The director wanted the hero to immolate a wooden idol at the end of the epic. (immolate: burn, sacrifice, destroy by fire; epic: saga, heroic drama, heroic tale) On a stage scarcely twelve feet wide the enormity of the imagined blaze was hard to envision. (enormity: immensity, magnitude, vastness; envision: imagine, visualize, envisage) The scenery budget would hardly stretch to one red lamp. The director's ambition began to look like a chimera. (chimera: fantasy, illusion, unrealizable dream)
The electrician brought a shard of mirror and a tin of water. (shard: fragment, splinter, broken piece) A lamp shone through a red curtain. Each tremor in the pan multiplied the light and made shadowy flames climb the mountain. The elemental spectacle held the house still. (elemental: fundamental, basic, essential) No heat reached the scenery.
The director asked the electrician to consummate their evening of make-believe by showing the audience how she had lit the mountain. (consummate: complete, fulfill, finalize) She was half inclined to claim an innate gift for stagecraft. (inclined: disposed, minded, willing; innate: inborn, natural, intrinsic) Then her father waved from the stalls, holding the bicycle lamp that had illuminated every shadow show of her childhood.