Saturday night was our last performance of The Baker’s Wife, and we went out with a bang. All the hard work eventually paid off and everyone we knew who attended said they enjoyed the show. Yesterday was strike day, when all the costumes and props are put away and the set is taken apart and put in storage to be reassembled in a different order and repainted when it’s time for the next show. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that will fit together in various ways to create a different picture each time. When the work was finished, the cast, crew, and their families sat in a giant circle where the orderly rows of audience chairs stood not long before. We feasted on pot-luck bounty: baked ham, chicken wings, pizza, chili, a variety of salads and sandwiches, with cookies, ice cream, cake, and a chocolate-raspberry trifle made by yours truly for dessert. It was all delicious, and by the end I couldn’t possibly have eaten another bite. Meanwhile, there was much chatting, laughter, and tearful good-byes among the adults as the kids played on the now empty stage. Eventually the very live room began to grow quiet; families needed to get home and get the kids to bed; those without young children also had other places to go and things to do. None of us has had a clean home in months. The director brought out the ghost light with a superstitious “Never turn off all the lights in a theater.” And then the room went almost completely dark. The last of us filed out quietly, contemplating the magic left behind.