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“I don’t see how,” Sammy said with a yawn, checking his phone. Boredom dripped from his every move.
She resisted the childish urge to thwack him. For an artistic director, he sometimes failed to appreciate the subtlety of what Genevieve did. “If I were to tell a feminist story, I would be trying to give the audience a message. I’m not interested in that. They can go to a lecture if they’re interested in women’s rights. I’m telling a story about what it means to be a human being. No message. No morals. Just pure feeling.”
“You know as well as I do, darling, that the critics will watch it and assume you have a message to tell them. And if you don’t give them one, they’ll assume one?and you won’t like what they come up with.”
Genevieve frowned, a familiar ache starting between her brows. Sammy was right. Critics were constantly looking for the meaning behind her choices. As if every single piece of art needed some moral lesson to justify its existence.Wasn’t it enough for art simply to be? To tell a story and thereby make people feel a little bit less alone, despite the fundamental isolation of existence?
She sighed, the deep melancholia in the face of other people’s mediocrity seeping into her bones. She’d had such high hopes, but so far, nobody seemed remotely capable of living up to her expectations.How hard could it possibly be?
“At this rate, we won’t have a play for anyone to criticise at all. Some of these girls should sue for their academy money back. The quality has dropped off a cliff. Who’s next in the long list of people wanting to disappoint me today?”
Sammy flicked through the piles of paper in front of him. “Eden Rowley. Thirty-five, Mountglad graduate.”
“Never heard of her,” Genevieve muttered, before waving to the attendant by the door. “Show her in. Let’s get this over with and go for lunch.”
Genevieve turned her attention to the glaringly short notes she’d taken about the previous girls. Hardly any had shown any kind of real potential, but there had been one or two she could work with in a pinch. Not a single one of them had really seized her attention, making that spark of human passion dance within her. Making Genevieve long to revel in the divine agony of being alive.
The girl in front of her coughed and Genevieve looked up.
Holy shit. What the actual fuck?Human beings didn’t look like that in real life, surely not.
She was like some maiden out of a fairy tale, her waves of blonde hair artfully pulled free from a long braid, so that they framed her heart shaped face. Her rosy lips slightly reddened from where she’d chewed on them. And her eyes. A gentle baby blue lined with thick lashes, holding all the depths of the ocean within them. There was a tiny mole, high on her cheekbone, delicate and regal all at once.
Her body was toned, but feminine. Gentle dips and swells somehow turning simple jeans and a t-shirt into an elegant ensemble. She was barely wearing make-up.A good call for an audition, Genevieve couldn’t help but think to herself. And the intoxicating scent of roses wafted through the air.Of course it would be roses.
Genevieve swallowed, composing herself. Then she scowled. “Name?”
The girl winced. “Yes, right, um . . . hello! My name is Eden Rowley, and I’m here to read for the part of Beatrice.”
Eden. Of course she was called Eden. The garden of perfection, and the birthplace of original sin.
“Obviously you’re reading for Beatrice. That’s what the audition is for,” Genevieve drawled, determined to maintain her stoic façade. “Tell me about yourself.”
Eden blushed at her gaffe, fiddling with her fingers. “Well, I went to Mountglad Academy after doing my undergrad at Durham University. I love acting. I live for it. Ever since I graduated, I’ve been auditioning where I can and waitressing to make ends meet. Working to improve my art every day.”
Genevieve nodded. It was the same story she’d heard a hundred times.Thisgirl wasn’t special, no matter how pretty she might be. All of them at Mountglad thought they were guaranteed the career of their dreams, but then came to realizethat merely getting into the school, and then studying there, wouldn’t be good enough.
“And what monologue have you chosen?”
Eden wrung her hands some more, nervous tension rolling off her in tidal waves. “I’ve chosen Shylock’s monologue, from Act Three, Scene One ofThe Merchant of Venice. Shall I begin?”
Genevieve’s eyebrows were practically in her hair. Over thirty girls had read for this part, and not a single one of them had chosen a monologue meant for a blatantly masculine character. They had mostly gone for female Shakespeare characters, which was certainly a safe bet. Some, like the wretched Miss Reed, branched out?though largely to their detriment. This, however.
Genevieve had not seenthisyet.
Beside her, Sammy shifted. “Well . . . this should be interesting.”
The director nodded her approval and Eden centred herself, smoothing her hands down over her simple t-shirt and looking down.
Genevieve could have sworn that the following pause was electric with anticipation.
Then, Eden lifted her head, blue eyes glistening with barely contained tears. Shoulders tense and desperate, as if fighting the urge to strike out at something.
“To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.”
Her voice dropped at the last word, turning guttural. Ravaged and broken.
“He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?”
