CHAPTER 65 – TONGUE-TIED
by inkadmin|
“I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” Luke 19:40 |
The audition notice was on the Arts Block board by the end of the day for the skilful few who passed the Cold Read.
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TITUS ANDRONICUS — SEMESTER 2 PRODUCTION |
She was going for the role of understudy for Lavinia, but still, she had to audition.
Her choice was: Act IV, Scene I. The scene where Lavinia, having lost all other instruments, finds the copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and guides her observer’s hands to the right page. The story of Philomela. The woman whose tongue was cut out by her rapist, who wove her story into a tapestry because she had no other way to speak it.
Lavinia, who uses myth as her last vocabulary. Lavinia, who turns a staff in her mouth and writes in the sand: Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius.
The scene required no dialogue. It required only that the audience, looking at her, understand that the silence was not silence.
Valorie would be there not for the audition but for future practice sessions.
She would make Valorie watch, over and over again, until she understood the same thing.
Until Mio’s displaced future was engraved onto Valorie’s acting bones.
Wednesday, January 16th.
Week 2 of Semester 2.
Dr Kirby had spent the week in the village of Salem—the hangings had come. She made James Jules read out Giles Corey’s death aloud in his careful, baritone voice, “More weight,” and the class grew solemn at the fact that he was not fiction.
She then set them an essay: Abigail Williams, victim or perpetrator?
The kids were told they could swing either way.
Someone sniggered.
Cooper’s session was longer than usual. The Auditions were imminent, and he wanted those who were interested to know what made Titus so special.
“Is Titus a mourner of his sons? Of his lost honour and glory?” He demanded of them. “Or is he a man on fire? A man who has forgotten the man who rode into Rome in triumph?”
At afternoon tea, the break before the audition, Eppie and the crew gathered in their usual corner to rehearse. This time, she was not competing with any of them, so she helped the Sophomores with her [Script Analysis] instead, picking up motes of [Causality] here and there. Last time, she had taken the centre spot. This time, it was their time to shine.
Then, it was time.
The Seniors’ audition took place in the Old Music Building, which Omnia renovated only a few years ago. Unlike the Main Building’s theatre rooms, these were spacious, versatile, and rigged to support professional-grade equipment.
The room smelled like teenagers, hairspray, and hot radiator oil. Folding chairs were lined across the walls. A table was set up with instant tea and coffee.
Eppie walked in, full of confidence, and immediately felt small.
Literally… small.
Seniors were seventeen to eighteen, with one or two kids who were nineteen for one reason or another. She was sixteen in February, skinny for her age, and stunted from the malnourishment of her developing years.
The combination was comical.
She sat in the room, a fifth-grader among a faculty meeting of serious people with their futures on the line, knees together, hands on her lap, in an expensive cardigan that only Valorie and a few others would recognise.
The Seniors knew who she was.
She was Euphemia Fontaine, composer of Umbrella.
She was also Valorie Sanders’ direct competition.
Yet, the Seniors were not unkind.
A part of the reason was self-evident. With her theatre tights, her cropped cardigan and her ponytail, she really was as cute as a button. Thanks to her gigantic blue eyes and small face, anyone thinking of saying a mean word to her had to immediately consider the optics of bullying a child in front of their peers.
So she received a different kind of bullying.
The kind that involved infantilising kindness.
The kind reserved for small and cute cats.
Valorie sat three rows ahead, flanked by her lackies, looking in her general direction with amusement. Then the joy bled from her eyes, and then Valorie dipped into the script, leaving the discomfort of conscience behind.
Someone offered her a biscuit and a cup of tea with two spoons of sugar.
Eppie took it.
One of the Senior girls stroked Eppie’s unruly hair like she was a cat.
Thusly pampered, Eppie awaited her turn.
A boy near the door called out a number. The room’s attention returned, recalculated, resolving to business as usual. Eppie sat in the middle, feeling small and skittish, waiting for her turn.
Eppie was No.18.
The room held a table, two chairs, and a standing lamp in the corner that gave the space a late-afternoon quality. Cooper and Tyker sat behind the table, behind a stack of scripts. Tyker held her battered leather folio open, and Cooper had his arms crossed.
Between them: a well-used copy of the Arden Titus. Cooper’s. Margins annotated in three colours.
A student stage manager, Joshua Klein, third year, reliable and known to her from the Antigone run, sat off to the side. He would be providing the scaffolding, the spare lines, the props.
“When you’re ready,” Tyker said.
