The Rehearsal

we will address this fear. It is by becoming the things she touches, the spaces she moves through, the fractured gestures that are not signs in themselves but are nonetheless hers and thus a part of her. If we discover the weight of these small things, then she will appear not as an idea but as a life and a totality.”
    He paused at this, and ran his tongue over his bottom lip. The hopefuls shifted uncertainly, wondering whether they were supposed to argue, and for a moment nobody spoke.
    Stanley had gone to an all-boys high school and he felt the presence of the girls in the group acutely. They studded his peripheral vision like scattered diamonds, but when he looked around the room his gaze passed casually over them, in the same way that he might self-consciously pass over a cripple or a drunk and pretend not to notice, pretend not to flinch. He waited uncomfortably for one of the girls to say something, maybe even to object. He looked at the floor.
    “ I don’t fear women,” one of the boys called out at last, and there was a ripple of relieved laughter.
    The Head of Movement nodded. “Stand up,” he said. “I am going to tell you a little about yourself.” He folded his arms across his chest suddenly, forgetting about the invisible thing that he had been holding in his hand, and the invisible thing disappeared.
    The boy got to his feet. He was thin and freckled, his rib cage peaking a little at his sternum and his hip bones thrusting out above the tight gathered waistband of his tracksuit pants. His shoulders and ankles and knees all looked a little too large, like he was a paper figure held together at the joints with brass pivot pins.
    “Go for a walk,” the Head of Movement said. “Go on. Walk around for a while.”
    The boy started walking. The Head of Movement watched him in silence for an entire circuit of the gymnasium, following him with his eyes, his arms folded and his face still. When the boy had lapped the gymnasium completely, the Head of Movement fell into step behind him and began to imitate him. He withdrew like a tortoise into himself, shoving his chest out and his shoulder blades together, keeping his upper body rigid while he walked so his arms fell awkwardly from his shoulders, and paddling with each step as if he were walking underwater. They walked in tandem in this way for a while, the boy looking unhappily over his shoulder and unhappily sideways at the other hopefuls watching from the floor, newly conscious of his big feet and his peaked chest and his stiff paddling arms.
    “You may stop now,” the Head of Movement said finally. “Thank you.” He turned to the group. “Can someone please tell me something about my performance of this young man’s walk,” he said.
    The hopefuls shifted awkwardly but nobody spoke.
    “My performance was a parody,” the Head of Movement said after a long pause. “It could only ever be a parody because I do not know this young man. I am old and comfortable and I don’t really understand his nervousness, or his uncertainty, or his hope. I cannot possibly understand these things just by watching him walk for fifteen seconds. In parodying this young man I disperse all possible complexity. I reduce him and I insult him. Your performances will be insulting too if you do not truly understand what you are pretending to be.”
    The gymnasium was very quiet. The Head of Movement said, “You cannot mime what you don’t understand. You cannot penetrate death, or God, or a woman. To attempt any of these things is to aim for sincerity rather than truth. Sincerity is not enough for students of this Institute. Sincerity is a word for hawkers and salesmen and hacks. Sincerity is a device, and we do not deal in devices here.
    “Mime,” he said. “We will begin very simply. Everybody up.”
    February
    “At the Institute we encourage our students to have sex,” the Head of Acting said. “You need to know your body in this profession. You need to know yourself. You need to explore all parts of you. However, graduates of the program will probably tell you it is not a good idea to sleep with each other. This is a small pool, and in any case, two actors together is always a terrible thing.”
    There was a little rustle of delight as the students looked around at each other to compress their lips and roll their eyes and giggle faintly at the prospect, and just for an instant any coupling, any combination of any pair among them, was possible. In this