Chapter 8
Eight
‘I EXPECT THREE THINGS from you: rigour, professionalism and commitment. If you cannot give me those, then my advice is for you to collect your bags and go. This is not the training for you.’ She waited.
‘No objections, I take it?’ She raised an eyebrow and looked around the circle.
No one moved an inch. ‘Good.’ She clasped her hands in front of her.
‘As I’m sure you’re aware, I am Frida Anselm.
’ She announced this with taut Scandinavian emphasis.
‘I am a theatre director, movement practitioner, and head of the BA Acting course at this school. Of course, I already know some of you from the third round of auditions’ – her steely eyes scanned the room before resting on my own – ‘while some of you I’ve not yet had the pleasure of encountering. ’
She placed her hands behind her back and began patrolling the perimeter of the circle.
Although no taller than five foot, her presence crowded the room.
Her neck was rigid and slender. Her gaze, steady and penetrating.
I watched as her frizzy crown of silvery-blonde hair vanished then reappeared between my classmates’ shoulders.
The room was completely silent but for the slow pad of her feet on the polished sprung boards, the languid swish of her charcoal palazzo pants along the floor.
She passed what felt like a few centimetres behind me. I stared down at my toes, hardly daring to breathe.
‘Your first lesson: the actor’s body is a machine.’ She stopped and picked a stray hair from Jolly’s shoulder. He flinched.
‘It is a tool which can be used to convey emotions and tell stories. If I am casting a play and I need an actor to serve the narrative, am I going to choose the actor with the purple highlights and colourful tattoos, or am I going to choose the actor who is prepared, focused, a blank canvas ready for me to paint my story upon?’
She returned to her place and gazed around the circle.
‘I am not interested in who you think you are. I am interested only in what you can do. If you come to class with hairstyles I deem extreme, piercings or makeup, you will be asked to leave and not invited to return until you have rectified the situation. Do I make myself clear?’
People nodded.
‘Tattoos will be covered with bandages. You will wear black every day of your first and second year. You will not test this rule. You will not complain about it. If you are late to class, you will be red lit. You will not be allowed to attend classes for the day and will be expected to catch up in your own time. If you are red lit three times, you will be given a warning. Four times, and you will be asked to leave the school.’
She narrowed her eyes and scanned the circle.
‘And if you smoke, quit. If I see any of you smoking outside the school, I will take it as an attack on the values of this institution and proof that you do not take your studies, your craft or yourselves seriously as actors.’
My legs trembled. I tried to catch Victoria’s eye, but she was staring dreamily into space, for all the world in a different place completely.