The Rehearsal Read Online Free PDF Page A

was who endured, critical and strident in the cultural memory, as the less resonant, less pronounceable characters
     peeled off and dropped away. Stanley’s part was pared almost to nothing by the sharp-nosed drama teacher who said, “People
     don’t want to sit here for three and a half hours,” and in rehearsals remarked, “You
are
a bit of a Horatio, aren’t you, Stanley?You’re a Horatio through and through.” Stanley nodded and smiled and mouthed “Thank
     you” and felt a private happy-thrill, and didn’t truly apprehend her meaning until several months later when he realized that
     the comment had been less than kind. Even on stage as he trotted about in Hamlet’s brooding shadow, flaring his doublet and
     flexing his hose, he had not really understood that his part existed merely to throw other, more interesting characters into
     greater profundity and sharper relief. His mother called him “Wonderful,” and in the exhilarated lineup of the curtain call
     he had been close as he could be to the center: by Hamlet’s side, holding Hamlet’s sweaty hand.
    At the end of seventh form Stanley had seen the ragged call for auditions stapled to the pin-board in Careers Advice and simply
     fished for a pen and written his name. He supposed that he had wanted to be an actor since he was a child. Acting was part
     of a child’s primary lexicon of adult jobs: teacher, doctor, actor, lawyer, fireman, vet. Choosing to become an actor did
     not require originality or forethought. It was not like choosing to be a jockey, or a greengrocer, or an events manager for
     a local trust, where part of the choosing meant seeking and creating the choice; it did not depend on opportunity or introspection.
     Choosing to become an actor was simply a matter of reaching for one of these discrete and packaged categories with both hands.
     Stanley did not think about this as he wrote his name. The auditions sheet was watermarked and heavy, and the emblem of the
     Institute was stamped in bronze.
    Later, wishing to amplify the memory of this unremarkable decision, he imagined that it was this moment, when he lifted his
     pen up to the paper and pressed hard to unstick the ink in the roller-ball tip so that for an instant his fingertips were
     white and bloodless and hard—this moment, he imagined, was the moment when he seized an opportunity to transform from a Horatio
     into something utterly new.
October
    “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