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“True,” Katie chimed in from next to me on the soundboard.

I leaned back in my chair and clicked my next cue, slowly bringing the lights down on stages right and left. The sun had set not too long ago, so Hazel’s spotlight could finally stand out, highlighting all the attention on Romeo and Juliet in the tomb. Romeo had just died by poison, and Juliet was about to wake up.

Lauryn killed it in her rehearsals this week but hadn’t delivered believable crying, which she needed for this final scene. I crossed my toes and held my breath.

You can do this, Lauryn.

Her eyes fluttered open. Even from this distance, her grief was so palpable that my own throat tightened. I could barely breathe as she tried to shake her (now dead) husband awake.

Suddenly, the Friar’s voice boomed as he fled the scene. “ ‘I dare no longer stay.’ ”

Ugh. Truly one of my least favorite characters in any play. A “man of God” abandons a young, just-came-out-of-a-coma girl, leaving her alone with her dead husband in the middle of a freaking tomb surrounded by her other dead relatives, including her cousin, who’s still freshly decomposing, and yet everyone calls Paris or Tybalt the bad guy? Please.

Lauryn’s body collapsed in grief over Romeo’s on the floor of the stage, the lavender in her hair sparkling under the single spotlight as her Capulet headpiece clattered to the floor.

I gasped.

Whether or not she meant for it to fall off, it was the most powerful moment yet.

Ms. Sparrow’s idea, to have Romeo die on the floor instead of on Juliet’s stone slab like so many other versions, added a totally different level of emotion. The two of them isolated, in the dark, with this lighting, was almost too painful to watch.

Lauryn found the dagger and held it up, the blade glittering, her eyes more golden than brown. She mumbled something wordless as if to call forth its power.

Chills draped over me like a cold blanket from my shoulders to my ankles as her cheeks glistened with tears.

“Oh, Lauryn,” I whispered as I hit my next cue.

Her voice trembled with emotion, but her projection effortlessly carried over the amphitheater. “ ‘O, happy dagger, / This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.’ ” She brought the blade down swiftly and “stabbed” herself, the audience members simultaneously sucking in a deep breath.

Crushed it.

My heart pounded as the families entered the tomb a moment later and crumpled around the two lovers’ bodies, my fingers trembling with the final cues. The fade-out on this “new” program on my laptop was super tricky. I had to hit “Enter” at just the right moment and hope the Prince would keep his pacing the same as he did during rehearsals, which was a 50/50 chance, since most actors sped up during the live performances.

“You got this,” Hazel’s voice came through my headpiece as she slowly zeroed out her spotlight.

The Prince began his final phrase, and with shaky fingers, I pressed my last cue, which would momentarily outline the lovers before a final blackout.

The faint blue of a silhouette appeared and started fading.

Three.

Two.

One.

Blackout.

I threw my fist into the air before high-fiving Katie as the audience rose to their feet with applause and cheers.

After I brought up all the light trees on the stage for bows, Hazel almost bowled me over. “That was awesome!”

“Thank you!” I squealed. “I couldn’t have done this without you. Your timing and hits were perfect.”

She beamed and hugged me quickly before hurrying off down the main aisle toward the stage.

We had to take our troupe out of the theater, it’s true, but you could never take the “theater” out of our troupe.

Five minutes of happy dancing with Katie later, I powered down my laptop and started packing up the gear in the tubs Ms. Sparrow had brought over from the high school. The sound techies were already winding up some of the cords as well and carefully placing their new mics back in their padded cases. We would load the tubs and cords into one of our rental vans for overnight storage before unpacking it all again for tomorrow night.