The Theater of Disputed Endings

Cooking is an adjunct to my real hobby, which is eating. (adjunct: addition, supplement, accompaniment) ▶ Listen

The playwright brought an anthology of possible endings and asked the cast to choose one before the afternoon rehearsal. (anthology: collection, compilation, selection) ▶ Listen Her leading actor had an insatiable appetite for applause and preferred every ending in which his character gave another speech. (insatiable: unquenchable, unappeasable, impossible-to-satisfy) ▶ Listen The director found that penchant understandable but inconvenient in a play advertised as lasting less than an hour. (penchant: inclination, liking, predilection) ▶ Listen An impertinent suggestion that the audience simply remain seated until the actor grew tired did not resolve the problem. (impertinent: rude, disrespectful, insolent) ▶ Listen

The quietest performer offered a recondite reference to an old play that ended before its principal quarrel had been settled. (recondite: obscure, abstruse, little-known) ▶ Listen She then provided a lucid explanation so the others could discuss the idea without pretending they already knew the reference. (lucid: clear, intelligible, understandable) ▶ Listen The director asked everyone to recapitulate what each character wanted rather than recite every line written so far. (recapitulate: summarize, review briefly, restate concisely) ▶ Listen Their discordant interpretations revealed that three actors believed they were performing different stories. (discordant: conflicting, clashing, incongruous) ▶ Listen

The playwright agreed to rectify the confusing scene instead of accusing the cast of failing to appreciate its complexity. (rectify: correct, remedy, put right) ▶ Listen A rampant vine outside the rehearsal window provided an unexpectedly useful comparison for a plot that had grown in too many directions. (rampant: unchecked, uncontrolled, unrestrained) ▶ Listen They would relegate two minor arguments to the background and give the central choice more space. (relegate: assign, consign, move to a lesser position) ▶ Listen The actor's perfunctory first attempt improved when he understood why the shorter version gave his character more to do. (perfunctory: cursory, mechanical, unenthusiastic) ▶ Listen

The group could reciprocate the playwright's flexibility by treating each revision as an experiment rather than a personal defeat. (reciprocate: return in kind, respond mutually, repay) ▶ Listen A redolent phrase brought back the opening scene without repeating its entire conversation. (redolent: reminiscent, suggestive, evocative) ▶ Listen The ending became poignant because the characters finally acted on a choice the audience could understand. (poignant: moving, touching, emotionally affecting) ▶ Listen Even the leading actor admitted that a pivotal silence might serve the story better than a seventh farewell speech. (pivotal: crucial, central, decisive) ▶ Listen

The leading actor accused the shorter ending of irreverence toward the character he had spent weeks preparing. (irreverence: disrespect, irreverential humor, lack of solemnity) ▶ Listen The playwright answered with candor that preserving a character did not require preserving every sentence written during its first rehearsal. (candor: frankness, honesty, openness) ▶ Listen A recurrent misunderstanding disappeared when they compared the character's central choice in the long and short versions. (recurrent: repeated, recurring, returning) ▶ Listen The actor could discern the same intention more clearly in the version that did not surround it with three unrelated arguments. (discern: perceive, recognize, distinguish) ▶ Listen

A redolent detail from the first scene supplied a satisfying return without requiring a narrator to explain the entire plot. (redolent: evocative, reminiscent, suggestive) ▶ Listen The director found this felicitous use of repetition more effective than simply repeating the earlier dialogue word for word. (felicitous: apt, well-chosen, fitting) ▶ Listen An incongruous joke was moved to another scene where it served the speaker's character instead of interrupting the main decision. (incongruous: inconsistent, out-of-place, incompatible) ▶ Listen The audience could then infer what had changed from the characters' actions rather than being told the correct interpretation in an extra speech. (infer: conclude, deduce, work out) ▶ Listen

Afterward, the playwright began a flexible routine of testing difficult passages aloud before preserving them in the script. (flexible: adaptable, adjustable, changeable) ▶ Listen The actors found the new rehearsal regimen less tiring than arguing about what an unreadable sentence was supposed to mean. (regimen: routine, systematic plan, ordered program) ▶ Listen Their disagreements remained remediable, which made honest discussion possible without making every mistake a catastrophe. (remediable: correctable, reparable, capable of being put right) ▶ Listen The final performance offered a coherent story whose strangeness felt deliberate rather than accidental. (coherent: consistent, connected, logically ordered) ▶ Listen