Maria

Maria is the New Burbage Festival's stage manager, the calm, unshakeable hand keeping rehearsals on schedule while egos and crises swirl around her. She has seen decades of directors come and go, and she runs her cue book and her actors with the same brisk, unsentimental efficiency.

Catherine Fitch plays her as the company's ballast, dry and unimpressed by the theatrical tantrums exploding around her, which makes her a wonderful comic pressure valve. She never needs a big speech to register; a raised eyebrow or a clipped line does the work, and that restraint is exactly why she sticks.