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Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 23rd Jan 2009 at 3:54 PM
Default Loren and Lacey- Closed RP
This is a closed RP between maeve and myself to further expand on Loren and Lacey's past relationship, not for any compelling reason, but because they are so mind bogglingly cute. If we need to bring up anyone from sweet 16 then we will contact them first, so as to not cause any confusion later.

I will keep track of NPCs we make in this post, and I believe that that is all that needs saying.
Rachel Mason: Director
Tony: Stage crew, actual friend of Loren's, chill
Marilyn: Talented actress, in college, jerk
Ellen: Talented actress, in college, weird in a normal way, Marilyn's friend, unbelievably amused by Loren

The humor of a story on the internet is in direct inverse proportion to how accurate the reporting is.
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Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#2 Old 23rd Jan 2009 at 6:23 PM
Default Loren at Theater
There was something about theater outside of Brooklake High. Maybe it was the fact that the college's auditorium was so much bigger, maybe it was the fact that everyone was older, wiser and almost without exception a much better actor than the drama kids at the high school, or maybe it was that Loren felt he had to actually work to get what he got there, as opposed to the theatrical entitlement of middle school. Either way, he dearly loved the community theater and he had shown up half an hour early that day, since school was out and he was so excited.

Not that there was any reason for that excitement, school was starting up again in less than a month, but now it was summer, and they were auditioning for Beauty and the Beast and it wasn't too early in the morning, and, really, he was in a fantastic mood.

The front entrance to the college wasn't locked, and even if it was, Loren was there so often and was held in such high regard by the director that he had a key. She had commented that an obsessed junior in high school was probably more trustworthy and more likely to be on time than an intelligent and slightly disaffected community college student. He hadn't quite understood what she was getting at, or why the few theater kids there had started laughing at one of the boys on stage crew, but he had taken it as a compliment and taken his key.

The auditorium was mostly empty, one of the crew boys, Tony, was checking the wires on the mics, and Loren waved genially. He didn't know why Tony bothered wiring up the mics for auditions, since the director, Rachel Mason, tended to think that using the mics to audition meant that one couldn't project, and pretty much everyone knew it.

Tony didn't react to his greeting, so Loren went to the back of the auditorium and started practicing his audition song: "Grow for Me" from Little Shop of Horrors. He didn't appreciate the irony of singing a song that in the show had been directed to a bratty, soon-to-be-revealed-to-be-homicidal plant when he wanted to audition, but even if he did, it wouldn't have mattered, since Ms. Mason seemed amused by that sort of thing.

He didn't need to worry about his monologue, he knew that as far as acting went, he was pretty unassailable. He hadn't gotten a lead here because he was too short, had too high of a singing voice, or too unsuited to any female costar, but over the past few months he'd grown almost half a foot, worked very hard to control his singing and get a larger range, and he figured that the first two should take care of the last one.

He repeated the song a few times, until Tony shouted something about high school brats shutting up til their audition actually started. Loren laughed and slouched back into one of the auditorium seats, knowing that Tony was right, if he kept practicing then he ran the risk of losing his voice, which would be a disaster.

The auditorium had started to fill up a little bit before Tony shushed him, and once he did, a few people applauded. Loren looked around, wondering if they liked his impromptu performance enough to be clapping, and saw Ms. Mason enter, looking unbelievably put together, and Loren figured that that was why everyone was applauding. In reality it was probably a combination of both, no one wanted to prepare for an audition when someone was singing to the entire auditorium.

((OOC: I hope that that was all right with you, and I'm going to end this post here, so that eavesdropping can happen in a nice linear way.))

The humor of a story on the internet is in direct inverse proportion to how accurate the reporting is.
Lab Assistant
#3 Old 23rd Jan 2009 at 9:54 PM
Default Lacey, arriving
The tree leaves were a lovely shade of green, and Lacey’s worn-down flats made a soft cotton-y sound as she walked the down the street.

She didn’t really want to go, but when she voiced her unwillingness her mother hadn’t really responded. Annemarie Cormier had been too busy looking for her keys, trying to force her fluffy brown curls into something resembling a pony tail, losing her shopping list for fifteen minutes and wafting herself with a magazine as all this exertion was quite tiring -- she didn’t need anymore problems.

