and she was still sleeping. Bright Light decided that it wasn't right, and he had the moral duty to change the situation. He reached out and–
"Where are the acrobats?"
The voice resounded in the silent theater. The cadence was peculiar, ancient. It sounded like dusty books, old teachers rotting behind their desks, and creaky scrolls.
"What do you mean, there are no acrobats? You told me this was a comedy! Where is the opening act?"
He reached out to Silver Feather's resting form and shook her. "Hey, darling. Wake up. It's Hearth's Warming Eve, there's so much to do and so little time. Golden String and Looking Glass will be here soon, and we can't be unprepared. Oh, how glad they will be when–"
"Tragic-Comedy? Nonsense! There is either Tragedy or Comedy! Even after the Tyranny of the Wretched Snake, this was known!" Volume control didn't seem to be something this mare had ever mastered.
"Oh, how glad they will be when they return to a home of light and festivity. A refuge of memory and certainty, of–"
"Why add sadness and sorrow into a comedy? That defies the purpose of it, squanders everypony's time, and wastes a perfectly serviceable comedy. And it still doesn't excuse the lack of an opening act. Back in my days, even the most plebeian troupe had acrobats, and I see enough dressed up ponies down there to pay an honest wage to some artists here."
Eyeline glanced over his shoulder and wondered why the valets hadn't already thrown out the nuisance. When he saw a winged profile and a horn on the balcony talking down to somepony hidden by the rail his heart skipped a beat.
It would be a long night.
He had to return to the stage, to the here and now, to his role. He couldn't leave Zarzuela hanging. A short breath summoned Bright Light again.
Zarzuela–no, he wasn't in the theater, he was in the bedroom with his wife. Silver Feather turned on the bed. Her voice was colored by a Manehattan accent and weighed down by years of unchanging routine. "I know, dear, I know. Let me–"
"Modernity has nothing to do with it! Rules are rules for a reason! And so far, you’ve failed to convince me of the value of… this!"
It would be a really long night.
Act II
Silver Feather ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her with her wing.
Bright Light raised a hoof, then shook his head and turned back to the decorations. He grabbed another globe of glass and said, "Ah, well, it has to be the cold. I'm sure some hot cocoa will turn her sour mood around. Just another couple of winter lights and I will put the milk on the stove."
"It is because you are blind to her feelings, you fool!"
"Once the house is ready, the beauty of Hearth's Warming will turn that frown around. It always does." A small statue of the traditional Cutie Marks of the three founders landed on the table.
"How can you be so blind? How can he be so blind? Is that idiocy the vaunted modernity you were talking about?"
He had to soldier on. The voice wasn't there. He was Bright Light. He looked down at the box and saw knick-knack. What had to happen now? He glanced over the contents in search of a leading thread, something that would guide him back on his path.
Ah, there it was. Salvation came from a prop he had personally chosen. The most kitschy and dissonant decoration he had ever seen, bought at a flea market for a bit and the promise to never bring it back. It was perfect, completely devoid of any kind of grace and taste. It would cause art critics to throw up in their mouths and aesthetes to have nightmares for weeks.
It was something Bright Light would love. Him gushing about it in great detail in a brilliant monologue would lead the play forward. It would connect the acts, it would show off Bright Light's contradictions and complexities. The evening would be safe.
"Not reacting to the spectators is extremely uncouth. Tell me, how did manners decay this much in the caste of actors?"
It would make everything better. It had to.
He reached into the box and grabbed the thing. It was heavy, the perfect anchor to let him be Bright Light again. He held the diorama up over his head as he sat down as if to admire it, showing it off to the audience. The poorly sculpted statues of the six ponies in the cave, whose identity was only inferable through context and wild guessing, were represented in various, contrived, and probably painful poses. The craftponyship itself was astoundingly bad, but the most important feature was the colors. Clashing, unnatural, with the sick kind of sheen usually associated with things crawling in dark cellars. It would cause shudders even if in the half-blind ponies seated in the last row.
"What wall is stopping them from reacting? I see no wall there. Are you trying to confuse me? What in Tartarus are you faffing about?"
The words didn't come. He could remember them, but Eyeline didn't feel them. Bright Light was out of his reach.
A spark of panic threatened to set his inner world aflame. He raised the diorama slightly higher and turned it a bit. A couple more seconds to gather his wits. The spark landed, and then Professionalism stomped it out. If art wouldn't help him, then training and experience would carry him through.
"This seems an unnecessary codification of well-known facts. And it is clearly something Tragedies do. But this is a comedy. Or should be, I have yet to laugh. Comedy works differently, or at least it did before my dear sister, bless her Sun, seemed to have let everything devolve into nonsense."
He had to continue. And now eight minutes of brilliant character exploration delivered through a talk about ugly decorations would be wasted in a formulaic delivery. Functional, without true emotion.
Eyeline gritted his teeth, he loved that part, and that… There would be another time, another chance.
Act III
Bright Light was still there. Barely.
His daughter and his son sat on the couch, hugging Silver Feather. Hearth's Warming paraphernalia adorned every inch of the room. A music box plinked its last notes. Bright Light took it in his hooves and turned the little key. As the carol began anew he put it on the table and smiled.
