The meeting was arranged for four o'clock on Sunday. We expected the first person at five to four, because that is how people who have agreed to visit an unfamiliar theatre behave: they either arrive early and get in the way of preparations, or ring after the start and ask where the entrance is. At a quarter past four, I realised there was a third possibility.
No one came.
There were thirty-six chairs on the stage, Vera and Raya were on duty in the foyer, Timur was keeping warm by the cloakroom, and Stas was checking the side door, though it had not had time to break since the previous day. I stood at the centre of the archipelago and did not pretend to be rehearsing my opening remarks. I was rehearsing them.
At seventeen minutes past four, a woman in a red quilted coat entered the auditorium. Without taking it off, she walked along the wall, chose a chair near the exit and asked:
"Can I just sit here?"
"Yes," Ariadna said before I could.
The woman sat down. A minute later, a tall man with a briefcase appeared, followed by two young women who, as it turned out, had met at the stage door and decided to stay together. Then people began arriving singly, in pairs and, once, as a family of three, although only the mother had been invited. Vera explained the rules to the husband and son, issued them visitor wristbands and seated them in the auditorium as non-participating companions. The husband was delighted. The son asked for the wireless password.
By half past four, nineteen chairs were occupied.
I stepped into the central playing area.
"Good evening. You are at the Second Exit, and today there will be no production in the usual sense of the word."
The door opened, an elderly man in a cap came in and loudly asked whether this was where they were collecting stories about the town. Raya caught up with him carrying shoe covers. I waited until he had sat down.
"As I was saying, there will be no conventional production. Each of you has given the system permission to read an unfinished story and propose an encounter without disclosing what you entrusted to her alone."
The man with the briefcase raised his hand in the front row.
"Have you read them?"
"Only the parts made available for the production."
"So you have read them."
"Not all of them."
"How much, then?"
I looked at the terminal. Ariadna displayed a line for me: `AMOUNT VARIES. DO NOT SPECIFY IN PUBLIC`.
"Exactly as much as each person permitted," Vera said from the aisle. "If you want to check your consent, come and see me. The same applies if you want to withdraw it."
Three people went over at once. One returned, while two remained with Vera to sort out the wording. The woman in the red quilted coat stood up.
"I thought you were going to show us a scene."
"We will, when there is a scene," I said.
"There isn't one now?"
"For now, there are people."
She looked at me without enthusiasm, then at the door.
"I'll be off, then."
"Of course."
Vera saw her out and closed the entry in the log. The chair by the exit was empty again. I did not turn her departure into part of the design, although a suitable observation had already occurred to me.
Ariadna asked everyone to choose their seats again, but did not explain why. The usual human movement began: people stood up, made way for one another, asked whether there was a draught from the door, moved their bags and introduced themselves, because silently shifting a chair beside a stranger is harder than learning their name first. The man with the briefcase was Viktor Semyonovich, a retired engineer. One of the young women worked in a pharmacy; the other taught dance to children. The elderly man in the cap lived two buildings away from the theatre and had been here only once before, for a children's morning performance in 1998.
I waited for the hidden pattern. There was none. People were simply changing seats.
I walked between the groups, trying to understand precisely where the encounter began. By the window, the two young women were discussing the bus route and discovering that they both got off at the terminus, except that one then walked through the market while the other went past the garages. Near the backdrop, Viktor Semyonovich was using the back of his invitation to show Stas a folding platform: three sections, hinges from old school desks and wheels from hospital trolleys. Stas listened seriously, because he had greater respect for other people's technical lunacy than for our artistic variety.
A young man sat in a quiet corner without saying anything. I went over, introduced myself and asked whether he was comfortable.
"Yes."
"Are you waiting for someone?"
"No."
"Do you want to know why you were invited?"
"Later."
Three answers gave me no scene. I was about to help matters along with a fourth question when he raised his palm, not rudely, merely marking a boundary. I had to step away.