Lacey didn’t mind. She was mellow like that.

And really, her mum would be right. Since they had moved to Brooklake, her mother had done everything in her power to make her daughter feel at home. She didn’t realise that Lacey didn’t need to attend the local community theatre and make some new friends to feel at home here. What Lacey needed was the beach in her backyard.

That was not going to happen, though, as Brooklake was nowhere near a coastline and her backyard was full of gravel and her mother’s various exotic plants in pots, not sand. So as long as she couldn’t have what she truly wanted, Lacey figured she would appease her mother. It didn’t matter that just because Annemarie Cormier had wanted to be an actress, that didn’t mean Lacey did – it didn’t matter that Lacey didn’t particularly enjoy acting or was any good at it.

She didn’t mind.

The heavy doors to the college auditorium took some pushing before they swung open importantly; and a loud singing voice greeted her. Thinking she should have expected some singing at a community theatre, Lacey moved into the room and scanned the rows of seats – the auditorium wasn’t full by any means, several clusters of people scattered over the seats. A girl sitting near the door, alone, half-turned toward her, and Lacey interpreted it as an invitation. She headed towards the girl’s row and sat a few seats down.

“Hi,” the girl said, her voice a lazy drawl. She twirled a lock of hair around her index finger and regarded Lacey with a bored expression. “Are you new?”

“Yes. My name’s Lacey.”

“’Kay. So, do you really love acting?” She said the last three words in a hyperactive tone three octaves higher, rolling her eyes, as if she was imitating someone, but Lacey wasn’t sure who.

“Well, no,” she admitted. “I don’t really love acting. I love a lot of other things more.”

The girl remained silent, so she hesitantly continued, “Like… the sea. And I like Wikipedia. Like a lot of people think Wikipedia is untrustworthy because everyone can edit things, but they constantly check things and remove things within seconds. I know. I tried it once.” And then she thought that might give the wrong impression, like she was the kind of person who tried to put dirty words in otherwise perfectly harmless Wikipedia articles, so she went on, “I mean, only to correct something, you know, because I know for a fact that Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was born in 1961, not 1962. Or at least I thought I did.” She frowned. “But if Wikipedia removed it then I must have been wrong.”

She didn't know why she was babbling on, and apparently the girl didn't either as she shot Lacey a look as though she was a total psycho. “Um, yeah, that’s really cool.” She threw a shifty glance around the auditorium. “Listen, Casey, I just need to go – check something – um –” Her hands fluttered around as she fought to come up with an excuse.

Lacey gazed after her as she traipsed off to join someone sitting further up in the auditorium, mildly disappointed. Well. It wasn’t as if she had come here expecting some great new friendship to spring up.

(( Hope that was OK! ))

We are the lucky ones
Your mother's daughters, your father's sons
Don't you grow old before your time
Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#4 Old 24th Jan 2009 at 2:18 AM
Default Loren- Eavesdropping
Loren had slouched down into the auditorium seats and hooked his knees over the seat in front of him to ponder a very serious thing that had occured to him as he went over his monologue. If the ceiling in the auditorium was of staggered heights, and the catwalk went straight back, then where the heck was all the space between the floor of the cat walk and the bottom tier of the ceiling?

If there was an empty space, then it might have collapsed when people walked around up there, and if it was filled in then the ceiling would have collapsed, and if there was a room in there, then it was probably full of awesome stuff, and he wanted in, but he had no idea where the door might be.

His reverie of architectural efficiency was broken when he heard someone groan nearby, "They're multiplying!"

It wasn't the words that drew his attention, but the tone, of utter and complete bemused anguish. He had seen a stage version of Phantom of the Opera where the guy who played Raoul could not get that tone, without which the scene fell apart, as Loren rapidly discovered. When Loren tried to get that tone he couldn't do it either, and so, like every other acting thing he had trouble pulling off, he kept it in the back of his mind to watch for it, to get more sources to imitate it from.

So he awkwardly swung his legs off of the seat and leaned forward, hazily attaching a name to the voice, Marilyn, the girl who played Audrey when they did Little Shop of Horrors. He thought she was nice enough, though she blanched every time he got near her. He assumed that it was a vestigal memory of when they had both been extras a few years ago on the opposite side of a battle on stage.

