TV Stars!

by Fiona Cummings

  Well, surprise, surprise – that didn’t last for long!

  For the first couple of weeks, everything we did at Angel’s drama class was completely new to us. I’d thought we might have to learn loads of lines for a play, and I’m no good at that. In school plays I always end up as a tree or something because I’m hopeless at remembering lots of words. Well, Angel’s class wasn’t like that at all. We did loads of improvisation exercises which were really great. Sometimes we split into twos, and one of us was a hairdresser and the other was the client who’d just been given a disastrous perm. Or we were in a big group and we had to act out an emotion, like being happy or sad, and everyone had to guess what it was and then copy what we’d done.

  One class was so funny. Angel asked us to pretend that we were angry ducks. I know that it sounds weird, but Angel likes to make you look at the world a bit differently. Anyway, everyone in the class was waddling around the room quacking in people’s faces. It was a riot. Well, when I say everyone, what I mean is everyone except Kenny. She was making screeching noises and going “BEEP BEEP!” at the top of her voice. It was hil-arious.

  Eventually Angel stopped the class and asked Kenny to show everyone her interpretation. Well there she was, screeching and beeping, and everyone just fell about laughing.

  “That’s very interesting Kenny,” said Angel, trying not to laugh herself. “Can you just remind everybody what that was?”

  Kenny looked kind of embarrassed. “An angry truck,” she said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Frankie and I just totally collapsed into fits of giggles. It’s a wonder I didn’t get hiccups.

  “That’s what I thought she’d said,” explained Kenny, sounding a bit injured when she came to sit down next to us.

  “Didn’t you realise that everyone else was pretending to be a duck?” gasped Rosie, still holding her sides and giggling.

  “I was so into being a truck, I didn’t notice what anyone else was doing,” admitted Kenny. “But I was good, wasn’t I?”

  We had to agree that she was the best angry truck that we’d ever seen!

  It was after about the third drama class when Angel called us all together.

  “I’ve got some very exciting news!” she said in her deep throaty voice. She was wearing a big beaded choker and it moved up and down on her neck as she spoke. “How would you fancy auditioning for a television advert?”

  There was a stunned silence. Then the hall kind of exploded.

  “Really?”

  “Excellent!”

  “Fantastic!”

  “What’s the advert for?” asked Frankie, who always gets down to the serious stuff first.

  “Good question!” said Angel, smiling at her. “I’ll be able to give you more details next week. All you need to know at the moment is that the advertising company are looking for a ‘bright, sparky girl who is approximately ten years old’.”

  That description covered most of the drama class. I looked around and everybody was chattering eagerly with their friends about it. Juliet smiled at me and came over.

  “You lucky thing, I wish I was ten again. Fancy being able to go up for a commercial when you’ve only been coming to drama classes for a few weeks,” she said. “You sound like just the kind of person they’re looking for too!”

  She was just being kind to me because I was the wonderful Tom’s sister, but it was nice of her to say that anyway. When she’d gone back to her friends I joined the others.

  “Just imagine,” Fliss was saying, “I’m going to my first audition!” She patted down her hair as though a casting director was watching her already.

  “Well if it’s bright and sparky they want, they won’t have to look any further than me!” Kenny pranced up and down the hall.

  “Not if they see me first!” Frankie bumped her out of the way.

  Angel was getting ready to lock up so we all bundled out of the door.

  “’Bye darlings, see you next week!” she called after us.

  By the time we got outside, Fliss was totally hyper about the whole thing.

  “Don’t you see? It’s another sign!” she shrieked. “First I tell you that I want to be an actress and Angel’s drama class pops up, and now she tells us about this audition. It’s like this part already has my name on it! What do you think?”

  “I think you’ll have some competition from the rest of us,” said Kenny. She sounded quite serious too. I didn’t say anything.

  Dad picked us up in the van and dropped everybody off. And all the time Fliss was twittering about the stupid audition for the advert. The more she went on about it, the more sure I was that I didn’t want to go for it. And what a big mistake that proved to be!

  I guess I should explain why I didn’t want to audition for the commercial. I’ll try, but to be honest I’m not a hundred per cent sure myself. It was more a sort of feeling I had, really. I know that I usually just go with the flow, but this time I didn’t want to. I suppose the problem was that I couldn’t face my brothers teasing me about the audition. You know what they’re like. They just go on and on about things and never let them drop. That’s OK sometimes, like when they tease me about spending so much time with horses. But with other things – like this TV commercial – well, it’s just not worth the hassle.

  I didn’t mention anything about the audition to Mum or Dad because they’d have made me go for it. Even though I didn’t want to. They like me to stand up to my brothers you see. But it was one thing keeping my decision from my parents. It was quite another keeping it from my friends.

  I was really panicking when I went to school the next morning. I knew that the commercial was all they would be talking about and I didn’t want to feel left out, but I didn’t want to lie to them either.

  Sure enough, when I got into the playground Fliss was already in full flow.

  “I’m going to smile at the advertising people like this…” (she did this big cheesy grin) “because Mum says that then they’ll be able to see that I’m bright and sparky, and that I have good teeth.”

