This was the Head of Acting’s method: to make sacred everything these students might regard profane, and then challenge any one of them to blanch, or laugh. It worked. The students looked up at him, all of them without the usual proud mechanisms that would make them need to cry, Everybody masturbates but me.
“Good,” the Head of Acting said softly. “Now everybody get up and form a circle.”
In their haste to leap up and obey him they were clumsy and flat-footed and gauche. They scrabbled to unknot themselves and form a ring. The Head of Acting watched them fumble, and he smiled.
October
“What do you think, Martin?” the Head of Acting said, tapping his fountain pen against his cheek. “I thought Number 12 was very teachable.”
“Willing,” said the Head of Movement. “Eager without being impatient. I’d say definitely a Maybe.”
“Too many on Maybe,” said the Head of Voice, spinning the whiteboard so the others could see. “We need to start making some definite decisions or we’ll be here all night.”
“It’s because there are more and more Maybes each year,” said the Head of Acting irritably. “The kids are losing something. Twenty years ago, kids were soft and supple and compliant. Now they’re like planks of wood. Everywhere you look you see fucking Maybes.”
He threw himself back into his swivel chair, and the suspension caught him, buoying him back up again so he bobbed crossly for a moment until the momentum died.
At the top of the whiteboard the Head of Improvisation had written Ambition, Teachability, Sociability, Talent in her cramped sideways hand. The words tapered as they advanced across the board, so Ambition was written much larger than the rest, and Talent narrowed to a spearhead against the raised silver lip of the frame. The Head of Acting tilted his head back and regarded the petering list down the length of his nose. Sociability was new. It had been Collegiality for a number of years, and Courage for many years before that. It had been Courage when he had first started teaching. The changes marked a devolution, the Head of Acting thought.
“Teachability,” he said aloud. “For the boys, it means their potential to be taught about themselves, about their own bodies. For the girls, it means their potential to forget, to be able to forget everything they’ve been taught about themselves and about their bodies.”
“Oh, come on,” the Head of Improvisation said. “You act as if the boys and girls are utterly different species.”
“I’m just aware that there are differences.”
“I don’t think the differences are that huge. How about this boy—Number 12. How are this boy’s chances and choices any different from any of the girls’?”
She was cross with the Head of Acting tonight, cross with the pointed sulky air of profound disappointment that was his by rights, as Director of the Institute and possessor of the casting vote. He was sulking majestically, like a spoiled king.
“Well,” the Head of Acting said, “he’s not concerned about his beauty, for one thing. He’s not concerned that every role he takes will flatter him, that every photograph will be backlit and soft focused, forever. He’s willing to be ugly for the sake of his art.”
“Which is all very convenient,” the Head of Improvisation snapped, “because all the unbeautiful roles, all the character roles, are written for men anyway.”
From across the table the Head of Movement watched them bicker, and wondered at his own stance. He thought he saw a surly vein of misogyny in the older man, swollen over the years into a bluish pucker at his temple that never quite disappeared, and he thought he saw an exposed nerve in the woman, some hypersensitivity, some indecent raw form of hysteria that made him want to wince and look away. The Head of Movement often felt like this: marooned between two points of view, suspended. He sighed.
“Let’s not intellectualize this too much,” the Head of Improvisation said at last, repenting. “What’s important is that the boy is humble and receptive enough to be able to try different things, to stretch himself and grow, as an actor.”
“Humility,” the Head of Acting said. “That’s what it should say then, up there. If that’s what we’re looking for.”
The others were silent. The Head of Movement rubbed his face with his hands.
“All right. This isn’t helping,” the Head of Voice said. “We agree Number 12 is teachable. What else?”
They observed the photograph of Number 12, affixed to his application form with a paper clip. He looked slightly wistful, wide eyed with long pale lashes and blond hair.
“My note on Number 12 was Vulnerable,” said the Head of Improvisation.
“I saw that too,” said the Head of Acting. “I wrote down Virginal.”
“Nice,” said the Head of Improvisation. “We can work with that.”
They were being deliberately polite with each other now. They’ll accept him in a moment, the Head of Movement thought. They’ll accept the boy and it will be simply for show: as a show of deference on his part, as a show of graciousness on hers.
“I’d be prepared to make him a Yes,” said the Head of Acting. “Martin?”
The Head of Movement shrugged. When he was younger this used to excite him, selecting the choicest students from the pool like a gourmand at a spice market, rolling the possibilities around on his tongue, full of hope and ambition for the year ahead. This year as he pawed through the application forms he felt bleak and even a little ashamed of himself, as if he was selling a product he knew to be without use or value. He had been teaching for too long.
He nodded finally. “Yes for me,” he said.
“All in favor?” said the Head of Acting, turning to include the others.
They all raised their pens gravely. The Head of Voice nodded a curt satisfied little nod and pulled the whiteboard toward her. She uncapped her pen and wrote Stanley’s name in large square letters at the top of Yes.
November
Stanley clutched his Yes letter as he waited in the Green Room to be called upon. The other hopefuls sat around him, perched upon armchairs or stacked wooden forms, or on the swivel chairs that were fixed at intervals in front of the cracked and dusty mirror. Stanley caught sight of himself and realized how frightened he was, stiff in his pressed shirt with a new haircut and long bloodless hands. His gaze slid to the left and he made unexpected eye contact with the boy sitting next to him. They both looked away quickly, ashamed at having been caught observing themselves in such a private way.
Stanley swung his ankles against the crossbar of his stool and looked about him. There was an even split between boys and girls. The final class of twenty always comprised ten of each, so neither the boys nor the girls really regarded the other as a rival: each sex was competing in parallel, vying only against their own. As a result the girls were cautious and deceitful with each other but bright and flirtatious with the boys; the boys, in turn, laughed loudly and publicly when they were addressed but in the meantime they sat apart from each other and watched the girls form their swift bonds of togetherness and false sympathy with something between bewilderment and scorn.
Stanley was watching the girls now. Even as rivals they were pressing together, sowing shallow seeds of friendship and community: “I know it won’t happen,” they said, “but I hope we all get in. I hope we all do. Wouldn’t it be amazing, if the tutors came out and said, Let’s take them all?” The girls said, “Even if some of us don’t get in, we’ll stay in touch,” and some of them said, “I don’t have a chance, really. Not against you guys. I cried in the first audition when you did that piece about the hope chest. You’re so much better than me it’s not even funny.” The girls said, “Underneath it all I just want to be liked by everyone, liked and even loved.” One girl was massaging another’s shoulders. She ground the heels of her hands into the shoulder blades of her rival, her adversary, a girl whom she had only lately met, and in a low voice she said, “You’ll be awesome. You were awesome at the first audition. You’ll get in, no problem.”