“You wouldn’t think Kuznetsov would be a hard one to find!” She says with a straight woman chuckle, and Natasha tries to give her best approximation of the same laugh back to her.
Natasha spots Sawyer as soon as she walks in the theatre. She’s in a booth behind a screen, but the high ponytail and harsh lines of blusher and bronzer are unmistakable. Natasha slows her walk to try and catch her eyes, but Sawyer is moving a headset into place, and nudging some buttons on the big desk in front of her. The crowd push Natasha along until Sawyer’s out of sight.
The seats aren’t the red, itchy plush of her childhood, but a modern dove grey mesh. Natasha flicks through the programme, enjoying the feature on costumes and the illustrated map of Edinburgh. On the last but one page she sees Sawyer’s name in an upright, bold gold font.
Sawyer Martinez studied Theatre at the University of Wisconsin. Since graduation she has mainly worked in Brookfield, Chicago and most recently Boston. Her most recent productions include August: Osage County (Dir: Irma Clarke); Uncle Yakov (Dir: Irma Clarke); The Bluest Eye (Dir: Florence Gamble.) Her upcoming productions include We Have Always Lived In The Castle at Boston Contemporary, the last show of Irma Clarke’s inaugural season.
Natasha stares at the paragraph, reads it a few times to make sure she’s soaked in all the salient information. There’s nothing that comes as a surprise to Natasha. But seeing it in one block, in a context completely separate from Natasha, thrills her.
She flicks back to the actors’ pages, then back to the one for the technical team. She wishes Sawyer had a headshot, it’s unfair that the actors do but she doesn’t. Natasha could have cut it out and kept it in her wallet. Natasha always thinks that that sort of thing would be handy if she ever needed to have her body identified. She might cut out and save the whole paragraph.
The lights go down, and Natasha tucks it away in her clutch. The show is good, Natasha likes the depiction of exhausted and morally bankrupt modern womanhood. She likes the lights more. From the opening shot of the actor standing in the middle of the stage, with one long strip of light turning from indigo to orange behind her, Natasha can feel Sawyer’s voice. The shadows on the chair the actor leans on are long; Natasha remembers Sawyer squatting on the floor of her kitchen to watch the way the shadows shorten as the sun rises fully.
In the second act a piece of the stage folds away and bright white lights deepen the perspective. It’s clever, and the swirling dust in the crisp bars of light are beautiful before a piss orange light casts across the actor’s face.
Sawyer always tells Natasha that her usual rule is ‘orange for faces, blue for spaces’, but this queasy shade of orange conveys no warmth. It’s the orange of a guilty morning after. The actor’s eyes are dark and searching in their sockets. The way the blue light hits her from below gives it a feeling of unheimlich.
The neon looks better than on the short video Sawyer sent. The wet-look faux brick and the inked puddles reflect the pink and turquoise neon light, giving the whole stage a seedy, late night look.
She doesn’t cry at the end, she never does. The conclusion was obvious from the first act, the main character kept on seeing her dead friend because she fucked her friend's boyfriend before her friend killed herself. Now she drinks and snorts and fucks herself blind to forget. She’s not the first or the last person to do it. The two women either side of her are sniffing and swallowing thickly.
Natasha waits in the foyer. The actors arrive first, looking nonchalant while swaddled in long coats and scarves. Some people that Natasha doesn’t know walk by, and then she spots Sawyer striding down the corridor, still in her theatre blacks. She pulls her long hair free of the tie as she stalks towards Natasha, and greets her by pulling Natasha in by the lapels.
“This suit is sexy,” Sawyer purrs. Sawyer’s eyes are already dark, and Natasha feels the strength in the hands holding her by the silky fabric.
“Thanks, I bought it for my cousin’s wedding.”
Sawyer gives her a slow smile, teeth catching on her lower lip. Natasha isn’t sure what is amusing about her cousin’s wedding, but a hot and dirty feeling grows in her stomach at Natasha’s smile.
“Come and meet the guys,” Sawyer is stroking her fingers down Natasha’s forearm.
Natasha doesn’t really want to, but Sawyer keeps that smile up and she finds herself nodding. Sawyer holds her hand until she gets to the backstage office. Natasha spots two men coiling cables while a woman piles costumes into a large laundry bag.
“Hi everyone, this is Natasha. Tom and Jesse are Sound Technicians, Jenny is our amazing Assistant Stage Manager.”
Natasha waves, they wave.
“Natasha’s from Boston. She’s a bit older than me so she might remember what you were saying earlier, Jesse.”
“What’s that?” Natasha fixes her face into an expression of pleasant interest.
Jesse’s voice is gruff. He’s missing all his R’s, like a true Bostonian. He reminds Natasha of her old math teacher.
“I was telling Sawyer that this used to be an ice rink before they refurbed it and put all that metal shit on the front.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Natasha says. “I was never allowed to go. Dad used to say that in Russia he spent all of his time trying
