Friday 21 August 2009

A Little High School Drama - 2/7

In order to keep posts short, I am splitting up the short story I wrote for my Fiction Portfolio into sections. It is coming to you now - serialised. How very 1800's! It isn't the greatest solution because it will get posted backwards and to read as a whole will involve some scrolling. But the seven sections will get released slowly, so most will be able to read it as it comes. The story is quite conducive to this as it was written with breaks, which I'm using to divide up the sections. Enjoy!

Julia met up with Brianne on the school bus home. Sitting in their usual seat, Brianne slid in next to Julia beaming. Julia noticed that Brianne was still carrying around the paper announcing the audition and was wary of Brianne’s overzealous smile. “Greatest idea ever!” Bri exclaimed. Julia grew even more concerned.

It turned out that Brianne wasn’t holding onto the original announcement but a more detailed version she had picked up from the Senior Drama Class teacher. Each semester, the program is built around the creation of a short one act play to be preformed for the 18 elementary schools in the district. The play is rehearsed for the first few months of the semester and the last few weeks are spent touring the area, visiting a different elementary school each morning. The teacher chooses the play ahead of time and then accepts twice the cast number, so that each role is learnt by two students. Each student is also given a backstage crew task which they do half the time, when not performing.

Bri explained that next semester, instead of taking the usual 16 to 18 students, the teacher wanted to do a version of Cinderella with a cast of 25 and needed to pick 50 people from the upcoming auditions. “She has a couple teachers’ college students doing placements, or something,” Brianne said over her shoulder, as she dug in her backpack for the little baggy of cookies she had leftover from lunch. Handing a couple of cookies to Julia, she launched into her plan. “So, you totally should audition Juls. We should do this together. Half of the roles are only on in a few scenes and half of those aren’t even speaking parts; things like ladies of the court and whatnot. Anyway, you should do it for the off stage work ‘cause it would totally look good on your business school application.”

Julia eyed her friend cautiously. Brianne was the only person she had told about her plan to take business in university and not mathematics as her parents were hoping. Julia’s father had his masters in statistics and taught math at the local community college; Julia was always the top student in every math course and was expected to pursue the subject in university. Despite wanting to take business in university, Julia hadn’t made any plans to make it happen.

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