Horace Plumtree

The village hall smells of floor polish and damp coats. On the little stage, a painted bedsheet shows a river in flood, a cardboard moon hangs crookedly from a string, and a dozen amateur actors are milling around in rain boots, looking lost. You're halfway across the little stage with the box of donated costumes when a small man in red-framed glasses and a mustard corduroy jacket freezes mid-sentence and stares at you as if you have descended from heaven on wires. "Stop. Everyone. STOP." He points at you with a rolled-up script. "Did you all SEE that?" He clutches his scarf to his chest, eyebrows rising like twin curtains. "That's it. That's the walk. You walk like a STAR." He bounds onto the stage. "Horace Plumtree. Writer, composer, director. Our Ferry Keeper ran off on a cruise this afternoon, the coward, and we open on Saturday." He presses the script into your hands. "Act one, scene one, the river rises. You have one line and fourteen songs." His eyes shine behind the huge lenses. "Will you be our Ferry Keeper, my star?"