The girl Marilyn was talking to, Ellen, was one of the nicest people he met, always with a little half smile on her face, and he assumed she held him in high regard, since every time they spoke she wound up laughing hysterically for minutes on end at jokes that Loren wasn't even aware he made and that she refused to explain to him.

"What's multiplying?"
"The weirdos!"
"Drama, Marilyn dear. You have to be much more specific."
Marilyn laughed a little bit, and Loren saw Ellen pick up a script that she had dropped on the chair and finger through it looking for her page.

"Fine. High schoolers that don't realize the world doesn't revolve around them. Ellen, why do we have to deal with that short doofus who-"

Loren didn't stay to hear the rest of that, he was completely excited. Make no mistake, he really liked the college kids, but there was something mind bogglingly appealing about meeting someone his own age who was just as thrilled with the theater as he was.

He got up, and walked down the auditorium to the stage, which was where he would be sitting if he were in a new theater. When he passed Marilyn and Ellen they immediately shut up, with Ellen looking half amused, half guilty, and Marilyn looking utterly disgusted. Poor thing, had probably stepped in dog doo on the way to the auditorium or something. He gave her an encouraging sort of smile, and her expression didn't shift.

The front of the auditorium was full of devout thespians practicing monologues, warming up for dances for thier songs, or just meditating. Loren sort of sympathized with them being nervous about the auditions, but he figured that if he was going to get a part, then it should be based on the sort of performance he would give at rehearsals, rather than a well prepared audition.

He didn't spot anyone knew that could be Marilyn's high schooler with a sense of entitlement, so after warmly greeting a few of the college kids down at the bottom, who sincerely greeted him back, kindred spirits of the theater, he walked back up the aisle, seeking out new kid.

There, at the back of the theater, was probably the person in question, looking just the slightest bit bemused, and maybe as if they didn't want to be there. That was super doubtful though. She was blonde and sitting by herself, and the latter would have been reason enough to talk to her even if she wasn't a high schooler.

She was in the third row from the back on the left side, and Loren was on the right, so as unobtrusively as he could, he crossed to the other side through the fifth row of seats. He didn't like to bother people, like would happen if he jsut went down the row of seats he wanted to sit in, especially when it was just as easy to take a step in the aisle and then take the seat directly in front of her in the fourth row.

He hooked his elbows over the seat back and put his chin on the back of his hands as he gave her a lazy, perfectly sincere smile. "Hey!" he said, his grin growing at the thought of meeting yet another thespian, doubtless equally wonderful and as incredibly different as all the others. "You new here? Bet you really love acting!"

Some people would say that that was a weird way to greet people, but Loren didn't think so. "Hey" was a non-sequiter, but by now it was so accepted as a greeting that Loren thought it didn't matter. When he explained that to those people who thought his greetings were odd they typically rolled their eyes and walked away.

((OOC: Gah, second RP post and they haven't interacted back and forth yet, and I already want to comment on how cute they are... They're like puppies.))

The humor of a story on the internet is in direct inverse proportion to how accurate the reporting is.
Lab Assistant
#5 Old 25th Jan 2009 at 12:43 PM
(( Inbox cleared ))

Lacey was just settling into her solitary position in the auditorium when something caught her attention. A boy was marching up the aisle, glancing around as though he was looking for someone. Suddenly he looked directly at her, and a grin lit up his face – through some complicated manouevring he ended up in the seat directly in front of her, in the fourth row.

His hair was bright blond and he had a slightly up-turned nose, but what was most noticeable was the enthusiasm that seemed to ooze from his body. From his brilliant grin to his bright, excited eyes, he seemed to be absolutely thrilled with everything.

He had turned around in his seat to face her and, still beaming at her, said,
“Hey! You new here? Bet you really love acting!”

Lacey could only gaze at him, bewildered, as he repeated almost the exact words that other girl had said – although in a much, much more enthusiastic tone.

Was it a conspiracy? Some sort of plot to annoy the new girl until she cracked, grabbed the microphone and slaughtered them all brutally with it? Ordinarily Lacey’s thoughts would have been much more positive – but the unfamiliar, and unwanted, situation she found herself in made everything seem much darker than usual.

