The Rehearsal

look at the Head of Acting to see if he had seen her triumph. He wasn’t watching.
    The Head of Improvisation said, “The stage is not real life, and the stage is not a copy of real life. Just like the statue, the stage is only a place where things are made present . Things that would not ordinarily happen are made to happen on stage. The stage is a site at which people can access things that would otherwise not be available to them. The stage is a place where we can witness things in such a way that it becomes unnecessary for us to feel or perform these things ourselves. What am I talking about here?”
    The question was too specific, and the hopefuls frowned at her in silence and pursed their lips to show they didn’t know. The Head of Improvisation was almost quivering. She scanned their faces quickly but without disappointment, already pursed and half-smiling as if the answer was waiting to bubble up and out of her in a kind of overflow of joy.
    “Catharsis,” she said at last, crowing out the word. “Catharsis is what I am talking about. Catharsis is a word that all of you should know. Catharsis is the thing that makes your job worthwhile.”
    October
    In the foyer there were two porcelain masks rising like glassy conspirators out of a porcelain basin filled with water. Comedy was turned away, staring with gleeful dead eyes down the corridor past the secretary’s office and the trophy cabinet and the loos. Tragedy craned upward. The tragic mask was supported by two brass pipes that ran up out of the water behind the jaw and the cheekbone and into the porcelain under-rim of each staring tragic eye. When the fountain was turned on, these pipes sucked the water up out of the basin and forced the tragic mask to cry.
    There was a film of brassy grime around the waterline and at the bottom of the basin a few hopeful silver coins. On the pedestal underneath the basin was a plaque which said:
    The Mind Believes What It Sees
    and Does What It Believes:
    that is the secret of the fascination
    October
    When he saw the pair of masks Stanley’s first thought was that some people turned the corners of their mouth down when they smiled and some people smiled when they were very unhappy. He was not looking at the masks now. He stood by the fountain with his hands in his pockets and frowned into the basin as he tried to dull the sick thump of his heart. The water had not yet been switched on and the surface was tight and smooth like the skin of a drum, the blue-veined porcelain masks dry and discolored in the still of the morning.
    Stanley was almost an hour early, unable to bear any longer the tiny orbit around his bedroom as again and again he flattened his hair and checked over his application form and felt in his bag for the hard laminated edge of his audition number that he would later pin to his chest with a pair of tiny golden safety pins. The foyer was empty. The secretary’s office was closed and shuttered and all the arterial corridors were dark. He stood very still and tried to ride out his nervousness, as if it were seasickness or hypochondria or a phantom chill.
    He heard the soft thud of the auditorium door and turned to see a boy approaching, red faced and disheveled and carrying an ancient disc gramophone, the fluted brass horn angled over his shoulder. It looked heavy. He was clutching the gramophone against him with both hands underneath its felted base, peering around it to check his way was clear and stepping delicately as he picked his way down the dark corridor.
    “Hey,” he called, “are you a techie? You don’t have a key to the main office, do you?”
    “Sorry,” Stanley said. “I’m here for the audition.”
    The boy peered at him. “Oh, you’re one of the hopefuls,” he said dispassionately. “I forgot it was that weekend already. You nervous?”
    Stanley shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. He flapped his arms a couple of times and tried to think of something adequately general to say, but nothing came. “Are you an actor?” he asked instead.
    “No, I’m Wardrobe,” the boy said. “We’re just packing out The Beautiful Machine . Closing night last night and they need the theater tomorrow.”
    “What’s The Beautiful Machine ?” Stanley asked. The boy had halted at the foyer’s periphery, and it felt a little odd, the two of them calling out across such a large and marble space.
    “The first-year devised theater project,” the boy said. “It’s kind of like proving