CHAPTER 66 — Tanabatasama

January 23rd.
Before her fated trip back to Fresno, Eppie had one more quest to clear: her new routine with the LAPA Seniors.

While musical prodigies were dime a dozen, the same rarely held for Theatre, Dance and Music Theatre, largely due to constraints related to multidisciplinary expertise. As Susanna Tyker puts it, a good actor isn’t just someone who can expertly carry out theatre exercises—a good actor possesses an “inverse of vanity”, but not humility. They can read the audience and yet remain cool under the pressure of judgmental, passionate, and hostile viewers.

A good actor must be economical yet appear expansive before her peers.
A good actor must be an old soul in a capable body, and Eppie… was nothing less.

In her current setting, Eppie decided to fight fire with fire, facade with facade. Unlike the humility she brought to her Sophomore classes, she came to her Senior practice as the young lady responsible for writing a Sony chart topper.

When she stepped into the Old Music Building, she was finally turning heads for the right reasons. She wore matte Wolford tights with a Lemaire three-quarter-sleeve crop top, completed with a markless Common Project in black with a white sole. The duffel she used was another object of envy she had kept out of the public eye, a Tumi, practical and expensive and re-gifted to her from Curon.

She walked in, the self-made young woman, and the room took note.

Nathan Drake, the rugged young man playing Titus, stopped stretching against the barre, straightened up, and gave her a nod that said welcome to the club. Jamal Whitfield, another Senior who played Marcus, elbowed the alternative-themed kid whom Eppie recognised as Saturninus, and said something Eppie didn’t catch but could guess the shape of.

The only other Senior whose headshot she recalled was Elizabeth Moore, the older-looking blonde playing Tamora. Moore gave her a slow once-over and then, scoffing, returned to her warm-ups.

Valorie stood with her clique, flanked by two girls who looked at Eppie with unfriendly eyes. Her rival wore similarly expensive attire, and she wore it far better than a young girl without the blessings of blooming puberty.

Eppie crossed the floor and stopped in front of Valorie. She bowed a little, showing just enough respect not to be rude.

“Evening, everyone,” she flashed her winning smile at the class.

A dozen people waved back. A few minded their own business. A handful ignored her. Unlike her Sophomore class, the Seniors had been inoculated against feminine wile.

“Val.” Eppie waved.

“Eppie.” Valorie nodded back.

The air between them sizzled. Half the Senior cast had abandoned their stretches to watch; someone had produced an actual bag of marshmallows from somewhere, and it passed hand to hand as if this were a sporting event.

There came a clap from behind Eppie.
Dr Cooper had arrived with Mrs Seyrova.

“Alright,” Cooper said, not loudly, but in a particular register that ended chitchat. “Sit down. Warm-ups. Now.”

The sweets vanished into a backpack. Twenty Seniors dropped to the floor in a ragged circle, and Cooper took over without ceremony—Suzuki walks first, weight rooted through the heels, spines stacked with weight. Mrs Seyrova called out spacing drills over it, sightlines and stage geography.

Unlike the Sophomore class, the Suzuki walks the Seniors enacted required the entire body, an exercise called the “Statue Walk”. The ordeal involved students walking on the ten-count with their bodies lowered, their feet landing with weight and in motion, while their upper bodies were locked into the immovable pose of “Grecian statues”.

Eppie stumbled for the first few rounds, but her [Agility] [Strength] and [Physicality] kicked in enough for her to follow, even as the use of all three aspects of her [Persona] rapidly taxed her [Stamina].

They only worked for fifteen minutes, and the Seniors were drenched in sweat, Valorie included. Eppie was positive that, were it not for her special constitution, she would be in stitches on the floor.

She now understood why the Seniors were all stretching like crazy before she entered the room.

“Alright, good warm-up.” Cooper nodded approvingly at the seemingly unbothered Eppie. “Now for the lines.”

They repeated the exercise, now with lines from Titus.

To Eppie’s horror, this was the exercise that broke her.
Her [Vocality] moved her body in ways, externally and internally, that her [Physicality] refused, contorting her organs in ways she did not imagine were internally possible. The strangeness of the muscles that moved in independence, triggered by [Traits] rather than will, felt as though she was being put through the rack.

[Pain Suppression] triggered, but even so, she had to take a breather against the wall until the stars faded from vision.

The Seniors laughed. Someone not associated with Valorie approached her with a towel and a bottle of cold water.

“Armand saw your posting,” the girl gave her a wink. “He’s rarely at school these days, but he told me to take care of you while…”

Good old Armand… Eppie felt warm and fuzzy inside.

The girl looked at Valorie, then leaned in and gave Eppie a pat on her sweat-soaked shoulder. “Well, if there’s anything you need, you can give me a call.”

The Senior introduced herself as Emma Andersson, a dual-Dance and Theatre Major. She looked bookish and lanky, with streaks of blonde in her dark hair. She wore Hello Kitty earrings.

They exchanged numbers and spoke a little while, and a few others joined them. It couldn’t be helped. Valorie’s clique aside, there were still a dozen unaffiliated individuals, and Eppie was a mere slip of a girl who was as cute as a stray cat that had wandered into the watering hole of lions.

After the break, the circle reconvened. Eppie sat next to her new friends while Cooper read out the basics.

“From today until May, this is the shape of the work.” He held up a hand, counting off without looking at notes.

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“Table work for the first two weeks. Text, scansion, who’s saying what to whom and what it cost to say it.”

“Blocking, four to six weeks, scene by scene, slow enough that nobody is allowed to fake it.”

He took a deep breath.