She eyed the boy’s broad smile suspiciously, and eventually decided that he seemed sincere. In fact, incredibly sincere. Maybe she was now meeting the person that other girl had been imitating.

So she smiled hesitantly at him, and answered, “Um – I like it, but it’s not really one of my… passions, I suppose.”

(( I hope Lacey's description of Loren is OK, I got that from the sim picture in his app, if not just say so and I shall edit at once ))

We are the lucky ones
Your mother's daughters, your father's sons
Don't you grow old before your time
Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#6 Old 25th Jan 2009 at 9:43 PM
Default First meeting
In Loren's surprisingly well thought out opinion, people were fascinating. At one minute they could be laughing and happy, at another painfully upset, and at another completely discombobulated by something perfectly straightforward. For the most part Loren didn't think like that, he was usually so happy or so busy that those other emotions or behaviors could barely even register. His acting was all imitation, and he assumed that everyone else was the same way, so although what he chose to imitate when was always spot-on, where he got it from was always filtered by the assumption that everyone was in a fine mood when they did it.

So the girl's look, one of slight bewilderment, was just as welcoming in Loren's eyes as if she had smiled back. She almost seemed suspicious of him, like she'd never met someone friendly in the theater before. Loren could see how that could have happened, some places were so elitist and hard to dig your way into. He hoped that she hadn't heard any gossip about what happened backstage here, because while it did happen, it was usually harmless in the long run.

Finally her expression broke, and she smiled. Not nearly as brightly as Loren was, which was fair, since the usual person only reached Loren's bubbly state of equilibrium after their life was suddenly and fundamentally changed for the better.

“Um – I like it, but it’s not really one of my… passions, I suppose.” she answered, seeming to have given his question a lot more thought then he would have. Then again, asking Loren is he liked theater and acting was like asking a fish if it like water. It was just assumed, and in his own little world he couldn't comprehend people thinking in any other way.

So not only was the length of her response a bit confusing for him, the fact that it wasn't an enthusiastic yes was a little strange. He knew intellectually that there were some people that weren't passionate about the theater, but the actuality of it never made any sense to him.

His smile sort of slipped a little, since that was by far the most intelligent response he had gotten to that kind of question, and the most baffling. Why would someone be at the theater auditioning if they weren't passionate about it?

He didn't tend to think much before he spoke, and now was no different. "That'll change," he said with all seriousness, though the effect of that was somewhat lost since he was still grinning cheerily at her. He knew it would, the only way that he could see someone not being passionate about the stage and all its intricacies was if they didn't know it too well, and if she stuck around as an extra, then doubtless she would, and would love it just as much as he did, as much as he thought everyone else did.

"So what is there to be more passionate about than theater?" he asked after a moment, legitimately curious. He didn't have the slightest guess, and after all, he had to play charachters who weren't actors, so when he did he just copied people in normal every day activities. This girl had just given him an oppurtunity to find out what their actual motives were, which Loren felt would be foolish not to take.

((OOC: Not particularly inspired, but twill do. And your description was fine.))

The humor of a story on the internet is in direct inverse proportion to how accurate the reporting is.
Lab Assistant
#7 Old 1st Feb 2009 at 3:16 PM
The boy in front of her seemed to be the sort of person whose beaming grin never faltered, the sort who found something good or funny in every situation. Lacey couldn’t help but mirror his enthusiastic smile – she liked him already.

He seemed a little taken aback by her response, though his smile remained firmly in place. “That’ll change!” he said at once, completely assured of himself. And maybe he was right. Lacey glanced around the auditorium for a quick second, taking in the rows of seats and the impressive stage.

Pessimism didn’t suit her, and she felt her optimistic nature taking charge. Maybe she would be completely at ease in this same auditorium, only a few short weeks later. Maybe this could become a place of happiness for her, a place to have fun. She sincerely hoped so.

“Sure,” she said agreeably, “maybe it will.”

To Lacey everything had the potential to be fun and interesting, and theatre was no exception. After all, she had never truly tried to act – she wasn’t very good at being anything but herself. Perhaps if she spent more time here, she might grow to love it. She might find a thrilling new hobby!

