First Rehearsal
Before the school's winter break, as Shawn was the male lead, the boy was scheduled to go for rehearsals twice this week and the numbers will only go up after the holidays. The play was scheduled to be in the start of march, meaning that they only have the whole of January and February for rehearsals. That does not include the holidays in between, making the timeframe rather narrow.
Sour about all of this, Shawn felt reluctant to go to school almost every day. In addition to the fact that he had to do the school play, the boy was now obligated to do his homework as he was getting pressure from both the teachers and his mother. It was a pain regardless of where he was, be it at home or at school. Today, was the first rehearsal for his role.
The first thing on the agenda was to read through the entire screen play as a cast. This was to give everyone a general idea as to what is happening in the play so as to allow for better flow of character. Shawn had to be dragged into the drama room by Emilie as he was not willing to come on his own. When he reached, everyone could finally begin the readthrough. After all, Shawn was the main character.
"Now, could everyone pay attention to when their character comes in? There is no need for you to make gestures, but I do want you guys to focus on your articulation and intonation. Got it?" Mr Bialik briefed the students.
"Got it." Everyone understood,
"Let us begin." With that, Mr Bialik would be the narrator in Struggles. He began reading the introduction and eventually, it reached the first lines of students talking in the hallway.
"Oh, how was your day?" Person A spoke.
"It was good. How was yours?" Person B replied.
The conversation soon took a turn as the group of jocks from the football team arrived near their locker place. They were bullying a freshman, by pushing and shoving.
"Hey runt, you look and smell like you have not shower in weeks." Justin Lay, playing Raymond spat on the freshman as he spoke his lines. "Give me your money."
The freshman was frozen in his spot, not knowing what to do.
"He said to give him your money." That line was spoken by Shawn. However, rather than it sounding with an exclamation mark, Shawn spoke in a monotonous tone that essentially killed the mood in the first scene.
"Stop stop…" Mr Bialik, without hesitation, stopped the read-through and started to correct Shawn's mistake. He could not have this happen throughout the whole script, considering how that student was the male lead. "Hey Shawn, when you read the script, if you see an exclamation, you need to express that emotion in your speech. The same goes for a question mark, you need to make it varied."
It wasn't that Shawn did not know this, but more of the fact that he was too lazy to do so. Seeing that his teacher had stopped just for him, he knew that he could not do this continuously. If he does, he would just be wasting everyone's time. The boy might be lazy and listless on all aspects. However, he wasn't one to disappoint others when he had already made a prior commitment. If he did not sign up for it himself, no one would be able to force him to do something he didn't want.
As such, Shawn focused for the read-through and followed along for the next 3 hours. Although the play was only 2 hours long, the read-through took longer as Mr Bialik had to stop a few times to explain what was going on whenever a student had a question. Even though Shawn was the male-lead and had the most lines, he never once stopped to ask any questions. To his teacher's surprise, he was able to understand what direction he needed to go for when he was in a specific scene. Emilie was happy to see that her friend was actually diligently going along with the play.
As they had stayed back after school, the pair had to go back by themselves as the school bus was no longer available. Neither of them had a private chauffeur and so, they decided to take a cab together. Before heading home, they stopped by the convenience store to grab an ice cream. Although today was almost zero degrees due to sudden drops in temperature, Emilie wanted to try eating ice cream that could not melt.
Shawn wanted to skip out on this as he was already an ice block from the thin jacket he wore. However, Emilie had other plans and had already bought the ice cream for him. The boy had no choice, but to eat while shivering relentlessly.
"Why do you do this to yourself? Its so cccccold." Shawn's teeth chattered.
"The question you should be asking is why do you only wear this jacket to school? You surely have more at home, correct?"
"I do, but I am lazy to carry around more than one jacket to school."
"Dude, just leave it in the locker and wear it with you when you are going home."
"Hmm, true. Why did I not think of that?" Shawn realised how stupid he was.
"What a dumbo!" Emilie grinned as she teased her bus mate. The sun had already set an hour ago and now, the pair was walking under the streetlights eating ice cream together. As their school was in a quiet neighbourhood, the calm of the night sky and the quiet streets were very present that day. They had to walk out to the main road, ten minutes away, to get a cab home.