Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan

Author:Stephanie S. Tolan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780062213365
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-04-24T07:00:00+00:00

Lucille stood, pulling at Archie’s arm. “I did warn you. Nobody pays attention to anything around here except their own projects.”

“But I haven’t had time to do the grocery shopping yet this week. We won’t have enough food—again!”

“That’s all right. Govindaswami is fasting.”

As E.D. slipped into sleep later, she was glad she didn’t have anything to do with her father’s show. She was beginning to have a strong premonition of catastrophe.

Chapter Eighteen

Jake had finished gelling his hair. Now he turned his face one way and then another so that the light above the mirror picked up the dusting of hair on his upper lip. Darken that down and he could pass for seventeen—couldn’t he? Not according to the red-haired kid who’d expected to get cast as Rolf and ended up playing an anonymous soldier instead. “It’s ridiculous for you to play that part. No way an audience is going to believe you’re old enough to get into the SS.” What the red-haired kid thought didn’t count, Jake reminded himself. Or what anybody else in the show thought either, for that matter. About anything.

Last night they’d had their first rehearsal, and Randolph had made that very clear at the beginning. The director, he had told the assembled cast, made the decisions, starting with casting, and anybody who didn’t like those decisions could go do another show somewhere else for some other director. He had directed in theaters all over the country and had had a smash Off-Broadway hit, and he intended to maintain a professional atmosphere at all times. “I am a professional and I will expect every one of you to behave as if you are, too. I don’t put up with lateness, laziness, or sloppy work. You will not be called to every rehearsal, but when you are called, you will arrive on time and you will be prepared. When you are not actually onstage, you will be silent and respectful of the actors who are onstage. There is no place in a Randolph Applewhite production for amateurs who behave like amateurs.”

If he hadn’t started that way, Jake thought, there might have been open rebellion. There had been so much hostility in the air when they first came in that Winston had gone right underneath a folding chair in the corner and hadn’t come out again until it was time to go home.

Nobody except the leads had been happy with the casting. The people who’d expected to get the leads were playing unnamed townspeople or nuns or storm troopers instead. There were so many people in the show that, except for the children, Randolph had had to cast almost everyone who had auditioned. But it hadn’t made them happy. “I’ve been with the Little Theatre since the building was the Masonic fellowship hall,” he’d heard one man say, “and I’ve never played anything but a major role! Now he’s brought in all these—these—outsiders and given them the plum parts. It’s a travesty!”

“There are no small parts,” the woman he was talking to said.

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