MARCH 1993
BY THE TIME THE RETREAT ROLLED AROUND, I WAS READY to strangle Harper with my bare hands.
She hadn’t made further efforts at friendship, exactly, but she’d tried for inclusion—extending invites to house parties and lunches.
I shunned them as politely as I could, too humiliated to confront her or leave any inkling that I’d overheard what she’d said about me—which left Harper so evidently confused by my cold-shouldering that it made me feel a little better, like I was clawing back some dignity by publicly refusing her.
But I wanted to strike harder, to prove that I didn’t need her handouts or her pity or to be collected. So I set about beating her where I felt the most powerful: on a stage.
We’d always vied for roles, but as we settled into the rhythm of our specialties, it seemed my premonition that she was the one worthy of my attention proved true.
She was my competition, always. We were the top of the class; we were often typecast the same—tall, skinny, attractive, lashing tongues that demanded snark and drama more than comedy, a resolute firmness to our performances that rarely overshadowed but drew the eye, nonetheless.
And it had already become distinctly clear that the stage could not tolerate us both; we jarred against each other, clashed where we should sing.
I was concerned CADS might see it the same way: that there was no need for both of us to be invited back next year.
The average second-year class was thirty students. Third year was often twelve.
Each place was decided by a board of faculty with one glaring exception: the Wilfred Allen Award. And that was worth more than our degrees.
Bestowed upon one first-year student following their final productions, the Wilfred Allen Award symbolized brilliance.
Every single recipient had gone onto greatness.
Dozens of Oliviers. Multiple BAFTAs. Two Oscars.
Winning that award might as well enshrine your name into the halls of theater’s best.
And, most importantly for me, it came with a hefty scholarship for the next two years—which you were guaranteed to be invited to attend.
I couldn’t bear the thought of returning home for summer, taking up my old leisure center job, and trying to work enough minimum wage shifts within those three months that it might sustain me for a year in London.
Or, worse, the fear of ending up there permanently.
I needed that award, which meant I needed to give the best performance of my life, and that meant I needed to make the most of the annual woodland retreat—or, rather, immersive study module.
It was effectively one large preparation for auditions, encouraging us to connect with our plays in their intended setting, so all the available options had a forest theme.
We weren’t guaranteed a role in our chosen play, but the school would accommodate where possible.
I chose Blood Wedding because I knew the Mother was right for me.
But that, of course, meant it was right for Harper too.
I found out in the secondhand bookshop near campus. I spent a few minutes rifling through plays on the shelves, and there Harper was, with a copy in hand.
“Oh,” I said, catching sight of it.
Harper realized the same thing I had—though where I felt my spirits falter, she beamed.
“Nadine, you’re doing Blood Wedding too?”
I considered lying—no, not lying. I considered changing my mind entirely. Normally I’d relish the challenge. But this was too important.
And for once, despite all the challenges and the heights she’d pushed me to, I considered finding an easier option—or, at the very least, weighting the odds for that award in my favor by not going up against the one girl who stood a chance of snatching it from me.
“I am,” I said.
“Wonderful,” she said without an ounce of sarcasm. “A whole weekend exploring the play together. Well here, you’d better take this. You need it more than me.”
She added the book to the small pile I held, even as I tried to pull away. I didn’t need her charity. I certainly didn’t need her feeling sorry for me.
“I don’t—”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll just grab a new copy. This is going to be so fun!”
———
The school had taken over a run-down adventure camp an hour west of London in the forest of Barlam Thicket.
“Choose your plays wisely,” Clive intoned, one of only two professors who had joined for this weekend. Martin Baxter was the other, tutor of rhythm and movement and so jovial I occasionally thought he needed reminding he was not a student too.
Clive held his own copies of the plays aloft. “You will connect with them in this landscape as you have never connected with theater before.”
Seven students chose Blood Wedding, and there were only six prominent parts. Which meant despite the school’s assurances they’d try to honor our choices, one of us would end up shunted across into a play we hadn’t studied.
Maybe I’d get lucky and Harper would be kicked out—oh, and please let that be true of second year too—but I doubted it. In both instances.