Half an hour later, Viktor Semyonovich sat down beside him. He asked no questions, placed his briefcase between the chairs and began sketching the platform on the back of a programme. The young man watched. Then he pointed to the hinge and said it would trap someone's finger. Viktor Semyonovich disagreed. The man took the pencil, drew a different joint and, for the first time, gave his name: Oleg.
I heard and went over at once.
"Are you an engineer?"
"No."
"Have you worked with machinery?"
"No."
"How do you know about the hinge?"
"Trapped my finger in one."
Viktor Semyonovich nodded approvingly: experience of injury counted as sufficient qualification. They continued drawing. I might have linked their conversation to Oleg's unfinished story, but I had no access to it, and his public card said only, "may be present without questions". He had not even given his name to me.
I moved away. They did indeed add a stop to the design later. The platform was built two months afterwards, and it never trapped a single finger. Oleg did not come to any subsequent meetings. His contribution remained in a four-millimetre-thick metal plate and required no biographical explanation.
By then, the two young women at the window had stopped discussing the bus and were arguing about which route was safer in the evening. One preferred the market: it was well lit, but taxi drivers gathered by the entrance. The other preferred the garages: darker, but shorter. The woman from the pharmacy joined them and drew a third route through the clinic courtyard. The dance teacher took out her phone, opened the map, and within five minutes they had agreed on a shared route to the bus stop.
"Did Ariadna match them for this?" Timur asked.
"They had compatible constraints on their journeys home," she replied. "The specific route emerged from the conversation."
"So you knew."
"I knew they finished late and lived in the same district. I did not know which route they would choose."
Timur looked at me. I was about to say that directing consisted precisely in creating the conditions for free choice. All I said was:
"Write down the third route. We could use it after rehearsals too."
We walked through the clinic courtyard all winter. It really was better lit. The gate was locked in spring, and the route came to an end for no metaphysical reason.
In the central playing area, the elderly man in the cap laid out photographs of the town square. They were amateur snapshots: snow, a bus, a shop with its old sign and three women beside a kiosk. People recognised buildings, argued about the year and searched for themselves in the background. I suggested moving the photographs beneath the lights. The man refused: the laminated paper caught the glare.
"What about putting them on the screen?" I asked.
"Then it becomes a presentation," he said. "I brought them for people to look at."
The photographs remained on two chairs. Six people gradually gathered around them, and no one stepped into the centre.
For the first time, I found myself at a meeting where everything was happening on my stage and nothing required me as a condition. The feeling was unfamiliar, but not hopeless: after all, the people had come to a theatre under my artistic direction and were sitting beneath lights I had agreed to remove.
Ten minutes later, the dance teacher said she needed a hall on Tuesdays, the engineer offered to help with the fittings for a folding set, and the man in the cap asked whether he could bring old photographs of the square before they demolished the shop on the corner. These proposals had nothing to do with one another, let alone with my opening remarks.
"Is this the meeting?" Timur asked beside the terminal.
"For now, yes," Ariadna replied.
"When do we perform?"
"When someone asks you to."
Timur looked around at the people. No one appeared likely to ask. He sat on an empty chair and began listening to the engineer explain the workings of an old folding platform to Stas.
By six o'clock, another three people had arrived. Two recognised each other at once: they had taken the same bus for ten years and never spoken. The third sat beside the acoustic panel, moved to the quiet corner a minute later and remained there until the end.
At half past six, Vera said it was time to close the building. No one applauded, because it was unclear what precisely they would be applauding. But seven people gave permission to be invited again, five exchanged telephone numbers, the engineer took the platform measurements from Stas, and the dance teacher arranged with Raya to look at costumes that had spent ten years being neither usable nor disposable.
The man in the cap was the last to approach me.
"Are you in charge here?"
"I'm the artistic director."
"Oh," he said. "I thought it was the woman with the logbook."
He said goodbye and left.
Fifteen empty chairs remained on the stage. Two stood apart: the young women had moved them aside before their conversation by the window. One had its back to the auditorium. The engineer had occupied the chair bearing my name without noticing the inscription and loosened the seat even further by rocking on it.
Stas took it away to repair.
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