  “I bet they will!” muttered Frankie.

  “They’ll probably barf up their breakfast, more like!” grinned Kenny.

  Fliss ignored them. “This means a lot to me,” she said firmly. “You know how much I want to be an actress.”

  We all rolled our eyes.

  “I’m not sure how I’m going to approach it yet,” chimed in Kenny. “Should I do this?” She pulled down the corners of her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Or what about this?” She curled back her top lip until it was touching the base of her nose.

  “You’re so gross!” laughed Rosie. “I think being natural is probably best.”

  “I’m sure Angel will tell us what the advertisers are looking for,” said Frankie. “We’ll probably practise in class anyway.”

  I hoped that we wouldn’t… but at least I didn’t have to say anything to the others because the bell went for the start of school.

  When we were in school we couldn’t talk about the audition, but as soon as break time came the others started up again.

  “Can you imagine being on television every night?” asked Rosie. “Everybody would see you!”

  “Yeah, even some big film producer! He might give you a part in his next movie.” Kenny whirled about as though she was in some big fight scene.

  “Hey, maybe we’ll get our own show!” shrieked Frankie. “The Sleepover Show!”

  We all cracked up laughing.

  “You’re not really going to audition, are you?” asked Fliss.

  “Sure am!” replied Kenny. “It sounds like a right laugh. Why, don’t you think I’m good enough?”

  “It’s not that,” said Fliss slowly, “it’s just that you’re, well – a bit of a tomboy, aren’t you? They usually have girly girls in adverts. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  Kenny looked a bit put out at this. Fliss smirked ever so slightly, and turned to Frankie.

  “What
about you Frankie, are you going for it?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be great experience,” admitted Frankie. “Even if none of us gets the part.”

  “Hmm,” said Fliss, looking Frankie over. “Don’t you think you’re probably a bit tall? You look so grown up, they’re never going to believe that you’re only ten.”

  Frankie thought about that.

  “Well I only look ten,” Rosie piped up, “and I’ll do anything once.”

  “You get a bit nervous though, don’t you?” said Fliss kindly. “I bet an audition will be really scary.”

  She turned to me. “What about you Lyndz?” she asked.

  “Nah, I’m not going to audition,” I spluttered. “It’s not really me, is it?”

  “Of course it’s you!” yelled Rosie.

  “If we’re doing it, you’ve got to do it!” said Kenny.

  “She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” said Fliss quickly. “Lyndz knows that she doesn’t really want to be an actress, and she’ll just be wasting the advertising people’s time if she goes along to the audition.”

  Everyone went a bit quiet.

  “Ohhh… I get it,” snarled Kenny all of a sudden. “You’re trying to put us all off because you want the part yourself!”

  “But I am the one who wants to be an actress,” whined Fliss. “You only came along to the class because I asked you to.”

  “Yes, and now we’ve decided that we want to audition too,” said Kenny firmly. “There’s no rule saying that we can’t be actors too, you know.”

  The others were silent. We all looked from Kenny to Fliss, expecting major fireworks, but they just glared at each other. I was relieved when the bell went for the end of break, but I knew that we hadn’t heard the last of their little feud.

  The awful thing was that in a way, I was glad that Fliss and Kenny had fallen out, because it kind of took the pressure off me. Everybody was so worried about them arguing that nobody seemed too bothered that I wasn’t actually going for the audition myself.

  The bad feeling between Kenny and Fliss also meant that everybody was really careful not to mention the audition at all. I had thought that they would be going on about it the whole time – but whenever someone even mentioned television, Frankie, Rosie or I quickly changed the subject. So by the time the drama class came round again, Kenny and Fliss were just about speaking to each other and almost seemed to have forgotten why they had fallen out in the first place.

  On the Wednesday evening, I met Frankie outside the hall.

  “I’m not looking forward to this,” she admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because World War Three’s going to break out again between Fliss and Kenny as soon as Angel mentions the audition,” Frankie reminded me.

  Rosie came to join us.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t audition either,” she suggested. “You’ve probably got the right idea, Lyndz. It might cause too much aggro if we’re all competing against each other.”

  “But that’s like backing down!” said Frankie indignantly. “If we want to audition for the commercial, then we should. If one of us gets the part, the rest of us should be happy for her. We’re too old to be spoilt babies!”

  “Maybe you should tell that to Fliss and Kenny!” suggested Rosie.

  “Tell what to Fliss and me?” asked Kenny. We hadn’t seen her before because she’d been creeping along the side of the wall, you know, like they do in American detective programmes.

  “Erm, tell you that…” spluttered Rosie, looking anxiously at Frankie and me.

  “We should tell you that it’s about time we arranged another sleepover,” I said on a brainwave.

  Kenny looked at me as though I was mad. “Yeah, right,” she said, looking dead suspicious.

  “Hey, here’s Fliss now,” yelled Rosie, relieved at the distraction.

  Sure enough, there was Fliss, done up like a dog’s dinner in her best jeans and enough eyeshadow to decorate the inside of the hall. One look at her was enough to remind Kenny about their stupid feud.

