The drop goes transparent, showing six figures upstage in the loading door, backlit by a brilliant light, undulating.)

SCOTT: Hold, please, (the actors stop)

JEREMY: Did someone turn on the air conditioning? It’s freezing in here.

SCOTT: Jeremy, we’ll have to stop for a minute.

JEREMY: What’s the matter?

SCOTT: Chuck says some people have come in. He tried to tell them we’re working, but they insist on talking to us.

JEREMY: Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of them. I’ll do it. I’ll be very diplomatic. I’ll ask them to leave in no uncertain terms, (he walks into the drop) Anthony, could you take this drop out, please? (Anthony: “Sure, Jay.”) I nearly ran into it. (gestures to Scott) Scott?

SCOTT: Thanks a lot. (to the Characters) I’m sorry, but this is a closed rehearsal. Can I ask what you want?

FATHER: (comes forward, followed by the others, to the foot of the stage) We’re looking for an author.

WILL: So are we. (laughter)

FATHER: Any author will do, sir.

JEREMY: Well, we’re here rehearsing some classics. We don’t have any spare live authors around. Unless you’d like us to resurrect Carlo Gozzi? (the actors laugh)

STEPDAUGHTER: (excitedly, as she rushes forward) But that’s perfect. You have no new plays. We could be the hit of your season.

(A moment to describe the Characters. They are bewildered and ill at ease. These Characters must be completely different from the actors in the company. They are bathed, for example, in their own special light, which follows them everywhere. The Characters are not ghosts but created realities, proceeding from the heat-oppressed imagination, and therefore, Pirandello says, “more real and consistent than the amorphous realities of the actors.” The Mother is the picture of sorrow, whose tears seem to have frozen in the corner of her eyes. She is dressed in plain material, with stiff pleats, making it [and her] look as if it were carved.

The Father is about fifty. He has reddish thinning hair, but he is not bald. He has a full mustache and an uncertain, rather vacuous smile. He is pale, with a high forehead. His eyes are blue and oval-shaped, clear and sharp. He wears light trousers and a dark jacket. His voice is rich but at times harsh and strident.

The Mother seems to be crushed under a heavy burden of shame and humiliation. She is wearing a thick black veil and a simple black dress. When she raises the veil, she shows a face like wax, her eyes humbly fixed on the floor.

The Stepdaughter, eighteen years old, is defiant, at times insolent. She is very beautiful, even in her mourning dress, and very elegant. She is disdainful of the timid, suffering, depressed air of her young brother, a scruffy Little Boy of fourteen, who is also dressed in black. But she is full of warmth and tenderness toward her sister, a four-year-old Little Girl who is dressed in white with a black silk sash around her waist.

The Son is twenty-two, tall, frigid, scornful of the Father and indifferent toward the Mother. He wears a massive overcoat and a long green scarf.)

KAREN: This rehearsal has been screwed up enough already.

TOMMY: No more schedule changes, please.