Chapter 9
“Hello.”
“Hey, want to grab a drink after the exam today?”
“Wow, I really thought I was going to fail.”
“How did you do on the exam?”
It was the second and final day of the workshop.
The applicants, who had gotten to know one another by now, greeted each other.
“I hope we all get into the same school.”
“Yeah.”
Of course, all of that was conversations between other people.
I didn’t have anyone I was close to.
A few people had tried to talk to me, but I wanted to concentrate on the exam, so I had decided to voluntarily become a loner for a while.
Of course, there was still someone who persistently came over to me.
“Ah, you were here?”
It was Choi Byeong-cheol, whom I’d met briefly last time.
“Did you do well on your special talent? At my school, the teachers watched both the special talent and acting.”
Apparently, he hadn’t liked the fact that Professor An Chi-won had praised me during today’s movement class.
This guy must not have been confident enough to compete with me on skill, so he was trying to shake my mental state.
Unfortunately for him, I had just overcome my trauma after subduing a crazy man with a soju bottle a few days ago.
It wasn’t easy to shake my mental state anymore.
“Your movements were definitely good. I think you’d suit the dance department better than the acting department. Acting is a little more complicated, you know? You have to be good at acting as well as movement.”
I considered giving him a flick on the forehead, but the professors were watching everything.
If I actually hit him, I’d be disqualified immediately, even if I got the highest score.
I simply ignored him and looked around.
There was something I hadn’t considered when I was looking for future successful actors last time.
It wasn’t easy to recognize the successful actors I remembered even if I met them now.
So I had to consider their acting styles, skills, and even how much their appearances would change later.
I watched everyone more carefully and attentively.
That was how I found several actors who would become famous in the future.
“Ahhh. We’ll never be able to go back to Moscow.”
The applicant warming up in one corner while performing a monologue was Shin Da-hye.
She was an actress who occasionally appeared in TV dramas. Back when I was going from one extra role to another, we’d once been in the same production.
Of course, she had been playing a leading role, and we hadn’t shared any scenes, so today was actually the first time I’d seen her in person.
“I won’t cry anymore. I was just fantasizing that once I got to Moscow, I’d meet true love there.”
Her pronunciation, projection, and acting were already excellent.
Hmm. Was Shin Da-hye originally the second-ranked student in this class?
That person was the top-ranked student, right?
Anyway, eighteen men and eighteen women were being selected separately, so she wasn’t my competitor.
There was no reason to worry about her.
Thud—
I felt something bump into me from behind and turned around.
“I-I’m sorry!”
A woman who looked about 165 centimeters tall jumped in surprise and bowed her head.
She was wearing thick glasses and looked hunched over from nervousness.
Her eyes were also fixed on the floor, so it seemed she had been walking while looking only at the ground and had bumped into me.
“It’s okay.”
Even after I said that, she bowed several more times before walking away.
Right. She was there too.
I sat down.
Since the person with the number immediately after mine was Choi Byeong-cheol, he sat beside me and talked endlessly.
Before long, the short break ended.
“Are you going to keep talking by yourself?”
Professor An Chi-won, who had been standing on the stage, spoke.
“Ah… I’m sorry.”
Byeong-cheol, who had been scolded by Professor An Chi-won, immediately became as quiet as a mute.
His attitude score would probably be lowered because of that.
I sat in my seat, smiling as I listened to Professor Lim Hyeon-sik.
“Applicants, you’ve worked very hard throughout this long period of workshops and examinations. Only the final stage remains, so please hang in there a little longer.”
The students, conscious of the professors’ eyes, reacted with expressions like, Already?
“The final test will be a scene performance with one male and one female partner.”
This was another reason I had been watching the other people carefully since the first day of the workshop.
The final test required a male and female applicant to perform together, and the professors would evaluate them and give them a score.
The problem was how the evaluation worked.
Even if only one of the two performed well while the other ruined the test, both received the same score.
In other words, no matter how well I acted, if my partner was bad, we’d both receive a poor score.
“Hmm…”
Everyone should be reasonably good.
This was the Daehan Arts School examination hall, home to the best acting department in the country.
Besides, if Kim Seong-su’s words were true, only people with high first-round scores had been gathered during this time slot.
“If there are any absentees, two people of the same gender will be paired together. Please stand with the men on the left and the women on the right, according to your exam numbers.”
Following the instructions of the student assisting with the exam, the applicants lined up.
“Now, please divide yourselves again into even and odd exam numbers. Make four lines in total.”
The men and women were paired together starting from the front.
Female even numbers with male even numbers, and female odd numbers with male odd numbers.
I could see Shin Da-hye beside me.
“Hello.”
Perhaps she thought we’d be on the same team, because she bowed her head.
“Yes, hello.”
I greeted her as well and waited, hoping we’d become partners.
But as the pairings were made from the front, I could clearly see that there were slightly fewer women.
At that moment, I realized that, being the second-to-last number, there was no female applicant available to be paired with me.
And, unfortunately, the very last number behind me belonged to Choi Byeong-cheol.
Since the pairings were being made from the front, there was a high chance I’d end up with Choi Byeong-cheol.
“……”
Choi Byeong-cheol didn’t seem happy about it either.
Neither of us showed it, since it could lower our attitude scores.
