Centre Stage: A Novel

Excitement swept through me as I imagined acting on the stage.
    ‘Sophie!’ Hearing a familiar voice, I swung round.
    ‘Justine!’ I exclaimed.
    Justine Wilcox came hurrying towards me. I hadn’t seen her for over a month but she looked just the same, with her long blonde hair caught up in two slides and her pale-blue eyes shining.
    ‘Are you auditioning too?’ she asked. ‘Sheila, the casting director, came in to my new school and did some auditions last week. She invited those of us she was interested in to come along today. She asked me to try out for Lucy.’
    Justine was auditioning to be Lucy! I stared at her in shock. Of course I’d known that there would be other people auditioning for Lucy but it had never in a million years crossed my mind that Justine might be one of them.
    ‘So are you auditioning for Lucy too?’ Justine asked.
    ‘Yes,’ I managed to say. My mind was racing. Justine was good at acting. In fact, when we’d been doing a school play of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe she’d ended up getting the part of Lucy instead of me.
    ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we both got to be Lucy?’ Justine said.
    Had I heard right? ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded. ‘We can’t both be Lucy.’
    ‘Of course we can.’ Justine looked at me, her blue eyes surprised. ‘You do know there’s going to be two Lucys, don’t you?’
    Er… no. I shook my head.
    Justine seemed to grow a few inches taller. ‘In any big show with children, you have two teams of juveniles — that’s what child actors are called,’ she said importantly. ‘One team does one night and the next team does the other night. It’s to stop us getting too tired or something.’ She smiled. ‘I thought everyone knew that!’
    OK, so now I felt about as big as an ant.
    Velda clapped her hands. ‘Can you all sit down now!’
    As we all plonked ourselves down on the stage, two women and a man joined Velda. One of the women was tiny and slim with very short red hair and a sharp chin. The other woman had shoulder-length grey-blonde hair, wrinkled, tanned skin and huge hazel eyes like a tiger. She spoke first.
    ‘Hello. I’m Claire and I’m the director.’ Her voice was gravelly and sounded like she smoked too many cigarettes. ‘This is Dizzy,’ Claire said, pointing to the woman with red hair. ‘She’s the choreographer of the show, and this is Stefan.’ She indicated the man. ‘He’s the musical director.’ Stefan and Dizzy smiled round at us.
    Claire continued. ‘As most of you know, we are looking for two teams of four children to play the lead roles in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . Although there will be singing and dancing involved, we’re not looking for perfect technique in singing and dancing. What we want are eight actors who can look like real children on stage. It is your acting skills that I am most interested in.’
    Relief ran through me. Acting I could do.
    Claire looked round at us with her cat-like eyes. ‘The procedure of the day will be like this…’ She reminded me a bit of Cruella de Vil in One Hundred and One Dalmatians . Of course, I don’t mean that she looked as if she was about to run off with a carload of cute puppies, but there was something about her that just made you want to look at her.
    ‘You will be split into two groups — boys and girls,’ she informed us. ‘Girls will be doing acting auditions this morning and singing and dancing auditions in the afternoon. Boys will be doing the opposite.’ She smiled. ‘Good luck. And try and enjoy your day.’
    I joined Velda with the other girls and she took us down a staircase at the side of the stage and into a large room with pale-green walls.
    ‘This is the green room,’ Velda told us. ‘You will wait here for your turn to audition.’
    I looked around. There were lots of small dressing rooms leading off a big central space, which had comfy chairs and tea- and coffee-making facilities.
    ‘I’ve got a list of the order in which you’ll be auditioning here,’ Velda said. ‘First of all you’re going to come up individually on to the stage to perform the piece you’ve prepared at home, and then Claire wants to do some group improvisation. At twelve o’clock we’ll break for lunch.’
    She pinned up the list of names. I was the third name down on the list and Justine was straight after me. ‘While you’re waiting, feel free to make yourselves a drink.’ Velda headed for the door. ‘I’ll be back in