Empty Stages

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Empty Stages: Madison Chorus

Madison Chorus

BBC Radio 4 - Empty Stages, Madison Chorus

A drama graduate finds herself alone on a stage in a theatre closed by the pandemic.

Drama graduate Madison joins a rota of solitary night cleaners at a theatre, closed by the pandemic, and one night imagines her future on the empty stage.  Read by Lisa McGrillis.

When drama graduate and part-time usher Madison is laid off during the pandemic by the famous London theatre where she works, she joins a skeleton team of night cleaners – all of them young actors – on a temporary contract to check and clean the building overnight. 

Working in rotation, each of them alone, they take turns to sweep and polish the empty stage, sometimes spontaneously performing to the vacant auditorium. 

On Madison’s shift, she reflects on her difficult journey into acting and speculates about her uncertain future. Must she abandon her dreams and return to Yorkshire? Is she deluding herself she could ever succeed?  Standing under the ghostlight – the lightbulb which illuminates an otherwise dark stage – Madison experiences a life-changing revelation.  

Read by Lisa McGrillis
Written by Nicola Baldwin
Directed by Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

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