"Theatre Music" by aprilmaples, AU snippet, Hartley uses mind control as a stage prop...
Title: Kings and Jesters; Theatre Music
Characters: Hartley Rathaway
Summary: This is a Gen short snippet set in Kings and Jesters AU, where musician!Piper will eventually meet FBI!James. Right now in this one he's using mind-control as a stage prop...
Theatre Music
People came to watch plays and musicals as a form of escape from their actual lives, to indulge for a few hours somebody else's worries and joys - so Hartley Rathaway gave them what they want.
With a swirl of woodwind notes or the touch-down of piano keys, he had all the audience members engaged, laughing and crying with the actors on stage, night after night. But very soon, the audience were sharing more than feelings, and begun to participate. Finally, at the finish of an elaborate group dance and song that could in no way be excused as natural, and when Hartley had so unthinkingly had everyone forgetting back within their seats without even planning to make them forget as he played the finishing tunes, he finally gave enough thought to what he was doing and stopped.
It was really fortunate that on the night he had a crowd of untrained audience members unthinkingly act along to the entire play, that what they were putting on was only a swordless comedy.
- end -
AN: For those of you dear readers who had been a member of your highschool's gay outreach club drama club, do you remember practising the 'stage slap'? And how very much did the 'stage slap' burns when your partner had a heavy hand and a faulty depth perception? I also just remembered that it's been so long, I forgot how to do it. :( Oh, just because a stage sword is blunt doesn't mean it's harmless, the following link has stage shootings gone wrong but plenty of sword injuries too, first being a slashed throat!:
http://www.meronlangsner.com/cautionary-tales-stage-combat-gone-wrong.html
Actually, let's be glad that Piper's theatre wasn't putting on something like The Westside Story too! In general, one should avoid mind-controlling the audience like puppets especially when one is so carried away that one is no longer sure of what one is doing.
Characters: Hartley Rathaway
Summary: This is a Gen short snippet set in Kings and Jesters AU, where musician!Piper will eventually meet FBI!James. Right now in this one he's using mind-control as a stage prop...
Theatre Music
People came to watch plays and musicals as a form of escape from their actual lives, to indulge for a few hours somebody else's worries and joys - so Hartley Rathaway gave them what they want.
With a swirl of woodwind notes or the touch-down of piano keys, he had all the audience members engaged, laughing and crying with the actors on stage, night after night. But very soon, the audience were sharing more than feelings, and begun to participate. Finally, at the finish of an elaborate group dance and song that could in no way be excused as natural, and when Hartley had so unthinkingly had everyone forgetting back within their seats without even planning to make them forget as he played the finishing tunes, he finally gave enough thought to what he was doing and stopped.
It was really fortunate that on the night he had a crowd of untrained audience members unthinkingly act along to the entire play, that what they were putting on was only a swordless comedy.
- end -
AN: For those of you dear readers who had been a member of your highschool's gay outreach club drama club, do you remember practising the 'stage slap'? And how very much did the 'stage slap' burns when your partner had a heavy hand and a faulty depth perception? I also just remembered that it's been so long, I forgot how to do it. :( Oh, just because a stage sword is blunt doesn't mean it's harmless, the following link has stage shootings gone wrong but plenty of sword injuries too, first being a slashed throat!:
http://www.meronlangsner.com/cautionary-tales-stage-combat-gone-wrong.html
Actually, let's be glad that Piper's theatre wasn't putting on something like The Westside Story too! In general, one should avoid mind-controlling the audience like puppets especially when one is so carried away that one is no longer sure of what one is doing.