“Great,” he said, giving me a nod and striding away, leaving me standing in the lobby, holding my coat. The rest of the audience—such as it was—was streaming out around me, walking through the exit door and up the stairs to the street, and in that moment I desperately wished I was one of them.

This was all I had wanted—to have a moment to talk to Mr. Campbell, to show him my commitment, to do everything I could to make sure I would get cast as Cordelia. Only a few hours ago, the idea that Mr. Campbell wanted my thoughts would have been the best thing ever. But now…

I looked at the door one last time, but I knew I wasn’t going to walk through it. Just like I knew I had to watch the rest of the play after he’d seen me, I now had to stay. I couldn’t leave once he was expecting me to be waiting for him.

I walked back toward the entrance to the theater, trying to tell myself that Stevie might have gone home hours ago. That maybe she wasn’t there alone, and I wasn’t letting her down a second time.…

The door to the theater was propped open and I peered inside. The cast was sitting on the stage, slumped over their phones.

When we got notes after our performances, we were always laughing and talking, giddy with postshow adrenaline, inside jokes flying fast and free. It was the time when we felt the most like a unit, a team. We’d done a thing together and now the jitters and nerves were behind us—we could just relax and have fun.

But nobody on the stage was even talking to each other.

I saw two actors coming up the aisle and hurried away from the door, pretending to be interested in a framed playbill for Burn This.

“He’s gonna be pissed,” the guy who’d played the first murdered man said to the girl who’d played the main character’s ex-wife as they walked through the lobby, both pulling on their jackets.

“I really don’t care,” she said, lifting her hair up out of her collar. “If he wants us to stay and get his crappy notes on his even crappier play, he needs to actually pay us.”

“You have a point,” the guy said, holding the exit door for her, letting a gust of cold air blow into the theater before it slammed shut again.

It was shocking to hear anyone talk about Mr. Campbell that way—but I also couldn’t blame them. The show had been so bad and none of this made sense, and I just wanted to leave… which was, unfortunately, the one thing I couldn’t do. I took a seat on one of the folding chairs in the lobby, knowing there was nothing to do but wait.