Lacey’s smile widened at the thought. She had plenty of hobbies – swimming, for one, though that had fallen to the wayside a little, but reading was still one of her major pastimes. She couldn’t think of much more, which was strange, as she always felt there was so much to do, so much to think about, there was barely enough time in the world.

Then, the boy continued, his eyes bright with curiosity, “So what is there to be more passionate about than theatre?”

Lacey had never really been the giggly sort, but a soft, girlish giggle couldn’t help but escape her lips. He was like a cartoon character. Such enthusiasm. It was quite nice to watch.

“I don’t know,” she said, her smile almost as bright as his. She might have teased him, or playfully joked with him, but Lacey was, in her own way, a little shy. She didn’t know him very well, and she had found that when one didn’t know the person one was talking to very well, the best way to go was to take their question and answer it earnestly. Well, maybe not the best way to go, but certainly the easiest.

So she just shrugged slightly, and said, “I like to swim.”

(( Heh, I know it's not much for him to respond to, but as I said, she's a little shy ))

We are the lucky ones
Your mother's daughters, your father's sons
Don't you grow old before your time
Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#8 Old 4th Feb 2009 at 6:02 PM
Default Back of the Auditorium
There were some things that Loren had been able to gauge accurately. He had seen really shy people act for a few weeks and then come out of thier shells to reveal a much more pleasant thing, or just be a bit more talkative, a bit less inhibited, a lot more fun. Then again, there were some people who just couldn't stand it, and those ones confused Loren so much that he just didn't think about them.

So when he told her that her opinion- or lack thereof- of theater would change, he was completely serious. It would. She would either love it as much as everyone in the auditorium did, or she would hate it and leave and Loren would just watch in mild befuddlement and then go back to memorizing his lines.

She looked around and then agreed with him. He was pretty glad of that, she seemed like she could be a lot of fun to work with. There wasn't much maybe about it, but he didn't think that the distinction was important enough to be made. Most people didn't think enough about the language of what they said to realize that a single word, like maybe, could change the entire thing. Loren sometimes thought that most playwrights didn't think about it either, but then again, he gave them a lot less lee-way then he would give someone in drama club. Then again a third time, he could edit plays.

“So what is there to be more passionate about than theatre?” he had asked, and she seemed to give the question a bit of thought. Again with the thinking before talking... it was kind of weird, especially compared with the people Loren usually hung out with who were able to pull one-liners, with varying success, out with no effort whatsoever. It was actually kind of refreshing, maybe she was actually trying to seem intelligent. Maybe she actually was! That thought appealed to Loren, because although he definitely didn't think that everyone in either drama club was stupid, it was hard to talk to them sometimes, since they were either way smarter than him, or way not, or just not as passionate about the stage.

“I don’t know,” she said, smiling brightly at him, and giggling. He smiled brighter in response, if that was possible. She had a pretty smile, and with all the comedies he had been in he didn't laugh just because other people were, but he appreciated it. Heck, he reveled in it, knowing that he had improved someone's day enough to make them break out in laughter? Even if it was just a sort of girly giggle, it was lovely.

"I like to swim," she ventured, shrugging slightly. Loren nodded. He could understand that. There were some people at Brooklake that just did the winter play, and then did a spring sport, or vice versa. That kind of thing confused him a little, since if someone was in the theater, how could they bear to leave at the beginning of their season? When he asked them they just said there was no way to get it into his obsessed skull, and left it at that.

Now that she had laughed- though at what he had no idea- he decided he might as well play a little bit with her. "I like to swim too!" he said, his smile turning oh-so slightly mischievous. He knew how the auditorium was set up, where exactly in the row he was in was completely invisible to her, and he slid out of his seat so his lower half was there in the blind spot, gone, and then windmilled his arms a bit. "Breast stroke,"

He leaned back and repeated the action, saying, with all due seriousness, "Back stroke," and then he reseated himself in the seat, with his weight on his knees and looked at her, completely devoid of expression for a moment, and added, with mock seriousness, "And my personal favorite,"

He shot backwards out of the seat and half skidded, half pedaled all the way into the aisle as he called out, "Rip tide!" He got to his feet, smiling brightly again and sat back in front of her, wondering what she would say to his not-at-all thought out physical comedy. He usually got all sorts of fascinating reactions to sudden slips into character or improv or anything.

