While eating my breakfast, as usual, in the Bread Box, I was summoned by text to SPA; Aashish sent a message, urgently requiring my presence. “Where are you?” No-one had told me I needed to be anywhere, but apparently I was needed. I wasn’t, though, not really. I was merely accompanying Aashish and a couple of other students around the classrooms of B… sorry, Champions… block. Aashish was delivering a short spiel to each classroom; or each classroom that was occupied. We would knock on the door, and then wait for it to be opened – they are very strict with such protocols here – and the teacher would stop what they were doing, and wait, more or less without interest, to Aashish’s spiel, trying to promote the auditions today.
My own role was pretty negligible; standing at the front, grinning. It did not appear that our response aroused much enthusiasm, or much of anything really. It was a bit like handing out flyers at the Edinburgh fringe; it all seems a bit pointless, but you never know: we could attract the one person who will make all the difference.
The morning audition started at 9 – this I did know about, and had thought it my first appointment of the day. I was pleasantly surprised that some people were on time, even more so that we had a reasonable number – twenty or so – fairly soon after. I talked to them briefly; it had to be brief, for we had about fifty minutes to do the whole lot: warm them up a bit, play a quick game to break the nervousness, teach them some basic characterisation skills, then set them an improvisation on which I could base my judgment. In other words, the sort of program I had envisaged giving them over the period of a month, to gradually build up their confidence and then let some talent emerge. But Odyssey had got in the way, and then there had been some exams. And a sort of organisational lassitude. So, about fifty minutes. Less, as the sand was falling through the waist of the hourglass.
Somewhat remarkably, there were a few first signs of some basic ability, but it was not at all surprising that most struggled. And that the greatest drama was taking place outside the window, with an extraordinarily ferocious downpour. Torrential rain, such as I had never seen before. Only I think I’ve written that, or something like it, before, and surely it can’t really be the case that each storm is somehow even worse than the others. Except I suppose it can, what with climate change and all. Though its far more likely to be my own rhetorical hyperbole.
The message soon came through from Aparna that, with widespread flooding, many students had not been able to make it to school, and that we would have to hold an extra audition on Monday, for there had been a second audition scheduled that afternoon, the one which (supposedly) would be attracting the greater number of students.
I made it back out through the flooded car park; wading is not nearly so much of a problem when you have sandals, and can roll up your trousers. I had my umbrella, and treated those sheltering by A block building to an impromptu version of Singing In The Rain. I think they all thought I was mad, but I regard it almost as part of the job description; if I hadn’t been carting my laptop with me, I might have gone the full Gene Kelly, stomping through the water and dancing with my umbrella; they had to be content with just the audio version.
In the afternoon, we went ahead with the audition anyway, and sure enough only attracted eight or nine students. Luckily, all were very good, filling in a lot of gaps in the casting; one particular pair gave an extraordinary performance, luckily with an extract captured on video. But I am going to have to cross everything I’ve got that we get a good showing on Monday. Otherwise, there will have to be some trimmings effected… though I have to say I don’t know how or where.
