h rehearsals
to make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and
Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage
minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st _that's_
a wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time
he scrubbed and mopped....

_Greta, they're hiding things from you_, I told myself.

Maybe there was a 25th hour nobody had told me about yet when they did
all the things they didn't tell me about.

Maybe they were things they didn't dare tell me because of my
top-storey weakness.

I felt a cold draft and shivered and I realized I was at the door to
the stage.

I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it
can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all
capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look
out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an
open-air place for the audience--a large upward-sloping glade walled
by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On
that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to
look part of it by a green groundcloth.

To your right is a big roofed auditorium with the same number of
seats.

The whole thing grew out of the free summer Shakespeare performances
in Central Park that they started back in the 1950's.

The Janus-stage idea is that in nice weather you can have the audience
outdoors, but if it rains or there's a cold snap, or if you want to
play all winter without a single break, as we've been doing, then you
can put your audience in the auditorium. In that case, a big
accordion-pleated wall shuts off the out of doors and keeps the wind
from blowing your backdrop, which is on that side, of course, when the
auditorium's in use.

Tonight the stage was set up to face the outdoors, although that draft
felt mighty chilly.

I hesitated, as I always do at the door to the stage--though it wasn't
the actual stage lying just ahead of me, but only backstage, the
wings. You see, I always have to fight the feeling that if I go out
the dressing room door, go out just eight steps, the world will change
while I'm out there and I'll never be able to get back. It won't be
New York City any more, but Chicago or Mars or Algiers or Atlanta,
Georgia, or Atlantis or Hell and I'll never be able to get back to
that lovely warm womb with all the jolly boys and girls and all the
cos