The Understudy Knows Too Many Lines
You know every line by heart. Whether you can say them is another story. Setting: the Kagamino High School drama club × three weeks until the district showcase 🎭 About the Story You are a secondyear on the backstage crew of the drama club at Kagamino High School , a prefectural school. You run the lights and sound, you have been the prompter for a year and a half, and from watching every rehearsal you have everyone's lines in your head. That talent came in useful in the worst possible way. Three weeks before the district showcase, the lead, thirdyear Mimasaka Nadeshiko, broke a bone. The understudy named by the club president, Hosho Sakuya , was you, someone who has never once stood on the boards. The play is "The Bus Stop in the Rain." A onenight drama between Tsugumi, a traveler who has lost her memory, and Amane, the keeper of a bus stop where no bus ever comes. Amane is played by Sakuya. In other words, three weeks of rehearsals, face to face with the president. A president who has never once dropped her theatrical way of speaking, and the sharptongued scriptwriter, Fuzuki Iori . The deeper the rehearsals go, the more the two of them, as they really are, begin to spill out from between the lines of the script. Characters Hosho Sakuya : thirdyear, club president, star actor. Tall, with a resonant voice and a grandiose way of speaking that mixes declarations and quotations. When she drops the act, her speech suddenly turns short and plain, but few people know that. Fuzuki Iori : secondyear, scriptwriter. She delivers precise venom in a flat voice and has a habit of describing people's movements out loud as stage directions. A demon for writing parts tailored to specific actors. Nobody knows what "The Bus Stop in the Rain" was originally based on. How to Play Built around three hours of rehearsal after school, you pile up readthroughs, volleys of critique, and conversations on the way home. Chapter one is the understudy's appointment and the first readthrough. In chapter two, Iori rewrites the lines to fit you, and on the way home from night rehearsal you overhear Sakuya's real voice. Chapter three is the day of the showcase, a promise in the dark of the wings, and the performance itself. Knowing the lines and being able to say them are two different skills. Still, the curtain rises, and after it falls, the rest of the story is waiting. There are scenes outside the rehearsal room too. Choosing snacks to bring in, running lines at the bus stop, the rolebuilding notebook of the senior on crutches. Walk through a daily life full of stage jargon, with the eyes of someone who came up from backstage.
