A Place in the Final Scene

On Monday evening, Seoyeon stood on yellow tape in the rehearsal room. Her theatre group would perform on the Saturday of the following week. In the final scene, she rose from a chair, took five steps, and turned beside an empty table.

Those steps had changed over three months. At first she hurried; later, she never knew what to do with her hands. Now she could wait for the breath of the actor behind her. Their director, Hyejin, finally watched without stopping.

At home, a message explained her missed call. A touring production needed a lighting assistant for a ten-day placement she had applied for. They left this Thursday. Their final workday was the day of her neighborhood performance.

She had long wanted to learn lighting. Whenever a stage brightened, she wondered whose hands had changed it. The dates had not been fixed when she applied. Instead of replying, she tapped between the two dates on her calendar.

They needed an answer by lunchtime. Seoyeon called Hyejin. “I can’t go, can I?” Hyejin paused. “I can’t stop you. But if you go, someone else has to take your role.”

“Could I record my voice? Could we change just the ending?” Hyejin reminded her of the actor across the table who answered while looking at her. Seoyeon remembered her own lines better than anyone else’s.

She opened her script. Notes marked where the others moved. Someone brought out a chair only when she stepped aside; someone sat only when she waited. She could not take just those last five steps with her.

Ten minutes before lunch ended, she accepted the placement. Then she wrote to the group that she would not perform. She deleted the words if that’s all right from her explanation. She had already accepted.

Replies came that evening. One person simply acknowledged it; another said they had expected her to stay through the performance. Sejin, who worked backstage, arrived carrying a script. Hyejin asked Seoyeon to hand over the role by Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Seoyeon gave Sejin her script. Little stars marked tricky sequences. Sejin thanked her, then added question marks beside two stars. “Why don’t you get up straight away here?”

Seoyeon explained the pause she had found last week. Sejin tried twice, then rose a little sooner. Seoyeon raised a hand. “Let’s watch it through,” Hyejin said. Seoyeon lowered her hand to her knee.

Sejin reached the table in four steps. Her stride was longer. Seoyeon laughed as her foot passed the tape. “It’s five steps.” Sejin looked down. “Does it have to be five?”

Hyejin moved the yellow tape sideways and turned the chair. They began again. This time nobody collided. Seoyeon picked up the scrap of tape that had fallen beneath the chair and wound it around a finger.

After rehearsal, they checked the new cast list. Seoyeon passed back the sheet without her name. She held the phone for a new group photograph. The eight people in the frame stood without leaving a gap.

Packing her script, Sejin said, “Your train’s tomorrow morning, right? Have a good trip.” Seoyeon nodded. On the way home she sent no comments about rehearsal. There was a scene she wanted to praise. She did not yet want to type it.

On the early train, she reached for her script, then stopped. Her bag held only the touring team’s work schedule. Her name was at the top. Beside it, under duties, were the words equipment organization assistant.

For the first three days, she unfolded bags, matched box numbers, and found things people requested. When the house lights went out, she watched a passageway instead of the stage. Sometimes she missed a lighting change. Her work did not let her watch that way.

On the second Friday night, Sejin asked about a sequence in the final scene. Seoyeon began a long reply, then deleted it. She pointed out the relevant passage and suggested working it out with the actor there. She did not send her own way of doing it.

On the Saturday of the show, the team moved equipment to another city. A message said the theatre doors were open. Seoyeon lost count of the boxes for the van and started again. She kept losing numbers that day.

After the show, a photograph arrived. Sejin stood beside the table, the other actors looking toward her. The mug Seoyeon had chosen was by the window now. Sejin looked less like someone filling her role than another person living in the scene.

Seoyeon enlarged the photograph, then shrank it. She congratulated Hyejin. The reply said they wished she had been there. Much later, she wrote, I wanted to see it too. On the next line she added that she was glad it had gone well.

That evening, she folded equipment bags behind the venue. The tape from Wednesday was in her pocket, its yellow dulled with several days’ dust. Without trying to flatten it, she dropped it in the bin.

A teammate called her to help carry a box when she finished. She put her phone face down in her bag’s outer pocket. She kept the photograph. Looking at it again could wait until she returned to their accommodation.

They gripped opposite handles. The other person counted one, two; Seoyeon rose on three. At the threshold, her teammate stopped, and so did she. They adjusted their grips and lifted the box over together.