It’s the scariest thing I’ve seen done on stage. Don’t make me do it.

It’s the scariest thing I’ve seen done on stage. Don’t make me do it.

Understudying a lead role in a play usually means cheekily dreaming that something terrible will happen. Not too terrible, just sufficiently terrible that you get your unexpected shot and a star is born. But me, I’m terrified. I want to throw away my shot. My fear is not that the actor I’m shadowing right now is onstage the whole time, or that she has to convincingly age more than 80 years in 100 minutes, or that she experiences that lifetime’s …