“Welcome to the first stage of the audition process,” said the Head of Acting, and he briefly smiled. “We believe here that
an untrained actor is a liar merely.” He was standing behind the desk with all his fingertips splayed upon the green leather.
“As you are now,” he said, “you are all liars, not calm persuasive liars but anxious blushing liars full of doubt. Some of
you will not gain entrance to this Institute, and you will remain liars forever.”
There was scattered laughter, mostly uncomprehending and from the ones who would not gain entrance. The Head of Acting smiled
again, the smile passing over his face like a shadow.
Stanley was sitting stiffly at the back. He knew some of the boys from high school, but sat apart from them just in case they
betrayed or encouraged some aspect of him that he wished to leave behind. The room was tense with hope and wanting.
“So,” the Head of Acting said. “What happens at this Institute? How do we carve up the strange convulsive epileptic rhythm
of the days? What violence is inflicted here, and what can you do to minimize the damage?”
He let the question settle like dust.
“This weekend is a virtual simulation of the kind of learning environment that students at the Institute encounter daily,”
he said. “Today we are holding classes in improvisation, mime, song, movement and theater history, and tomorrow you will extensively
workshop and rehearse a text in collaboration with a small group of others. You are all expected to participate fully in these
lessons and to try your hardest to demonstrate to us the level of commitment you are prepared to offer us should you be invited
to study here.
“We will be watching you over the course of the weekend, patroling the edges of the rooms and taking notes. If you are
successful
after this first audition weekend, we will invite you back for an interview and a more formal audition. Does anyone have any
questions about how the weekend will be run?”
They all had paper numbers pinned to their chests like marathon runners. Number 45 raised his hand.
“Why don’t you just hold ordinary auditions like the other acting schools?” he said. “Like where you prepare two monologues,
one modern and one classical.”
“Because we do not want to attract that kind of student,” said the Head of Acting, “the kind of student who is good at self-advertisement,
who will choose two contrasting monologues that perfectly demonstrate the range of their skill and the depth of their cunning.
We do not care about the difference between modern and classical. We do not want students who color-code their notes and start
their essays weeks in advance.”
Number 45 blushed, feeling that he had been implicated as a student who color-coded his notes and started his essays weeks
in advance. The other hopefuls looked at him with pity and privately resolved to keep their distance.
“Acting is a profession which requires a kind of wholeness,” the Head of Acting said. “My advice to you today is this: your
ideas about talent count for nothing here. The moment when we decide to move you to the Yes list—the moment when we decide
you deserve a place at this Institute—might not be a moment when you are actually acting. It might be a moment when you’re
supporting someone else. It might be when you yourself are watching. It might be when you’re preparing yourself for an exercise.
It might be when you’re standing by yourself with your hands in your pockets and looking at the floor.”
The strategists among them were nodding gravely, already planning to let themselves appear to be caught unawares as frequently
as possible. They made a mental note to remember to stand for a moment with their hands in their pockets, looking at the floor.
Stanley looked around at his rivals, all of them eager and fervent like candidates for martyrdom, the Head of Acting looming
above them, swollen with the wonderful honor of choosing the first to die.
“Let me hand over to the Head of Improvisation,” the Head of Acting said. “Good luck.”
The longest corridor at the Institute bordered the gymnasium for its entire length. The corridor was glassed on one side with
long curtained windows and recessed doors, and on the other side the wall was uninterrupted save for the heavy double doors
into the gymnasium that swung out halfway down. On this long wall were fixed a number of costumes preserved and flattened
against the high brick, their empty arms spread wide, like ghosts pinned by a sudden and petrifying shaft of light.
