Trevor, In Previews

Trevor was backstage.

It was preview night for Bless the Frogs and Toads at the Minx Theater. The preview nights were always scheduled for early September to get out of the way of the steamroller that was Potter's Theater's season opener.

Word was out that Lisa, Potter's Theater's new Artistic Director and Trevor's ex-wife, was shaking things up--starting with the first show of the season.

EMMA: Isn't this exciting? I'm so excited. Are you excited?
TREVOR: I'm underwhelmed and sexually frustrated. I might need you to help with that.
EMMA: Absolutely. I can imagine how stressed you are.
TREVOR: My ex-wife is back. I'd cut myself, but I'm waiting until we do a show involving animal sacrifice. Fake blood isn't cheap.

Emma was Trevor's intern aka assistant aka lover aka kiss-ass.

But Emma, like everyone in Rome, has ulterior motives.

EMMA: So...did you read it?
TREVOR: Read what?
EMMA: My proposal.
TREVOR: Don't you read all proposals sent to me?
EMMA: Yes.
TREVOR: So how could I read your proposal, Emma? Think about it.

Trevor isn't this nasty to everybody, just his assistants. He thinks it keeps them in line.

TREVOR: Was it worth reading?

He's right.

Emma has been the assistant to three nice people, and she ate them all up and spit them out. She's set her sights on replacing Trevor as the Artistic Director of the Minx Theater, and to do that, she was going to have to grin and play dumb.

EMMA: Wellll...it was about wanting to premiere a musical here.
TREVOR: Musicals are food for the deformed and retarded.
EMMA: Oh, come on now. Think of the great hallmarks of musical theater! Cabaret, Company, Hallelujah Baby!
TREVOR: Are those shows or Gwenyth Paltrow's children?
EMMA: Musicals are fantastic when done right!

Emma hates musicals. She just knows that they bring in audience, and she who brings the audience brings nothing but good publicity onto herself.

TREVOR: What's the shitshow about?
EMMA: It's called Eat, Eat, Eat. It's about cannibals that fall in love.

Trevor thought maybe he was hallucinating.

Strike that--he wished he was hallucinating.

TREVOR: Let me get this straight. You want to do a musical?
EMMA: Yes.
TREVOR: About cannibals?
EMMA: I know it's a hard sell.
TREVOR: It's not a sell at all. It's the anti-sell.
EMMA: Nothing great is ever conventional.
TREVOR: Are you kidding me? Everything great is conventional. Gourmet dessert, pop music, The CW--
EMMA: You've built your whole career on the unconventional!
TREVOR: Emma, look onstage.

Emma glanced at the empty space and the audience leafing through their program waiting for the show to start.

TREVOR: These people are unshockable. They come here to see people dressed as dancing oregano, aborted fetuses dueling on a pirate ship, and a monkey reading from the Old Testament.
EMMA: I know, that was our season brochure last year.
TREVOR: They expect these things. And we give them--and generously. That makes us conventional, and also, at times, contrived.
EMMA: So why do it?
TREVOR: Because we're goddammed good at it, that's why.
EMMA: But cannibals would be sooo shocking!
TREVOR: That's the point. They'd be too shocking.
EMMA: More shocking that dancing fetuses?
TREVOR: Typically shocking, which is what we don't want. They want to know how we're going to attempt to shock them. We can't step outside our bag of tricks.

The time had come to do the opening announcements.

EMMA: Are you going to go out there?
TREVOR: You do them. I don't have the energy.

Lately, that seemed to be Trevor's mantra.