Intermission #Un-numbered: Reality

The director laid down his script.
"Take a break, guys," he said.
He watched as the actors and actresses dropped, exhausted, to the floor.
He had so much respect for them. They had all learned so much and had put everything of themselves into it. They'd become their characters: they had denied their own histories and taken on the pasts of characters that never existed. They'd renounced, even disowned their own realities for imagined realities. And made those imagined realities real.

He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, they were gone.
It was almost like they had never been.