The iron is a fireproof curtain that must be lowered and raised once in every performance, in view of the audience, by law, and the winch logs every drop. Ours drops every night at twenty to nine on an empty stage, holds for the twenty minutes of an interval, and rises. Twenty to nine was the interval of one show. The winch was replaced in 2010 and the new one does it too.
I am the master carpenter at a theatre with an iron, and the iron is mine to drop.
The iron.
A fireproof curtain, three tons, in the proscenium, between the stage and the house. By law it is lowered and raised once in every performance, with the audience watching, so they know it works, and it is usually done at the interval. It comes down on a winch with a brake, and the winch logs every movement with the time and the key that started it, and the key is on my ring.
At twenty to nine every night the iron comes in. Twenty minutes later it goes out. No key.
Twenty to nine.
I asked the archive, because that is what you do in this building. Every show has a different interval time, and the archive has the show reports, and I asked her which show had gone to the interval at twenty to nine, and she did not have to look. She said, the last one before the closure.
The theatre closed in 1996 for four years, for money, and the last show before the dark ran for three weeks to nobody, and its interval was at twenty to nine, and the iron was dropped at it every night by the carpenter of the day, and on the last night, the archive said, he had dropped it and gone to the pub and not come back to raise it, and the second half had played to the iron for five minutes before somebody found the key.
He was not asked back when they reopened. He died in 2009.
What has been checked.
The winch, replaced in 2010 and again in 2021. The new one drops the iron at twenty to nine.
The brake. On. The iron comes in past it.
The stage, at twenty to nine, by me, downstage, on the wrong side, the house side, where I can see the iron come in. It comes in at the speed I bring it in at, which is slower than the winch's top speed, because I was taught to bring it in slow so the house sees it. It lands on the deck with the sound it makes, which the whole building hears. And it stays twenty minutes, and it goes out, and the log says key, and the key is on my ring, on my belt, in my hand, where I have held it up to the empty house to show it.
The house.
The iron is lowered in view of the audience so the audience knows. There is no audience. But I sat in the stalls one night at twenty to nine, which I had not done, and when the iron came in the house did the thing a house does when the iron comes in, which is nothing you could point at. A settling. The sound of an interval starting, of five hundred people who have been sitting still deciding to move, without there being one of them, and the bar doors at the back of the stalls, which are on closers, opened, and stayed open the way they stay open when people are going through them, and closed twenty minutes later, and the iron went out.
What is done about it.
The drop is logged and the log goes to the licensing officer with the show reports, and the licensing officer has asked why the iron is being dropped on dark nights, and the general manager has said we are testing it, and the licensing officer has said that is very thorough.
What I do.
I look after the iron.
He dropped it and did not raise it. That is the whole of what he did wrong, in a career of thirty years, and it is the thing he is known for, and it is on the archive's note against his name, and I think it is what he is doing. Coming in at twenty to nine, every night, because that was the drop he was supposed to be there for, and holding it the twenty minutes, and taking it out, because the second half has to play, and the iron cannot be left in, and he has been taking it out every night since 2009 for a show that closed in 1996, and it is out every time, on the minute, and nobody has ever said so.
So I go to the winch at nine. When the iron goes out, at the speed I would take it out at, I stand at the winch with my hand on the key, which is not in it, and when the iron reaches its dead and the winch stops, I say, iron's out, thank you, which is what the DSM says on cans, and which nobody said to him because he was in the pub.
The log has changed. It logs the drop at twenty to nine, no key. It logs the raise at nine, and against the raise, since I started, it logs a key, and the key number is mine, and I have not put it in. I think that is him signing it off to me. I think he wants it known that the iron is out, and that somebody was there, and I was.