“Yup, all good now.” I cleared my throat, the slightest hint of a tickle still sitting underneath my raw vocal cords. “I really appreciate you coming to help me out. The first two hours have been brutal. I am hoping to God that the next two go better.”
“Well then, we’ll have to make sure they do.” He offered me a hand, motioning for me to get off the ground. “Rise, it’s time to do our warm-up exercises.”
“Charlie, these are stupid,” I whined.
He cocked his head to the side and stared back at me, insistent. “They are not stupid. They are necessary. Now, repeat after me. The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue.”
I jokingly rolled my eyes and repeated, “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue.”
“Was that so hard? Okay, next let’s shake out our bodies. Arms, head, torso, hips, shake, shake, shake. Root your feet and let yourself flop about like an electric eel.”
My brain flashed back to the pulverized octopus body bouncing around our cutting board at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Flop, flop, flop. The tentacles springing off the surface with every whack of the mallet.
“Avery, why aren’t you shaking your body like an electric eel?” Charlie chastised.
I followed his instruction and let my limbs go limp, waving them around like one of those huge blow-up dancing inflatables that get propped on top of car dealerships to attract buyers.
“Yes! Finally!” Charlie said. “Keep it going for another sixty seconds. This is going to help you shake out your pent-up energy and reset to neutral before you need to get into the mindspace of your character.”
I shook my body with all my might for one more minute until I was practically breathless and sweating.
Charlie called out, “Okay, last exercise. The silent scream.”
“No. Absolutely not. I look completely ridiculous when I do the silent scream.”
He nodded his head with a wicked smile. “Oh, I know, consider it my payment. Now, let’s go. All the emotion you have deep down inside you, let it out without making a single sound. Use the whole space, really feel it. Go.”
“Ugh,” I grunted, but still got down on my knees, took a breath to cue I was ready to begin, and then proceeded to writhe around on the floor making a face similar to that of the Scream mask and pulled my hands through my hair like a woman crazed.
“Perfect, stay just like that,” he said, snapping a photo of me with his iPhone.
I sprang up from the ground like a puma. “You did not just take a picture of me!”
“Oh yeah, I plan to sell it for big bucks once you’re a Broadway star,” he joked. “Now, let’s get to work.”
For the remaining hour and a half, Charlie and I continued to break down my scenes, focusing on character choices and meaningful blocking. The practice was like muscle memory, the questions to ponder and the endless possibilities of how to unravel this character’s motivations, goals, and emotional arc all flooding back to me in a wave of nostalgia.
We ran the scenes at least a dozen times, and when I was still defaulting to sneaking glances at the stashed pages tucked inside my sleeve, Charlie furrowed his brows. “Um . . . the audition is two days away. When were you planning on being off script?”
“I . . . I don’t know. It’s a security blanket, and every time I try to rehearse without it, I can’t seem to get the lines to stick.”
“That’s because you’re still just saying the words. But, you need to believe them, embody them. Then, it won’t feel like acting.”
“The audition song was a disaster. I practically ran the accompanist out of the room.”
“Oh, so that’s who I saw peeling down the hallway like the roadrunner getting chased by the coyote,” he joked.
“It’s not funny. I was bad, Charlie. Like really bad. I’m not going to be ready.”
“You’re just getting in your own head, which is normal before this big of an audition. You need to stop overthinking it so much. You were Marley. I saw it and they saw it. Now you need to see it.”
“What if I can’t? It’s happened to me before. I never told you what happened at the Wicked callback I had a few years ago. I completely choked. Well, technically I mooed.”
“Mooed?”
“Never mind. Let’s just say I botched it big time. I couldn’t take the pressure.”
“Yeah, but think about who you were then and who you are now. Do you really think you’re still that same girl?” he asked.
With all my old insecurities and self-doubt bubbling back up to the surface, as much as I wanted to tell him I wasn’t, it was hard to be sure. “You know what, I think I’m ready to call it a day.”
“Sure, whatever you want. Feel like grabbing a drink or something? There’s a pretty cool spot right downstairs,” he said.
“Thanks, but I can’t tonight. Gabe’s been trying to ease my stress these past few weeks by plying me with carbs and butter. I really appreciate all of your help with getting me ready, though, mentally and physically, for this whole thing. I don’t think I could have done it without you. So, definitely a rain check on the drinks—my treat.”
“Absolutely. We’ll have a proper champagne toast when you get the part.”
“How can you always be so sure?”
“Because you’re BrAvery Lawrence,” he answered without missing a beat.
“One saucy rendition of ‘Big Spender’ more than a decade ago does not a brave person make,” I joked, eyeing him playfully.
“You know, it wasn’t the song that earned you that nickname.” Charlie turned me around so we were both facing the smudged mirror. He leaned in close to my ear, his face so close to mine, and whispered, “If you could only see what everyone else sees,” and squeezed the top of my shoulder before heading out.
I stayed in the studio for another hour until a janitor said he needed to clean the room for the night. I glanced down at my watch. It was after 8:00 p.m., well past when I told Gabe I’d be over to his apartment. I fished my phone from my bag and saw I had three missed calls from him and two texts. I dialed him back as quickly as I could.
“Oh good, you’re not dead,” he joked, picking up the call before it even had a chance to fully ring.
“I’m so sorry. Rehearsal didn’t go well . . . again, and I stuck around the studio a little longer than I planned on.”
“Don’t worry about it. I set some dinner aside for you. What time do you think you’ll be here? I can throw it in the oven.”
“I know I said I’d come by tonight, but would you be upset if I just head back to Bushwick? With the audition right around the corner, I could use a good night’s sleep.”
“Oh, Ave, any chance I could persuade you to come here instead? I have something I want to talk to you about and besides, I’ve been missing you. If you have to go home, I understand, buuuuut if you can come by even for a little bit . . .”
I sighed, knowing I couldn’t resist the invitation. He’d been so patient and so understanding of my ups and downs over the past few weeks since we got back from our trip, and truth be told, I missed him too.
“Aww . . . you’ve been missing me?” I asked sweetly.
“More than you know,” he replied.