Call Out

Catherine Sweeney

♫ FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD! FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD! ♫

   All eyes are on me. The choir were singing to the symphony, the makeshift school band hitting off every practised note and Mrs East's finger effortlessly flew across the grand piano keys, carrying the cord to strike a resonance. The fluorescent stage lights were redirected onto me, beckoning a circular shadow surrounding my silhouette. My parents were seated in the front rows in the theatre's foldable chairs. Mum waving, Tim with his toy in hand, smiling and Dad capturing it all on film. I wore a youthful and innocent face, my posture relaxed as I was clearly excited and full of courage just like her. A chequered sky-blue pinafore dress carefully crafted with gingham, a fake brown wig with braids tied behind my back and the unforgettable magical ruby-red slippers — all these elements were required to bring the show to life. I am Dorothy, and tonight, I will play my very best in this role.

   Correction, I was Dorothy.

   Just look at where the ruby slippers had truly brought me. I'm always reminded of this wild experience from the youthful innocence that was year six, a purposeful trip down my memory lane to when I still believed that I could be anything if I just tried. I sighed and retrieved the disc, the television disturbingly flashed in static, with the greys giving way to black, and the CD was scribbled with a black Sharpie reading '2019, 1st Performance: Wizard of Oz' with each word feeling detached and messy. I half-smiled, packaging the fragile item away into the black case before inserting it back into the living room's bookshelf, overcast by the many, many other books and older CDs. Whenever I'm bored, I like to review my earlier performances which by now I'd simply deem pathetic. If I had chosen to continue, a few years onward and I would explicitly be doing the same thing — reviewing my past self with unapproval, and looking down on an inferior and lucid past iteration. I find it funny that my dad went out of his way to encode the film into a physical disc when he could always have just sent me a file of the performance, he's just like that sometimes.

   Nowadays, I don't do theatre anymore, I'm not good enough. With each rehearsal, it became more tiring to move, weariness grasps onto my body — I've lost the grace. The crowd's applause had become unexciting, there was nothing left to offer on the stage, the 'spark' had disappeared. At times, the acts and open audition positions available still piqued my interest time and time again but I'm not going to do anything about it, to step up, to seize a role, everything only lasts for a certain period of time and never forever. Acting. It was just a phase for me.

   My phone dinged, notifying me that I had a new follower on my socials. That's nice, I suppose. I checked the time on my screen, I still had an hour and a half to kill before the disco. Why did I even bother signing up for it? My body sunk into the couch as if it was moulding into the cushion as I scrolled through my endless timeline to no avail. There is not one Leprechaun waiting for me with a pot of gold at the end of it. This wasn't any rainbow, only a perpetual scroll. All of the popular dance content creators I followed were onto a new trend of dance to incorporate with the explosive popularity in the new hit Idol anime or something, which seemed simple enough to replicate. I rested my phone on the coffee table and got up from the couch to practise the fifteen-second dance sequence.

   I rest my right elbow onto the back of my hand, kicking forward on my right leg, then the left, balancing myself on each heel. I then bring both arms together and roll them in a circular motion. Clap, arms down, prance and spin around on the same spot. I bring out my right hand with its index finger and thumb, forming an 'L' and quickly gesture to the lip. Waving it around like a metronome whilst simultaneously kicking out with the left heel. Left, right, left, I swing both arms up around waist-level then bring them together and roll them downwards in a circular motion just like before. The final few bits of choreography left, clap again, I let my hands down, opened it about 25 degrees, lightly kicked forward, and rested the weight on my heels. I twist my left leg over the right one, bringing both hands into the air and curling them together like a cone, before ending it off with one last spin and freely letting go.