Chapter 6
Over the course of the next morning, Tom spoke to all of the girls. None were chatty and all seemed nervous. This feeling soon infected him as it sank in how important the day was. He knew all of his lines and tried to act to the best of his meagre ability but the main thing for him was the nude scene and he realised it had been dominating his mind all throughout rehearsals. Caroline and Becky obviously enjoyed it but it made no difference for their grades. As for Amy and Jane, it was only one of many things that they were being assessed on. Tom resolved to forget about it and do the best he could in all scenes for the sake of his friends.
He forgot about it until ten minutes before show time when he peeked out from behind the curtain at the back of the stage in the drama studio and saw the audience. There were about 30 girls sitting there - so much for no one being interested. At the front sat Miss Woods and the external examiner, a woman who appeared to be in her 40s. Luckily there were no other teachers. He didn't think he'd ever be able to look any of his teachers in the eye if they watched this play. He returned behind the curtain.
“That’s a lot of people.”
Jane replied, “Yes, this is pretty good. Doing a play when the actors outnumber the audience is disastrous so I’m happy.”
“They all tend to stay to the end, then?”
“To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever walked out of one of these plays and I’ve seen some bad ones. Ours is nowhere near the bottom of the list. They were all warned when they came in that there will be full frontal male nudity on stage in case they were offended. Nobody turned round, so I'm afraid they will be glued to their seats throughout and quite possibly afterwards too.” Tom failed to notice the joke. Jane made a mental note to try it on Caroline later. “Look it's really going to be OK. This is why we have rehearsals and I’m sure you've played with yourself a lot over the years so that all counts as experience. I'm not going to tell you to imagine the audience naked, but with the bright lights you probably wont see much further than the first row anyway. Now you have to excuse me while I try to calm Becky down.”
As Jane left, Amy came over.
“Colour?” Tom asked. She responded black. “Me too!” Tom and Amy had begun breaking the ice by checking the colour of each other's underwear before taking their clothes off.
“Have you got different ones for this afternoon?” Amy asked.
“Yes, I have a few to choose from, I haven't decided yet. What about you?”
“I’ve pretty much decided what I'm wearing. Not something you've seen before.”
“I can look forward to that then.”
Amy smiled. "Time to make a start."
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