Stanley paused to look. He supposed that the costumes had been retained to mark notable performances, and he moved forward
to read the first brass plaque mounted underneath a pair of limp tartan trousers and a jaunty ruffled shirt. It bore neither
the title of the play nor the name of the actor, but merely the name of the character and a date, engraved as if on the side
of a tomb. Belville. 1957. The plaques continued neatly down the wall. Stanley walked along the corridor as one paying respects
to the dead, looking up at the stiff splayed arms and limp trouser-legs and tattered lace, the older costumes ragged and flecked
with mold. Vindici, Ferdinand, Mrs. Alving, The Court Envoy. He paused at a heavy royal costume, brocaded in silver and satin
lined. One of the splayed kingly sleeves had fallen away from the wall and hung limply by his side, so the effigy seemed to
be pointing toward the foyer, the fabric of the fallen arm dragging his shoulder painfully down. The War Minister. Hal. The
solemn procession of costumes down the wall was like an eerie trickle of spirits from a leak in the bounds of the underworld.
He shivered. Perdita. Volpone. The Toad.
“They’ll do terrible things to you there,” Stanley’s father said. “You’ll get in touch with your emotions and your inner eye
and worse. I won’t recognize you this time next year. You’ll just be this big pink ball of feeling.”
“Look at all the famous people who’ve come through,” said Stanley, taking the brochure off his father and pointing to the
list inside the back cover, where all the television and film stars were asterisked in red. The pages of the brochure were
already soft from being turned and turned.
“I look forward to seeing you on daytime television,” said Stanley’s father. “That’s my son, I’ll say out loud, to nobody.
There on screen with the airbrushing and the toupee. That’s my son.”
“Did you see the photos of the grounds?” Stanley said, flipping back through the brochure until he found them. “It’s in the
old museum building. It’s all stone and mosaic floors and stuff, and big high windows.”
“I see that.”
“Three hundred people audition.”
“That’s great, Stanley.”
“And only twenty get in.”
“That’s great.”
“I know it’s just a beginning,” Stanley said.
A waiter arrived and Stanley’s father ordered wine. Stanley leaned back and looked around. The restaurant was starched and
shadowy, full of murmuring and quiet laughter and cologne. The ceiling was strung with little red lanterns glinting back and
forth above them.
The waiter bowed and moved off. Stanley’s father shook out his cuffs and smiled his therapy smile. He pushed the glossy brochure
back across the tablecloth.
“I’m proud of you,” he said. “It’s going to be great. But you know, we’re working for opposing teams now.”
“What do you mean?” Stanley said.
“Theater is all about the unknown, right? Theater has its roots in magic and ritual and sacrifice, and magic and ritual and
sacrifice depend on some element of mystery. Psychology is all about getting rid of mystery, turning superstitions and fears
into things that we can understand.” He winked and speared an olive with a toothpick. “We’re practically at war.”
Stanley felt stumped, as he often did when his father said something clever. Each year after this meal was over Stanley lay
in bed and thought for hours about what he could have said back that would have been cleverer. He chased the oily bubbles
of vinegar around his dish with his finger.
“Do you disagree?” his father asked, looking at him sharply as he chewed.
“Sort of,” Stanley said. “I guess I thought… I guess for me acting seems like a way of finding out about a person, or getting
into a person. I mean, you have to understand sadness to be able to act it. I don’t know. That seems kind of similar to what
you do.”
“Ah-ha!” said Stanley’s father with the unpleasant greedy quickness of someone who likes to triumph in an argument. “So do
you think actors know more about ordinary people than ordinary people know about themselves?”
“No,” Stanley said, “but I’m not sure that psychologists know more about ordinary people than they know about themselves either.”
His father burst out laughing and slapped the table.
“Aren’t you supposed to be giving me life advice and passing on a torch or something?” Stanley asked, to change the subject.
“Shit,” said his father. “I would have come prepared. How about you just tell me all the new cuss words, and we can swap dirty
jokes. I’ve never been to drama school. Don’t ask me about my feelings.”
“I don’t know any new cuss words,” said Stanley. “I think all the old ones are still current.”
There was a small pause.