He rolled his shoulders back a little, curious to see and enjoy the show that was his life.

((OOC: Hope that was okay with you? And if you need me to clarify, feel free to ask))

The humor of a story on the internet is in direct inverse proportion to how accurate the reporting is.
Lab Assistant
#9 Old 15th Feb 2009 at 8:13 AM
“I like to swim too!” he said, and his eyes gleamed mischievously. He slid out of his seat until only his upper half was visible, and flailed his arms about as if he was windmill. “Breast stroke.”

Lacey felt her eyes widen on their own accord, and a broad smile spread over her lips. And then he earnestly continued, “Back stroke,” and mimicked doing a back stroke, before reseating himself and looking straight at her. “And my personal favorite…”

And with that, he skidded out of his seat wildly, half skidding and half pedaling and calling out, “Rip tide!”

Lacey watched the strange boy, completely lost in his performance, and heard another tinkling giggle that surprisingly seemed to come from her. What was it with her today? She didn’t giggle. Not much, at least. She usually just laughed, and maybe with a funny little snorting bit at some point, like a pig.

Then, however, he smiled brightly at her, and without really meaning to a waterfall of giggles burst out of her, and she was laughing so hard her sides hurt.

Laughing was something she didn’t do often – or rather, she didn’t often laugh this hard. Not because she didn’t find things funny, but because on the whole Lacey wasn’t an outrageous person. She might give a little chuckle at a good stand-up comedian, a tiny giggle at a funny sitcom. But she was not prone to what others called “laugh attacks” – not the way she had seen some girls be, who need only look at each other to collapse in a fit of laughter. They didn’t seem to really need a reason, other than some inconsequential joke of some sort, and off they would be.

But now, she felt herself laughing as uncontrollably as she had seen other girls do. It wasn’t really for his little skit, it wasn’t really for anything in particular, other than that it felt so good to laugh a little – to laugh until she was completely out of breath. It had been so long since she had even giggled over something.

She rolled out of her seat and onto the floor, and found herself laying in the narrow space between rows, still laughing hysterically. The sound of the endless ha-ha-has became foreign to her ears, the way any ordinary word will if you say it too much. Finally, she felt the laughter die down, and after a last hiccup-y giggle she was calm again. She blinked up at the boy’s stunned face, and had to bite her lip not to start again.

“Sorry. I," - leftover giggle - "I don’t know what that was.”

(( hope it’s OK I wrote Loren as being stunned, that is the reaction I imagined he would have to someone erupting into hysterical laughter at a little skit he does, but if you write it differently I shall wield my mighty edit sword and all shall be forgotten ))

We are the lucky ones
Your mother's daughters, your father's sons
Don't you grow old before your time
Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#10 Old 1st Mar 2009 at 4:45 AM
There was probably some bit of common wisdom that said that an audience is the most important part of the theater, and that bit of wisdom doubtless came from parents needing to tell small children to shut up when they went to Broadway.

That didn't make it any less true. A good audience, an appreciative audience, made everything better. When the audience laughed, the actors and crew and everyone knew that they were being funny, that what they were doing was good. When a previously good audience fell silent, the actors knew that they were doing something wrong, and that they should try something else. Good audiences were the most useful critics ever.

Bad audiences, the ones that silently watched the show without revealing anything, were just annoying, since one couldn't tell if they were bored, or if they were just quiet.

Not that Loren paid strict attention to his audience. On show nights it was dark and he couldn't see them, and for auditions or people trickling into the theater he didn't want to know what they thought. So he wasn't paying the least bit of attention to the girl's face when he did his little improvised physical comedy.

He did notice that she was grinning hugely before he went away in the rip tide, and that was part of why he did it. The fact that she was enjoying his impromptu show was a huge green light for him to go ahead with the funniest thing that he could think of on short notice in the theme. Then again, if she had seemed like she wasn't enjoying it he would still have done the rip tide thing to try and save it, since it was the funniest part of the thing, and if he couldn't tell, then it would just be to coax out a reaction.