Eppie walked to the middle of the room and placed her copy of Titus on the table.
She had spent a dozen nights playing the scene out in her head, readying the mental script for her [Physicality]. Her interpretation was between classical and neo-classical, the idea that Lavinia’s body had been made into an object of someone else’s story—Tamora’s revenge.
What she must do is “win” back that authorial autonomy. Lavinia would tell her story in her terms.
“Soft, so busily she turns the leaves—” Joshua’s voice was deep and resonant. His intonation was superb for his age, bringing about the right mixture of bitterness and curiosity. “Help her: what would she find?”
Eppie’s shoulders dropped.
She moved her hands behind her back, walking off balance, like a part of her had been hewn away, and the natural gait that came to [Agility], [Act Natural], and [Script Analysis] joined [Physicality].
Her feet thumped the sand, shuffling just right so that it looked as though the ground was soft and she was being dragged by her will. Costello’s Suzuki walks had put something into her lower body with a rootedness that made the upper body’s plea legible.
She reached her book.
It was her copy of the play, opened.
The person who had opened it for her was Cooper.
With her mouth half-open, her throat making a mewling, guttural growl, she moved the book with her forearms and her chin until it was facing her the right way. Her movements were urgent but awkward, flipping the pages with increasing desperation, her eyes darting from page to page, as if she was actually reading Ovid.
“Ennnnngh—” she grunted, her mouth moving, her tiny tongue pressed against the roof of her petite mouth.
She pretended to read.
Her eyes scanned the invisible pages. Three, four seconds—she simply read the script, her eyes moving between the page and Cooper.
Joshua: “Lavinia, wert thou thus surprised, sweet girl? Ravish’d and wrong’d, as Philomela was?”
Yes. Her body said. The answer shot through her spine like electricity and changed her face from its despairing grimace to burning resentment, then to shame and guilt and self-loathing. She thought of Mio, she thought of Valorie, and she thought of hateful William, smiling, despite missing a chunk of his shoulder.
She picked up a pen from the table. Not in her hand. With her mouth.
In any other subject, the instructor would have put up both hands and been done with her, but not so here.
With her lips, she held the pen. With her tongue, she flipped it upright, and then, with her arms and elbows holding the book flat, she leaned in.
She wrote—slowly, deliberately, three words.
She wrote them with her whole body.
The stage manager stood in his corner, impressed, unable to see past her.
Cooper watched the words being written.
Tyker stopped writing and was watching her write.
Eppie fell on her knees. Her Lavinia had collapsed. She had spent her final, soulful force bringing the truth to light.
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Trait Acquired [Physicality] Causality Tier (A) You have acquired an exemplary talent for body control, creating lifelike actions through fine motor manipulation. This trait is modified by your [Agility] statistic. This trait can be improved through training, performance, and Karmic Causality |
“Thank you,” said Cooper, after a moment. “That was excellent, Miss Fontaine.”
Eppie stepped back. She let her hands come free. She bowed.
Susanna Tyker clapped. “I guess we’ll be seeing you soon.”
“Joshua, would you please round up the next group?” Susanna Tyker watched their aide leave, then turned to her partner with both brows raised. “Well then… that was something.”
Cooper exhaled, then nodded.
Tyker made a note and set her pen down. “How do you suppose she managed that?”
“She was excellent as well, during the Cold Read.”
“I saw.”
“I know.”
Tyker looked at Cooper. Cooper looked at his script.
“To think she just picked up the pen…”
“It was a clean pen…” Cooper coughed. “I figured she might… do something unorthodox.”
“She has…” Susanna felt amused just saying this. “Very good mouth-writing. Arial 12. Bold.”
David Cooper laughed, then shook his head. “When she wrote Rape. William. Chen. I almost picked up the book and threw it out the window.”
“I almost had a heart attack.” Susanna also laughed out loud. “She’s our understudy then?”
“Was there any doubt?” Cooper said.
“She will have the role of a Senior.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Indeed, even as her role is something else entirely.” Cooper pursed his lips. “She is our playwright. The shadow producer behind LAPAGANZA 08.”
Tyker looked at Cooper again. Cooper was looking at Eppie’s name on the roster sheet.
She read the unspoken words on her colleague’s face.
The rest was silence.
The results went up on Thursday.
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TITUS ANDRONICUS LAPAGANZA — Spring Production, 2008Directing Team: Dr D. Cooper & Mrs S. Tyker Movement: C. Costello · Spacing: Mrs Seyrova CAST
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