Re: Auditions; Community Center Stage: Hannah
Hannah arrived early, after buying herself a really, really sweet coffee, and she had no idea whatsoever what she was supposed to do. She had nothing planned, no songs to sing, nothing to read, nothing at all. She was there because Ren had asked her to be, and she liked Ren very, very much, and so there she was. She wasn't even dressed very professionally. She wore a flowing dress, because she'd grown fond of them when she wasn't working at either of her jobs. It was defining, she believed: Hannah at home, and so that was what she showed up wearing, feet bare, nothing in her hands and nothing prepared.
She realized, after watching a few people audition, that she was supposed to say something, to read something, but she only knew one thing by heart. It wasn't anything from a play, but she didn't know that it absolutely had to be something from a play, so she wasn't very worried.
When she was called, she walked out, stopped in the center of the audition space, and she cocked her head a little to the side and looked out at whoever was out there. In fact, she maybe stood there a little longer than was comfortable, but there was something eerie about being out there, and she was a strange and otherworldly thing with hair messy around her shoulders. Eventually, eventually, she began reciting, her voice clear and inflection dramatic: "I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself." She paced, because pacing felt right. Pace, pace, pace. Frenetic. "If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary." Here, she stopped, stage-left. "Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."
And she stopped, went quiet, stared a little longer, and then she smiled and curtsied, because people always curtsied. She didn't ask about rehearsal times or anything. She just walked off the stage without prompting, bare feet going slap, slap, slap on the floor.