“I’ve got a joke for you,” said Stanley’s father. “How do you give a priest a vasectomy?”
“I don’t know,” said Stanley.
“Kick the choirboy in the back of the head.”
Stanley laughed and felt disgusted that his own father was more outrageous than he was. He started flicking through the brochure
again just in case he’d missed something.
The wine arrived. Stanley’s father made a great performance of tasting it, rolling it around in the bottom of his glass and
inspecting the label on the bottle. “That’s fine,” he said to the waiter at last, nodding briefly at their glasses, and then
switching his smile back to Stanley. “So, you want some life advice,” he said.
“Not really,” said Stanley. “I just thought you were going to do the big ‘now you’re all grown up’ thing.”
“You want psychobabble?”
“No.”
“Kid, you got good blood and a fine pair of shoes.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Did I tell you about my client who set herself on fire?”
“I heard you telling Roger.”
“Life advice,” said Stanley’s father, holding up his glass for a toast. “Right. I’ve got something good and nasty. Stanley,
to mark your rite of passage I am going to tell you a secret.”
They touched glasses and sipped.
“Okay,” said Stanley reluctantly.
His father stroked his lapel with his fingertips, his glass
poised and careless in his other hand. He looked rich and camp
and deadly. “I am going to tell you how to make a million dollars,” he said.
Stanley had the hot frustrated feeling again, but all he said was Okay. He even smiled.
His father said, “Okay. I want you to think of your time at high school. Five years, right? During those five years, same
as during anyone’s five years at any high school, there was one kid in your year who died. Yes?”
“I guess so.”
“Maybe he drove too fast, drank too much, played with guns, whatever—there is always one kid who dies. Did you know, Stanley,”
he said, “that you can take out life insurance on a person without them knowing?”
Stanley just looked at him.
“And the premiums on school kids,” his father continued, “are really,
really
low. Provided they don’t have any reasons to think these kids are going to die. You can take out a million-dollar life insurance
policy on a kid for something like two hundred a year.”
“Dad,” said Stanley disbelievingly.
“All you’d need to do is pick it. All you’d need to do is to get in there and do some research and get some information that
would give you the edge.”
“Dad,” Stanley said again.
His father put his hands up like an innocent man, and laughed.
“Hey, I’m giving you gold here,” he said. “Think of your kid. The one who died at your school. Could you have picked it beforehand?
If you could have predicted it, then you could have got in there and made something good of it. Here’s your life advice, Stanley:
that is how people get rich. That’s the only secret. They see things are going to happen before they happen, and they pounce.”
Stanley’s father was smiling his therapy smile.
“I couldn’t have picked it,” Stanley said at last. “The boy at my school. He was hit on his skateboard coming home from the
shop. Out of all of them, I’d never have picked him.”
“Shame,” his father said. He didn’t say anything further. He toyed with his fork and reached for his wine and watched Stanley
over the frail rim of the glass as he drank.
Stanley fingered the drama school brochure unhappily. He was hot and uncomfortable in his suit jacket, like a chicken trussed
up to roast. “What about me?” he said. “Can you see what’s going to happen before it happens?”
His father leaned forward and stabbed the tablecloth with a bony white finger.
“I can see,” he said, “you are going to have a great year. You’re going to be great.”
“Acting is not a form of imitation,” the Head of Improvisation said briskly, after the hopefuls had assembled in a ragged
cross-legged ellipsis on the rehearsal-room floor. Near the door the Head of Acting was hovering with his clipboard, watching
with a studied indifference and pinching his pen in his fingers as he measured the worth and quality of each student against
the next.
The Head of Improvisation said, “Acting is not about making a copy of something that already exists. The proscenium arch is
not
a window. The stage is
not
a little three-walled room where life goes on as normal. Theater is a
concentrate
of life as normal. Theater is a
purified version
of real life, an extraction, an essence of human behavior that is stranger and more tragic and more perfect than everything
that is ordinary about me and you.”