In the realm of dreams

Part 16: A mid-summer's play

Baek Yoona

'The audition for school play is soon, you guys fancy trying out for parts?', Soobin said as she picked up some pickled radish with her chopsticks. The summer offerings in the school canteen were turning out to be quite good.

'What's the play?', I asked.

'Oh the play is a big secret actually. We do things differently in our school, isn't it Banjang?', Jisung said looking at Sooho.

Sooho was sipping on juice having finished his tray of food.

'Yes. Erm, basically it's what we call a fluid audition. They will have a bunch of scenes to play out for audition, and anyone trying will take part in it. But the name of the play will be disclosed after the actors have been selected. The director will decide who will play which part based on the audition performance.'

'So basically, you don't audition for a specific part you just try and convince someone you can act'. Jisung added.

'But the best thing about our plays is that we are not restricted to Western playwrights, we sometimes choose East Asian authors or sometimes we even choose a K-drama on which we base the play!', Soobin said excitedly. 'Do you want to try out?'

It sounded pretty cool to be honest. In my previous school, we only ever did plays written by dead white dudes. It might be a good way to expand extra-curricular merits. Sports didn't really count as EC for me as it was my main path to scholarship. To give myself a better chance at university acceptance, I should have a wider portfolio. And who knows it might even turn out to be fun.

'I think I might try you know', I said tentatively then looked at each of them in turn silently imploring them to join in the tryouts. Realisation dawned on their faces and each had a different response.

Soobin clapped enthusiastically, 'Yay, we are all gonna be in a play!'

Jisung nodded, 'If there's a musical role, I will be golden!'

Sooho shook his head 'Ahh no, I think I will not'.

'Come on Sooho, it will be so much fun trying out and even more fun if we all end up getting parts. Don't you want to expand your extra-curricular credits?', I said, eager to persuade him.

It took two days of persistent haranguing to convince Sooho to audition for the play. Tactics included gentle requests, mild threats, nudging, cajoling, offers of non-monetary bribes, numerous text messages, singing voice notes and the occasional inspirational poems.

The day of the audition arrived with much excitement and flare. I wasn't sure how I would fare in the realm of acting, but I drew inspiration form the fact that I was acting every single day of my life and no one seemed to have noticed. So I guess I was pretty good at it.

Acting was just pretending really wasn't it? Just like I pretended to be fine by hiding my sorrow and went to school, chatted with friends, trained; acting would simply mean I would pretend to be someone else for a few hours.

Baek Sooho

I had let my friends talk me into this somehow. Some fifty students had showed up for the auditions. Fifty! They were divided into five groups of ten and given a short manuscript of different scenes to act out. I was in the same group as Soobin and our scene was from the Avengers movie when they are all arguing with each other about the intention of SHIELD and they were questioning one another's motives and calling out on their egos. I had to hand it to the director – it was a great scene that allowed people to work collaboratively because the dialogue delivery was all down to timing and also gave enough scope for individual performers to show a range of emotions in a short space of time.

Each team had an hour to workshop the scene and then go up on stage without any props and act out the scene whilst the other teams watched from their seats. To say it was nerve-wrecking would be an understatement but I had to admit once I got into the flow of things it was quite fun. I really got into the scene and focused on my dialogue and interaction with the others and we flew through it effortlessly. As an amateur I thought our team performed quite well.

Next up was Yoona's team. Their scene was from Age of Ultron when the Avengers turned up at Hawkeye's family home. Yoona flourished as Black Widow and Jisung was a convincing Banner. The standout performance though, I have to admit, was Eugene Yeo as Captain America. Perhaps it was his American accent that made the words come out of his mouth like spun silk.

We had to wait a couple of days before the results of the audition was out. Sadly, Soobin and Jisung didn't make the final cut for acting roles. But they were given roles in production- Soobin in set design and Jisung in music. Both seemed pretty ecstatic at the promise of their assigned roles which probably better suited to their natural strengths.

We will be recreating the drama While You Were Sleeping on stage. Yoona, fittingly, will play Suzy's character - the main female lead. I have been assigned Jung Hae In's role. This was all fine. It was the name that appeared next to the name Jae Chan, the main male lead, that made me clench my fists and storm out of the auditorium – Eugene Yeo.