We have enough of them.

WILL: I’m having enough trouble remembering my lines for King Stag!

CHUCK: I’m sorry, Equity doesn’t allow visitors during rehearsals.

FATHER: (to the Stepdaughter) I guess there’s no author here … (to Jeremy) unless, maybe, you would like to …

KAREN: Are you tourists here?

JEREMY: If you’re looking for the Freedom Trail, it’s … is this supposed to be a joke?

FATHER: Of course not! We are bringing you a story of deep anguish.

STEPDAUGHTER: We could put your theatre on the map.

JEREMY: ’Bye now. We wish you luck with all your endeavors, whatever they may be. We’re a professional theatre, we’re already on the map, and we have work to do. We have no time to waste on tourists…. Scott?

FATHER: (hurt but gentle) If you are a man of the theatre, then you know that life is full of strange things—things that are real, no matter how absurd they seem, and therefore don’t need to be pretended.

JEREMY: First you interrupt our rehearsal, and now you insult us. Would you please leave?

FATHER: All I am saying is that it’s a little crazy to try to reverse the order of life: to create scenes that are obviously untrue, and then try to convince us they are real. But then I suppose that kind of madness is built into your profession, (the actors are growing angry)

KAREN: Somebody else who thinks actors are loonies. Jeremy, can we please get rid of these people?

FATHER: Well, nobody is forcing you to make the false look true. You do it as a game…. Isn’t it your job on stage to give life to fictional characters?

JEREMY: Look, sir, we do not do it as a game, as you call it. We are professional actors. I’ll have you know that the actor’s profession is the noblest in the world, (to Tommy who looks dubious) Well, it’s a living. Even when our playwrights give us bad plays to perform, writing puppets instead of characters, we actors still manage to bring life to the scripts, right here on this stage, which I wish to hell you’d get off…. (The actors heartily agree with Jeremy. “Right on, Jeremy.” “You tell them, SA.”)

FATHER: (bearing in hard with his argument) There! You see what I mean? You say you’ve given life, you’ve created characters who are more alive than those who breathe fresh air and wear street clothes! Well, perhaps they’re not as real, but they’re closer to the truth. We’re really in agreement.

CHUCK: Hey, wait a minute. Just before you said …

FATHER: Excuse me, but what I said before—about acting being a game—I said that because you said you had no time to waste on … “tourists”—was that your word? But who knows better than you actors that nature uses the human imagination to create an even more intense reality.

CHUCK: Why are we listening to him? Where is all this getting us?

FATHER: Nowhere. I’m trying to prove that one can be thrust into life in a variety of ways and in many forms—as a tree, as a stone, as water, as a butterfly, perhaps as a woman. And maybe even as a character in a play.

TOMMY: All right, now let me get this straight. You’re trying to tell us that you were all “thrust into life” as characters in a play?

FATHER: Exactly! And we’re alive, as you can see.

JEREMY: Yes, like a stone, or a butterfly, a stoned butterfly. (Jeremy and all the actors laugh)

FATHER: I’m really sorry you think that’s funny, because as I told you we are bearing in us a story of great pain and anguish—as you might have guessed from this woman dressed in black, (at this point he brings the six down slowly to center stage, with tragic elegance, where they are lit by a fantastic bright light)

CHUCK: Nice lighting, Floyd. Could you save the special effects for us?

FLOYD’S VOICE: (from booth) I didn’t do anything.

JEREMY: Don’t encourage them, Chuck, (to actors) Very good pain and anguish, (turns to the Characters) And you lot, will you kindly leave the theatre? (to the stage manager) Scott, will you call the campus police?

SCOTT: (comes forward but stops short as if held by a strange force) This is a private rehearsal. Please leave the theatre.

FATHER: (to Jeremy) No, no, I beg you, don’t you see …

JEREMY: Don’t you understand we have work to do?

WILL: (mumbling) This would never happen at the Huntingdon.

FATHER: (coming forward with resolve) I’m really surprised at you. Why can’t you believe me? I guess you’ve never seen characters who have been created by an author assume real life on a stage face to face with each other. Is it because we haven’t given you a written script?

STEPDAUGHTER: (coming down to Jeremy, smiling and seductive) We really are six of the most fascinating characters you’ll ever meet. But we’ve been abandoned.

FATHER: That’s right, abandoned. The author who first conceived us decided for some reason not to complete the written play and send us into the world of art. That really is a crime, sir, because a fictional character can laugh even in the teeth of death. An invented character is immortal! Men will die. Writers will die! But whatever has been created will live forever.