Kim was finding Laia fascinating. Not only was she efficient but also intelligent and cultured. And clearly had some acting experience in her curriculum. It was going to be fun working with her for this short season.
“And you clearly have some acting training yourself, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, Dídac and I were at drama school together.”
There was that name again. His face darkened.
“Anyway, Margarida Xirgu was a Catalan actress,” she went on quickly, “for whom Lorca wrote many of his starring roles. She had her first professional role here in this theater, back in 1906. It was in the playSea and Sky, by our most famous playwright, Àngel Guimerà. She spent the last twenty years of her life in Uruguay, where she died. But they say she always missed her native Catalonia, and on nights of the full moon, when all is quiet in the theater after the evening performance, Xirgu can be heard up here, declaiming once again her greatest successes.”
“Hopefully we won’t be working that late, though it’ll depend on how quickly the actors give me what I want.”
Their laughter was interrupted by the tramp of feet on the stairs. Looking at his watch, Kim saw it was a quarter to ten. Over the next ten minutes, actors and the production crew arrived in ones and fews.The Swanwas a ten-hander, though only seven of the roles were speaking. The other three were actor-puppeteers, who were to operate various object elements, including the massive swan that made various appearances throughout the play, and although symbolic, was virtually a character in its own right.
Kim took his time chatting and getting to know the people he would be working with. Apart from himself and Laia, also present was the set designer and technical director, Xavier Pons, a lean, dark, and agile man with a quick nervous energy. They had been communicating well by email over the past few weeks, and Kim was thrilled with his designs. In the flesh he seemed a man of few words, who just nodded quickly at Kim with a small smile as he took his seat.
“We call himHanuman, the monkey god,“ Laia whispered, “because he prefers to be up in the gods, climbing around the lighting bars rather than down on the ground with us mere mortals.”
The other production role there was Maia, head of props and wardrobe. She was a big jolly woman with a huge halo of red frizzy hair, dressed in a voluminous, frilly kaftan-type dress of reds and yellows.
“It is a thrill to meet you, Senyor Delatour,” she said in heavily accented English. “I watch yourCasa de Bernarda Albain video last week. Beautiful!”
“Thank you,” Kim smiled. It was nice to have his work acknowledged, as far away as Europe, halfway around the world from where they had put the production together.
The three puppeteers, two guys and a girl, dressed in dark unobtrusive colors, appeared fit, quick and supple, forming a compact, silent group at the foot of the table. They were friendly, but seemed to exist as an autonomous unit slightly removed from the rest of the cast.
Six of the actors arrived together, trooping up the stairs in a noisy chorus. This would be the test. Kim normally insisted, like any director, in casting the actors himself for his own production. But time and distance had been an issue here, with the rehearsal period cut to a mere five weeks, and Kim working on another production in Melbourne right up until the last moment. So he had used a casting company, in conjunction with Jordi Veràs, the theater director. Now facing them around the table was the moment of truth. The three women were all competent actresses—actors, he corrected himself—with solid résumés. Dana Fernandez and Carme Roig were both young, in their twenties, blond and brunette respectively, while Felipa Gómez was a more mature, experienced performer of fifty-five. Likewise, with the men: Dani Alvarez and Kiko Martín were the same age as their feminine counterparts, while Domènec Faro was an older, portly actor with a voluminous cloud of white hair surrounding the polished dome of his bald pate. Kim had been careful to choose competent actors whose work he admired, but none with whom he felt particularly enthralled. He had learned his lesson as a young director not to get involved or even slightly infatuated with his cast. He just hoped that the lover boy who had been forced on him for the lead wasn’t going to be a problem.
Finally, thirteen of the fourteen places around the table were occupied. It was two minutes to ten.
“Right, we should start,” Kim began.
“Excuse me,” Domènec piped up, “but aren’t we missing someone? Where’s Dídac?”
Dídac Amat. That name again. The one Kim had been dreading to hear for the last two days.
“I have no idea,” Kim replied coldly. “Does anyone have any idea where that actor might be?”
“It isn’t quite ten yet,” Felipa Gomez said in a husky voice. Perhaps we could wait a few minutes?”
It was clear that Felipa and Domènec had taken upon themselves the mantle of union representatives for the rest of the cast.
“Certainly,” Kim said in a neutral voice. “Let’s wait.”
He looked at his watch. A minute and a half until ten. No one said anything. The seconds ticked by. Kim wasn’t about to make this easy for anyone, and it might even serve as a useful example to show the cast the sort of commitment he expected. After what felt like an hour or more to everyone present, the second hand on his watch finally clicked past twelve. Ten o’clock.
“Right, let’s begin,” Kim said.
This time as he launched into his introductory spiel, no one interrupted him or said a word.
About fifteen minutes later, Kim had finished outlining his main artistic premise in devisingThe Swan. He had just talked through each of the characters individually, except for Anton, the character Dídac would play. As he talked, he was weighing up in his mind how he would deal with the missing actor for this read-through. Domènec was too old for that part and the other two male actors, too young. Besides, they wouldn’t be able to show the much-needed contrast of age andexperience in the final climactic scene if they were doubling up on parts. He couldn’t read it as it had been translated into Catalan. Could Laia help out for today by reading Dídac’s part?
These things were going through his head as he continued to talk about the play—he knew it so well that part of his mind operated on autopilot—when there was a commotion on the stairs. Even as sleep-deprived and disheveled as he clearly was, Dídac Amat swept into the room with a breath of godliness. He looked like he’d had time for a shower and little else, but the moment he entered, wearing just gray sweatpants and a faded orange tee-shirt, everybody in the room turned to him like a field of sunflowers seeking the sun’s rays. It was an action that was as automatic as it was palpable. Dídac was immediately firing off greetings and kisses to everyone in the room as he worked his way around the table to the one empty chair. Kim’s carefully structured read-through meeting was in shambles, as people rose and came toward him, wanting to be blessed with the gift of Dídac’s brief attention. Kim scowled. The man was impossible. And why had he chosen to wear such body-hugging pants? You were almost forced to acknowledge the perfect round globes of his ass as he went in for a hug with Felipa Gomez, clock the sizable bulge in front when he turned to greet Dani and Kiko, who were slapping his back as if they were long-lost pals from kindergarten. Dana and Carme were both simpering like teenage fans ready to wet their knickers. Was Carme actually blushing?
“OK, enough! Can we get back to this rehearsal now?” He used the voice. And it worked. The entire room subsided and went creeping for their seats like naughty schoolchildren. “Rehearsal started at ten. In this production you need to be here warmed up and ready to go by ten sharp. If you need to grab coffees, talk about your weekend, or anything else, you do that outside my rehearsal time. Understood?”
The cast all nodded and assented guiltily. All this time Kim had avoided meeting Dídac’s eyes. But now there was nothing for it. He looked directly into those green pools:
“And you? Do you have that clear? I run aprofessionalproduction.”