He had gotten back to his seat and smiled at her, delighted that she'd enjoyed his improv, filled with the same pride that any creative person felt when a briefly planned out display was appreciated. And then she went so far as to laugh, and Loren grinned even wider if that was possible. If there was anything better than knowing that a faceless audience liked what you were doing, then it was knowing that something made up so quickly was good, and that who it was made for specifically liked it, liked it enough to giggle even.

Check that. Liked it enough to laugh out loud. Loren had had small parts before where he had gotten to do something funny, and he had had the delight of hearing people laugh at his performance, and then, as now, he reveled in it, grinning as he couldn't do on stage, letting his audience know that he appreciated that they appreciated him.

Then she physically fell out of her seat, and rolled a bit, still laughing hysterically. That one hadn't happened before and Loren immediately started. He thought that rolling on the floor laughing was just an internet thing, something that didn't actually happen. He got up and went around to stand above her as she rolled around, still laughing.

She finally stopped laughing and looked up at him, and, smiling herself, “Sorry. I-I don’t know what that was.”

Loren wasn't completely sure how to react. Here someone had just rolled around on the ground laughing at something that he had done, and it just never had happened before, and while he was flattered, he had no idea what was appropriate for the situation. Not that he cared. So he did what he would have done had it been any of his friends on the ground for any reason- he gripped her forearm to haul her to her feet. She didn't know what that was, so he explained it, "And that's improv." No other words were necessary, at least inasmuch as Loren thought.

He released her arm a moment after she stood up, just after giving it a little squeeze, the kind of thing that said, "Everyone has days when they klutz out and wind up on the floor. Perfectly alright." She didn't say anything, and Loren glanced behind him and noticed that everyone had sat down in the first few rows of the auditorium, and that Mrs. Mason was speaking. The woman was at once the most quiet and unassuming adult that Loren had ever dealt with, and the most forceful thespian. Doubtless now she was describing the theatre program here, and speaking just loudly enough for the fifth and sixth row of seats to hear her.

"The auditions and stuff are starting now," he told random giggle girl, unable to keep his voice from crawling up half an octave in excitement. Loren loved auditions so much, they were the best part of theater, other than opening night, and closing night, and applause, and rehearsals and cast parties and tech week....

He turned and walked down to sit on the end of the last filled row, where someone gave a glare at him for having the audacity to be late to Mrs. Mason's speechifying. He was a bit sorry to have missed it, even though the speech was always something to the effect of, "We rock, because we work hard, so don't suck", Loren never tired of hearing all the clever variation that that same idea could have.

She was talking about auditions now, and random girl took the seat next to him as Mrs. Mason spoke, "And we'll begin auditioning now, if anyone would like to audition privately?" She didn't wait for an answer, no one would want to audition privately, the amount of camraderie generated from a really bad or a really good audition was worth the risk of a dull, average audition. "You should all know the drill, you have three minutes to sing your song, and five minutes for your monologue, I'll be in the back, if I can't hear you, that's bad."

The director then walked up the aisle of the auditorium with her skirts swishing, and seated herself as far back as one could get, so the upper left tier under the manual spot light. She called down the auditorium, "Timothy Adelaide," and thus the auditions began.

Tim was the sort of person who never realized quite how flamboyant he was, and he went up onto the stage and gave his name, all perfectly loudly, though Loren thought that he sounded more like he was shouting than projecting. He did a great job with his monologue, taking one from Shakespeare and really getting into it, but he didn't have any character during his song.

"Marilyn Arensen"

Marilyn did fantastic as always, her monologue was from some sort of chick play and was about shopping, and her song was her solo as Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors.

So the auditions went on, from the good, like Marilyn, to the bad, like the boy whose voice cracked as he went up to a high note, to the bizarre, with a girl who did a full on dance routine with her song. The actors watching were something of a good audience. As a courtesy, they wouldn't speak during someone's auditions. As knowledgeable people, they would laugh if they were amused, laugh louder and more derisively if they thought someone did a bad job and would clap enthusiastically if they were impressed.

Loren was perfectly excited to audition, and he could barely focus on the other auditions as he waited for his name to be called.

((OOC: I am so sorry for how long it took me to reply to this maeve.
In your post you can either have it be the start of Loren's audition, or you can have Lacey audition, since she's ahead of him in alphabetical order.))

The humor of a story on the internet is in direct inverse proportion to how accurate the reporting is.
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