"See, Father, that is the issue. You lock everything else out, you can't even see what's right in front of you. You live in your world of decorations and–"
"What do you mean, they learn every line and they repeat it, always in the same way?"
"–you refuse the world. You can't continue that way, even if you think it makes you happy. It doesn't, it–"
"I don't care for the director. I'm asking about the actors. Don't they improvise?"
"–makes you blind, and it hurts mother. Please, listen to us. Come out to us."
"THIS IS A COMEDY! Improvisation, creativity, and flair is a the heart of it! Truly, the art is dead."
Bright Light shattered.
He looked at his companions, years of hard work, of miserably paid performances, of sacrifices for his dream passed in front of his eyes. And his companions had been there with him, they had shared the rare moments of glory and the far more common depths of despair. Together.
Eyeline broke out.
He took a deep breath and turned around. He looked over the assembled audience, then his eyes wandered up to the balcony. "Princess, could you do us a favor and SHUT UP?"
Silence fell over the theater. The sound of the famed pin dropping would have been ear-shattering.
The figure on the balcony, still just a shape in the dark, rose, spread wings and flew down. She landed in the central aisle between the seats and stepped forward. The movements were precise and the steps had an artificial elegance to them, a hint of something learned and not practiced for a long time. Eyeline could finally see her through the lights of the stage. She was small, probably a bit shorter than Eyeline himself, with a lilac coat and an azure mane.
She stopped and stood motionless, staring him in the eyes. In an icy voice, she said, "What did you say?"
She was barely out of her filly-hood. She was… She was a Princess. "I asked you to stay silent, so as to allow us to finish this play."
She flared her nostrils. "I have been informed that certain traditions I was accustomed to seem to have been forgotten in time. I stand by my point that this is a grave loss. This whole evening has been less than pleasant. Still, I will suffer in silence for the rest of this absurd travesty of a comedy, and weep for the state of the art."
Eyeline loved Bright Light's monologue, he had learned to recite it years before the honor of doing so in front of an audience had been bestowed upon him. "This comedy is one of the masterpieces of Cross Stitch, I and my company are her legacy, and we stand by this masterwork about love, denial, and happiness."
"This, a masterwork? This thing standing in the middle of the road, without the courage to go either way, defiling established and true rules and traditions for no apparent reason?" The princess scoffed. She scraped her hoof on the floor, then resumed her posture. She clenched her teeth, looked up, rigid as a statue. "Theater may as well be dead. I will see to its resurrection."
Eyeline felt somepony touching his shoulder. He swatted it away and leaned forward. It took all his training to not scream.Without moving his eyes from the princess, he asked, "What in the name of the Heavens is your problem?"
The shapes of her guards could be seen behind her, stumbling in through the doors of the hall.
"My problem? My problem?" The royal wings flared out. It could have been the lights blinding him, but Eyeline thought he could see tiny tears in the Princess' eyes. "It lacks structure! It lacks coherence! Like this whole new world, it is a whirlpool of chaos, confusion, and incomprehensible babbling! It's a demented procession of meaningless words! My problem is that nothing makes sense! And yet, despite everything, ponies defend this state of being as if there was something of value in it!"
"Because there is, and if you don't see it then maybe you simply lack understanding or the required intellect for it!" Eyeleine stomped and swished his tail back and forth.
Luna screamed, the glass on the set rattled, Eyeline could feel the wind blowing past him. "Beyond my intellect? You boorish, inept caricature of an actor. After the reign of the Mad Wyrm, it was I who recovered the fragments of what remained of the art! I assembled them again, rebuilding it all from memories and whispers! I gave ponies back the courage of feigning being somepony else! To finally enjoy fictive stories without the terror of them becoming reality and suffocating the true nature of those telling them! I shaped it until my absence a millennium ago! Without me, there wouldn't be Theater!"
"Then thank Celestia for your absence so it could grow up and become something better."
And then there was only silence.
Closed Curtains
As far as Eyeline knew, the Princess had never said anything about that night. He believed that. It would have been useless for her to do so. Hundreds of others had witnessed it and sealed his fate.
He checked the white make-up in the mirror. Then took a red nose and placed it on his muzzle.
Perfect.
He should be grateful for having at least this. It wasn't what he had aspired to when he graduated from the Academia, but it still was theater. A simpler form, devoid of complexities and nuances, but the art was still there. Just… different.
The screams of his new audience filtered through the curtains, dozens of foals trying and failing to sit down quietly. Soon he would tumble out there, and they would laugh and scream and shout him warnings about somepony sneaking up on him with a papier-mache club.
It still was theater.
He had also heard that Princess Luna would be out there, among the audience. It seemed that she appreciated this specific form of entertainment. He was sure she remembered him, but he doubted she would recognize him in his costume. He was glad that she had found something she could recognize. His bitterness wasn't for her. She was a Princess. It would be like being angry with magic. Futile, wasteful, pointless.
He heard the juggler outside saying her part. She would tell a joke, the audience would laugh, and she would cartwheel out.
In a few moments it would be Eyeline's turn.
He looked at the clown in the mirror. It was all theater.
He turned in his swivel chair, looked up to his audience, smiled, and asked, "Well, wasn't that entertaining?"
