Audition

The narrator does not tell Xavier anything about her second pregnancy. As they continue walking to the theater, the narrator describes her acting process, explaining that she sometimes becomes so entranced by ideas that she loses sight of where these ideas are supposed to end. She explains that it is necessary for her to “lose sight of the shore” (66) in order to fully immerse herself in a role. The ideas associated with the role take over her life, making it necessary for her to reach the other side of the idea in order to survive.

Occasionally, the narrator feels as though there is a gap between the richness of her life and the clichéd, stereotyped roles that she is offered. This disconnect comes partly because of her identity as a woman of color, which once prompted her agent to suggest that she change her name into something more distinctive to Western audiences. Although the narrator disagreed with the suggestion, she spent several years wondering whether her roles were three-dimensional enough to require her full commitment to embodying them. Her work on Parts of Speech stood out from all her other roles because it was the first part that “allowed [her] to be human” (68). Some aspects of the character persisted in her behavior long after the end of the production, prompting her to recognize the importance of managing the border between her characters and her real self.

Xavier wonders if the narrator has immersed herself in her current role, implying the possibility that she hasn’t. His words make the narrator feel vulnerable, given Xavier’s partnership with Anne. Privately, the narrator is worried that she hasn’t properly inhabited the role yet. She was driven to seek the role because she had been eager to work with the playwright, an emerging talent in the theater scene. When the playwright reached out to her with the role, the narrator quickly accepted it, believing in its potential to be her best role yet. However, her confidence shifted during the first table read, in which it became evident that she couldn’t quite find her way into the role.

The narrator deflects Xavier’s question, leading him to share Anne’s high praise for her. The narrator admits that she is running out of time to improve her performance. Xavier wonders if the narrator might actually be good despite what she thinks of her own performance. The narrator is privately unsure of what she really believes.

She thinks back to an actor with whom she worked on a recent project. The actor had appeared in a film called Salvation, in which he had delivered an extraordinary performance. The narrator became excited to work with him on his next project but was surprised to learn that the actor was extremely unprofessional. The director later conferred with her and told her that on the set of Salvation, the actor’s terrible behavior inadvertently strengthened his performance because his inability to learn his lines made him appear genuinely confused and afraid of the world around him, which was appropriate for the role he was playing. This insinuates that the actor was actually experiencing dementia and reveals that this revelation forever changed the way she viewed the actor’s performance in Salvation. She could suddenly envision the actor’s death as the endpoint of his life. At the same time, the narrator realizes how intensely the quality of the actor’s performance depends on her interpretation. In her view, the film captured the actor’s surrender to the inevitability of death.

The narrator asserts that artifice is what makes a performance enjoyable, citing the fact that she can no longer watch Salvation without recognizing the reality of the actor’s dementia. She insists that performers must be satisfied with their performances, which validates their agency.

Xavier disagrees with the narrator’s last point, insisting that her performance is good whether she likes it or not. They arrive at the theater, grabbing everyone’s attention. Anne calls them a “perfect mother and son” (80), and the narrator realizes that Anne is projecting the archetype of the ideal son onto Xavier. Their affectionate dynamic makes the narrator envious.

Anne communicates her optimistic feelings about the production. The playwright, Max, has also signaled her approval of the endeavor. The scene that Anne wants to work on that day occurs in the middle of Max’s script and features the narrator alone onstage. The narrator is pleased because this is the one part of the play that she does not yet fully understand.

Max talks to the narrator about the scene, indicating that it is unlike anything she has ever written before because it is more conceptual than emotional. However, as the narrator listens to Max, she realizes that Max is bored of the narrator’s character. Max describes the scene as the moment in which the narrator’s character achieves an emotional breakthrough, which she ties to the title of the play, The Opposite Shore. This idea clashes with the narrator’s own conception of the character. Soon after this conversation, the narrator realizes that Max has written the scene as a filler, bridging two versions of the character together after growing bored with the first version. This evidence of disjointed writing frustrates the narrator, who now has no idea how to resolve the fundamental issues of the scene. 

Xavier checks in on the narrator, who drily asks him for advice. Xavier tells her a joke that he learned from his father, whose friend had fallen out of love with his wife and could no longer find joy in his family. The friend consulted a therapist, who advised him to pretend that he was in love with his wife. The friend kept doing this until he actually fell in love with her again. The narrator does not understand the punchline, so Xavier explains that the joke does not actually refer to a friend, but to Xavier’s father himself. The narrator is disturbed by Xavier’s sense of humor.

Anne tells the narrator that she is pleased with Xavier’s presence as part of the production. (Xavier is classmates with Hana, the daughter of two of Anne’s friends.) Anne praises Xavier for being attentive to her needs rather than reactive. Knowing how exacting Anne can be, the narrator does not believe that Xavier will survive as her assistant. Nevertheless, she also considers the possibility that Xavier could work well with Anne and with Max, to discuss how to improve the narrator’s performance.

The narrator begins to tell Anne what Xavier told her during their first meeting. Before she can reveal this information, the narrator gets a text from Tomas, asking her if they can talk. He is worried that he has avoided the issues in their relationship for too long. Alarmed, the narrator doesn’t say anything more to Anne about what Xavier told her. She urgently needs to call Tomas, but Anne denies her the opportunity, indicating that rehearsals must start immediately.