  “They’re not casting for the advert today, you know!” she hissed. “So coming all done up like that won’t help you!”

  “There’s no harm in looking smart,” Fliss snapped back.

  Frankie, Rosie and I all looked at each other and pulled faces.

  “Come on, we’d better get inside,” said Frankie quietly, and in we went.

  We always started the class with a few warm-up exercises, then we went into improvisation work. Angel put us into pairs, and always put us with a different person every week. That particular week she paired me with Frankie, which was great. But who else do you think she paired together? Yep – Fliss and Kenny!

  “Oh no,” moaned Frankie when she saw what Angel had done. “Of all the weeks for her to have put those two together!”

  Fliss and Kenny were glaring at each other like two panthers waiting to pounce.

  Angel started to explain the exercise to us. “OK, one of you has taken your friend’s homework without asking. When you give back the book, it’s all filthy and covered in stains. It looks like you’ve dropped it in the mud and some of the pages are ripped. The friend can’t hand it in like that, and will have to spend the whole night copying it out again. Decide who is to play each role – and go!”

  I love doing improvisations like that! Frankie and I really got our teeth into it. I imagined how I’d feel if that happened to me. We were reasoning with each other when we heard this really heated conversation behind us. Fliss and Kenny were both bright red in the face and yelling at each other at the top of their lungs.

  “They’re going to kill each other in a minute,” Frankie whispered.

  Angel clapped her hands.

  “Now that’s what I call real aggression!” she said. “Fliss and Kenny, let’s listen to your argument.”

  I held my breath. I was kind of hoping that they’d be too embarrassed to carry on in front of the rest of the class – but no such luck!

  “You always think you’re so special, don’t you?” yelled Kenny. “You think everybody else should just back down and let you do whatever you want!”

  “No I don’t. I expect a bit of cooperation from my friends though!” screamed Fliss.

  “You’re just frightened of finding out that you’re not Miss Perfect after all!”

  “That’s just rubbish!”

  “OK, right, OK.” Angel clapped her hands hurriedly. “I think you’ve strayed from the basic argument there, girls, but that was very good! Right, we’ll swop partners and try that exercise again!”

  And she swiftly moved Fliss and Kenny as far apart as she could.

  Towards the end of the class, Angel called for all the ten-year-old girls to join her in a group.

  “She’s going to tell us about the advert,” squealed Rosie excitedly.

  Angel took a piece of paper from her bag.

  “OK, this is the moment that you’ve all been waiting for.”

  An excited murmuring spread through the group.

  “Auditions will take place on Saturday 25th June at the rehearsal rooms in Leicester from 9.30am. It’s an open audition so I advise you to get there early.”

  “But where are the rehearsal rooms?” someone asked.

  “And what will we have to do?” Fliss called out.

  “What’s the advert for?” Kenny shouted louder.

  Angel looked amazed. “Gosh, I’m not doing this very well am I?” she laughed. “I’d forgotten that I hadn’t given you any details about the commercial. Here goes.” She read from the sheet of paper. “The advertisers of Spot Away, a new cleanser for teenagers, are looking for a ten-year-old girl to appear in their new commercial. She must be of average height and build, have a bright, bubbly and expressive face and dark hair.”

  A wave of noise sort of built up amongst us. There were a few nervous giggles.

  “Spot cream?” squealed Kenny.

  I started to laugh. I mean, really laugh
. Tears were streaming down my face and I was doubled up. Then of course I got the dreaded hiccups. It was just so funny, them getting all excited about an advert for spot cream. The others all started laughing too. But then an awful sort of shrieking cut through the giggles. It was Fliss. She was clutching her hair.

  “But I’ve got blonde hair!” she wailed. “What about me?”

  Even Kenny was upset to see Fliss so distressed. We rushed over to where she had crumpled into a heap on the floor. But at least my hiccups had stopped. It must have been the shock of Fliss’s wailing.

  “I want you to take some deep breaths, Fliss, like we do at the start of the class,” Angel told her very calmly. “In, out, in, out – that’s it. Can you feel your breathing getting calmer now? Good.”

  The whole class by this time had crowded round. Everybody was looking anxiously at Fliss.

  “Right, I want everybody to sit down,” said Angel softly, her deep voice still filling the room. “And that includes you older guys.”

  Everybody just sat where they were. Rosie handed a tissue to Fliss, whose eyes were all red.

  “Now this is a very good time to give you all some good advice,” said Angel slowly. “Acting is a very fickle profession. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good an actor you are – if your look isn’t right, you don’t get the job. It’s as simple as that. I know that’s not fair, but it’s a fact of life. That’s why acting is so tough and very few people make it to the top.”

  She looked round at us all. “This class is supposed to be fun, you guys. I don’t want you stressing over it. Fliss has just had a tough break because her look doesn’t fit.” Fliss’s eyes started to well with tears again. “But next week something might come up where the casting director is looking for petite blonde girls and she’ll fit the bill perfectly.”

  Fliss smiled weakly.

  Angel continued, “We can’t all be winners all the time – and that’s a good lesson for everyone to learn. That’s life!”

  There was a ripple of subdued laughter.