Historically, luck tended to be on her side, not mine.
She curled around Lewis as if with enough public displays of affection, the casting directors might decide they couldn’t possibly split them apart.
Zoe Holland was there too, giving the distinct impression this gathering was three against one.
Eric Mwangi stepped up to be the unofficial leader of our group. This was a part of the test; we were to be left to our own devices to practice all that we had learned, with the professors there as a last resort for guidance.
Blood Wedding was a play about honor and longing and risk and duty. It was a play permeated in its own tragedy, infused with the dark stain of itself from the very first cut grape in the opening scene.
I didn’t imagine delving into it with Harper, Zoe, and Lewis would be particularly enjoyable.
Making up the rest of the circle was Ruben Porter, who was an intense actor, always leaning in a bit too far, so the rhythm of the stage was thrown off-kilter, and Flora McCarthy, who was entirely forgettable.
We threw everything into our study—every technique, every concept we’d learned applied. Every movement and mode to connection.
“I think we should dive into the rawness of the play,” Eric said at the end of the day, when the sun was vanishing behind the trees and I was starting to feel like I had no more to give. “It’s a play about the temptation of violence. The desire for revenge. Let’s talk about that.”
“I think it ties into loss,” Lewis said, leaning forward. “When all else has been stripped from you, you give up or you keep going. Revenge is what kindles in that empty space, a fire when you have nothing else to keep you warm.”
“I disagree,” I said. “The Mother sees the futility of the conflict. But she’s still pulled repeatedly toward it. Because it’s human nature to be drawn into darkness. We are violent by instinct. To be human is to crave retribution.”
A few startled faces stared at me, but Harper smirked a wry, almost embarrassed smile. “No.”
“No?”
“That’s what the play proposes. But if that’s true, we would watch it while delighting in its carnage.
No, the intention is to force us to face that futility of violence.
We are devastated by the pain, not drawn to it.
We are tender, soft-hearted things caught up in rules of honor and justice that undo us all in the end. That is the tragedy.”
I stared at her, a little shocked. A little scared she was right.
I scrounged for some explanation of how a girl who passed notes to her boyfriend in lectures and often needed her lines fed to her could have a deeper insight into the play than me when I’d spent weeks poring over it.
The image that answered was the only other time I’ve thought her better at something than me: Her batted lashes and grazing, harmless touches.
Her chirping laugh and gentle hair tosses, and I wondered, suddenly, if her assessment of the text was even hers.
Maybe it wasn’t just flirting at the end of classes; maybe one of our professors was giving her … extra lessons.
It was an absurd suggestion, but not entirely baseless.
Harper was still watching me, and I didn’t know how to respond—to fight my cause or concede the point, not when I was so acutely aware of the fact the words wouldn’t wound at all if they were spoken from other lips.
So I simply stared, like to look away from Harper would be to illuminate something I could never bear to see the light.
———
Partying began not long after, with bottles of alcohol doing the rounds that must have been intentionally packed because there was nothing around for miles.
Dear god, these were our very futures at stake—how could everyone treat it all so lightly?
So I abstained, curled up in the corner of the lounge instead, reading my well-battered play again and again, watching as Harper poured a glass of wine for Clive, wondering what else she might do for him. Now that the idea had crossed my mind, it felt like a certainty.
In the morning, I pushed my team past their pounding heads as we rotated the parts, spinning through them all, even the minor ones that would be awarded to those who chose other plays. We’d end up as trees and choruses in theirs, but here was our chance to transform.
I felt that rage settle into my skin. That desperation. At just how keenly I wanted this, the entire year working up to this one performance.
It sapped me, knocked the breath from my lungs. If I didn’t win this prize, it was not as though I would be unable to continue at CADS. I would struggle, but I would persevere. I would work hard and claw my way through regardless, just as I always had.
But that awareness that someone else was better than me would be something I would always know, in that part of myself that I knew was too fragile to survive this pursuit. But it was a piece of myself I was willing to break, to throw to the wolves, to obliterate if needed.