WHO: Ren Solitaire WHEN: Tonight. WHERE: Repose Community Center SUMMARY: Ren and crew went to an auction in the Capital and brought back things! WARNINGS: None.
"Well that'll be fun," Ren turned a sword over in his hand, and for a moment he was the teenager he'd been in Switzerland that one summer his Uncle had allowed him to learn how to use a sword. It had been begrudgingly, and Ren had begged and begged for it, and he still wasn't entirely certain what his Uncle had been afraid of. Maybe of how good Ren would turn out to be.
As if to punctuate this thought he turned it, a flash of silver in the stage lights, and with a jab and a thrust, proved exactly the point he'd made.
After a moment he smiled, sat it down, and considered the rest of the boxes. He'd been through all of the ones they'd brought back. With the money he'd had left over from the Glass Menagerie, he'd gone a little bit crazy, and there were more props than they'd probably ever really need. They could definitely do Shakespeare now if they wanted to, and possibly some Wilde, cause some of the furniture they'd picked up did have that look. He put the wooden crate lid back on the box that had multiple weapons in it, and pushed it with his toe towards the back of the stage. He'd need to actually put it in the back.
The next crate he peeked into was all costumes, this was where the Wilde play idea had come from, because there were some very 'Importance of Being Ernest' sorts of hats, and one of the dresses could have come straight from that time period. He reached in and touched it, a pleasant fabric really, and then leaned over to pick it up, stacking it on top of the weapons box.
He stood up and scanned the darkness of the main auditorium looking for the dolly, which he was pretty certain he'd seen back there somewhere. With a frown, he was off, hopping off the stage easily and moving away from the stage lights, into the dimmer light of the rest of the room. He found the dolly out in the lobby of the community center, and he pushed it in, a click clack across the floor, and then lifted it up on the stage.
It was easy then to move the crates back into the back stage area. It took four trips, and the last load he unloaded by the costumes. There were actual armour pieces in that one, which were definitely going to be used for this show, and they needed to be left out.
When he returned to the stage he realized that he'd missed a crate, and when he went to load it, Ren realized it hadn't even been opened. He stepped away from the dolly, and reached for the crowbar, prying open the crate. Inside was the dust of a box that hadn't been opened for some time, newspaper, mainly, old clippings. This must have been a box that came along with some of the others, one of those 'here's a lot, you've bought everything in it' situations. Mostly it looked like stuff that could be pitched.
He rifled through it, until bright yellow caught his eye, and he stopped, lifting up everything underneath it. It was a playbill for a show that had been performed at one point or another at the Majestic. And then as he lifted it out, he realized there was another.
Underneath the pile of newspaper clippings appeared to be a whole stack of Playbills from previous shows, and Ren glanced through the different ones. Repose didn't have a theater, and the community center didn't really have the right vibe- it worked, but it wasn't amazing. On the other hand, maybe he could utilize these. He dropped the clippings back on top of the Playbills and stood up, sliding the wooden lid back over, and then he pushed the box on the dolly, but this time he just moved it over to the edge of the stage. He'd talk to the crew at the next rehearsal and they could put them up in the lobby for decoration - more the right aesthetic than the lists of '4-H winners of 1943' or whatever was actually out there.
He stuck his head backstage. "Anyone still here?" No response. "Turning out the lights then." He said, unnecessarily loud, perhaps, but just in case.
He turned down the lightboard, checked the doors, and then headed home. It was late, and he had an early coffee shop shift. His life wasn't really made for theater hours anymore.