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The Understudy Situationcomedy

The Understudy Situation

~31 turns4 endings

The premise

You are the understudy nobody thinks about, and tonight the whole tiny world backstage is coming apart forty minutes before opening curtain. The lead is locked in the green room and won't stop crying, the director is out front lying to the board about ticket sales, and the callboard is counting down to places. Somebody has to walk on stage. Every single person back here wants it to be somebody else.

Four endings to reach — where the thread leads is yours to decide.

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How it opens

Forty minutes. The callboard by the stage door says so in Teddy's neat hand — CURTAIN, and under it the red word that ends every countdown: PLACES. The hallway is the width of two people who don't like each other. Dez is pacing it, phone to his ear. "Filling up beautifully," he tells the board out in the lobby, "just beautifully — we're golden." Behind the green room door, three feet away, Margot is crying — not the shaky pre-show kind you could talk down, but the kind that has been going a while and means to keep going. June leans in the prop-alcove doorway, already in her first-act costume, watching you the way you watch a play you have seen before. …

The story picks up from here — start a save and it answers to you.

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