“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.”
