M-STEP Practice Test 8

Places, Please: A Play in One Scene

¹[Backstage at a middle school auditorium, twenty minutes before the opening-night performance of The Lantern Keeper. Costumes hang on a rolling rack. SUNITA sits on an overturned crate, mouthing lines from a worn script. MATEO enters, carrying a coil of cable.]

²MATEO: You've been reading that same page since I came in to check the spotlights. That was an hour ago.

³SUNITA: [without looking up] I'm memorizing.

⁴MATEO: You memorized it in February. Everybody heard you. You said the whole second act to the vending machine.

⁵SUNITA: That was practice. Nobody was supposed to need it. [She closes the script.] Understudies are like spare tires, Mateo. You keep them in the trunk and hope you never have to look at them.

⁶[MS. ROWAN, the director, enters quickly, holding a phone. She stops when she sees SUNITA.]

⁷MS. ROWAN: Sunita. Good. I need you to stay calm and listen. Priya's mom just called. Priya has a fever of a hundred and two, and she isn't coming tonight.

⁸[A pause. MATEO quietly sets down the cable.]

⁹SUNITA: [standing up too fast] Okay. Okay. So we cancel, right? We tell everyone to come back next week?

¹⁰MS. ROWAN: There are two hundred people in those seats. Their tickets say tonight. [gently] And I have an actor who knows every line.

¹¹SUNITA: Knowing the lines in a hallway isn't the same as saying them out there. What if I freeze? What if I'm the reason the whole thing falls apart?

¹²MS. ROWAN: Then you'll be in very good company. I froze in my first show. Forgot my own name, practically. [She smiles.] The audience never noticed, because the boy playing my brother said my line for me and kept going. That's what a cast does.

¹³MATEO: And if you forget where to stand, look for the light. I'll keep it on you. Wherever you are, that's the right place.

¹⁴[SUNITA looks from one to the other. She picks up the script, then sets it on the crate without opening it.]

¹⁵SUNITA: I've never even worn the costume, so it probably won't fit me.

¹⁶MS. ROWAN: We'll pin it.

¹⁷SUNITA: And Priya does that little bow at the end, with the lantern, and I always thought it looked—

¹⁸MS. ROWAN: Do your own bow. It's your show tonight.

¹⁹[Offstage, a voice calls, "Fifteen minutes!" SUNITA takes a long breath. She lifts the lantern keeper's costume from the rack and holds it against herself, measuring.]

²⁰SUNITA: [quietly, almost to herself] Spare tires get used, I guess; that's the point of them.

²¹MATEO: [grinning, picking up the cable again] That's the point of them.

²²[He exits toward the lighting booth. MS. ROWAN kneels and begins pinning the hem. Lights fade.]