“Okay, is everyone paired up?”
“Yes!”
The applicants answered with the bright voices expected from acting students.
I also answered using my voice while keeping an eye on the professors.
Then the door opened, and two female students came running inside.
“I’m sorry!”
Apparently, they’d gone to the bathroom and returned late.
“Acting is a collaborative effort.”
Professor An Chi-won looked displeased.
While the two girls were being scolded, Choi Byeong-cheol beside me sighed.
“Phew. That’s a relief.”
Well, that would probably be reflected in his attitude score too.
“Let’s move two people farther back.”
Ahn Seok-ju, who had introduced himself as the acting department’s student council president, rearranged the pairs.
Shin Da-hye, whom I had expected to be paired with me, ended up with Choi Byeong-cheol.
Byeong-cheol looked quite pleased, as if he’d been paying attention to her acting earlier.
Well, even I could tell Shin Da-hye was talented.
And the person I ended up being paired with was…
“Ah, hello!”
It was the timid girl who had bumped into me earlier.
“We’ll give you thirty minutes. You must create a short one-act play with your partner and perform it on stage.”
After being paired with the timid girl—I decided to call her that for now—I stood there and listened to the instructions.
“Once the time limit is over, a bell will ring. After that, you’ll have your final oral interview, and all the examinations will be over.”
I would have to prepare for the oral interview with the timid girl too.
Once Ahn Seok-ju, the acting department student council president, finished speaking, the people around us began dispersing one by one to discuss their plans.
I also took the timid girl to a quiet place where there weren’t many people.
“Let’s introduce ourselves first. I’m Yeon Gi-jun.”
“I’m Han Seo-hyeon…”
The timid girl, Han Seo-hyeon, bowed her head.
As expected.
She was the person I’d been thinking of.
“Seo-hyeon.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of acting are you most confident in?”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with, Gi-jun… I’m okay with anything.”
I knew she’d say that.
“Let’s avoid comedy for now.”
Looking at Han Seo-hyeon’s personality, comedy would be poison.
“Let’s do a serious drama.”
“Yes.”
If it was acting that gradually built up emotions, a personality like hers could actually become an advantage.
“Seo-hyeon, what monologues have you practiced normally?”
“Uh… Laura from The Glass Menagerie, Nina from The Seagull, and Emily from Our Town.”
They were all shy, fragile tragic heroines.
Well, they suited Han Seo-hyeon quite well.
“What about you, Gi-jun?”
I should adapt to her as much as possible.
“I’ve also done Tom from The Glass Menagerie and Treplev from The Seagull.”
I wrote down the works one by one on a sheet of paper before speaking.
“Both of us have played characters with similar qualities so far.”
More precisely, I was pretending they were similar.
All of the works Han Seo-hyeon mentioned were pieces that anyone interested in acting would practice at least once.
“It shouldn’t be too difficult to decide on a direction.”
“Yes.”
Han Seo-hyeon hesitated for a moment before speaking.
“Th-then, how about we make the most of the characteristics of the characters we’ve played so far?”
I’d been waiting for that answer.
“Sounds good. Let’s make the structure clearer. Let’s have two types of characters: a passive person and an active person.”
That would create a conflict between the two characters and make the scene more lively.
“Let’s make the situation more detailed. It would be difficult to create something completely new, so let’s take ideas from existing works.”
Han Seo-hyeon nodded slightly.
After that, we exchanged several ideas.
“Um… how about making the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland the male lead and having Alice fall in love with him?”
“……”
“If you don’t like that, what about adapting Romeo and Juliet so the female lead is from a wealthy family and the male lead is poor…? That’s not very good either, is it?”
“Yes, I think both would be difficult. The stories are too large and complicated to fit into a short performance.”
Perhaps my words discouraged her, because Han Seo-hyeon lowered her head.
Han Seo-hyeon and I continued brainstorming, throwing out one idea after another.
At the same time, whenever something seemed too excessive, I immediately filtered it out.
After exchanging several more ideas—
“I… I thought of something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Since we’ve both acted in The Glass Menagerie… what if we adapt it into a twenty-first-century version?”
Oh.
That was actually a pretty good idea.
“We could keep Laura’s setting of being unable to leave her room… and add a character similar to Jim O’Connor, the person she has a crush on.”
“Should we make the reason Laura can’t leave her room the same as in the original?”
In the original The Glass Menagerie, Laura has a physical disability that causes her to limp.
Since she was in school, she had been conscious of people’s gazes and gradually became afraid of going out into the world because she felt that people were laughing at her.
Eventually, Laura lived inside her home, spending her time collecting small glass animal figurines.
“Having her be disabled is good, but… if we make her limp just like the original, wouldn’t it be too similar?”
Han Seo-hyeon carefully watched my expression as she spoke.
She was right.
“Then we need a reason why she can’t leave the house. Hmm… how about she was in an accident?”
“An accident?”
“Yes. She was injured, and something about her appearance became disfigured, so she can’t leave the house because of people’s stares.”
Han Seo-hyeon’s eyes suddenly lit up.
“Where was she injured?”
I thought for a moment.
The moment I said an accident, something had already come to mind.
I took a breath and spoke.
“Let’s make it so she has scars on her face.”
I decided to put the life I had lived 그대로 onto the stage.
