Pink Camelia - Neil Perry x Reader/OC

'~ Chapter 9 - the audition ~'

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, if you'll please take a seat just over here-" a fine-looking woman gestured to a circle of chairs on the otherwise empty looking stage. 

"For those of you who don't know, my name is Ms. Finch, I will be your assistant director, choreographer, and costume designer." the rather orthinoid woman began introducing the judges of the audition, who were to be the crew for the play. 

"This is Mrs. Douglas, she is the head director." the old woman who had been calling people into the room waved to the group.

"You can call me Duffy." the woman smiled, waving her hand as if to brush away any formalities. Ms. Finch looked at her slightly disapprovingly, clearly a more formal woman. 

"Over here is our wonderful Miss Thompson, who will be in charge of our sound and lighting, as well as covering anything to do with the script, you can thank her for scoring us the rights for the play." a small, nervous applause broke out, the younger woman waved it off bashfully, before the introductions continued.

"And finally, we have our stage manager, Miss Dione Hawthorne, a student as some of you know- and although she may be a student like yourselves we expect you to hold her in the utmost respect, she wasn't selected for this role for no reason." Ms. Finch stared around the room intensely, as Dione looked at the floor rather embarrassed, Neil got the feeling something had happened to prompt this, but he would take it up with her later. 

With the introductions of the crew finished, the audition group were now prompted to introduce themselves, they went around the circle, Neil didn't really catch any of their names, except for one girl, who introduced herself as 'Ginny Danburry', to which Neil looked up, wondering if there was any relation to Knox's supposed 'competitor' for Chris's attention. 

Eventually the group turned to Neil, who had slightly zoned out.

"Oh, um, I'm Neil Perry, and I'll be going for the role of Puck." the boy fumbled.

"Well, with that settled, we'll begin the readings." Duffy motioned to each of the students to read the pieces of paper they had been handed. 

The students hadn't actually been handed pieces of dialogue from the play, they had each been given a short poem to read out, as it turned out, selected by Miss Thompson. Neil had been given a section of a poem by Wordsworth, when his turn came, he read it out without looking at the paper. 

"Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought! That giv'st to forms and images a breath and everlasting motion! not in vain, by day or star-light thus from my first dawn of childhood didst thou intertwine for me the passions that build up our human soul, not with the mean and vulgar works of man, but with high objects, with enduring things, with life and nature, purifying thus the elements of feeling and of thought, and sanctifying, by such discipline, both pain and fear, until we recognize a grandeur in the beatings of the heart..."

The other students there looked taken aback, all of them had read out the poem from the paper, but Neil had actually gone to the effort of memorizing the poem. The panel did well not to show their opinions or emotions, with the exception of Dione, who was looking at Neil as if he had just spun gold before her eyes. 

The cold reads went smoothly, Neil read for Puck, and Ginny for Hermia, with the rest of the students taking on a few other speaking roles within the scene they were reading. 

"Alright, callbacks are going to be held shortly, we will inform you all shortly whether or not you have received a callback, those who are given one are to come through one by one and do another short cold read." Ms. Finch announced to the students as they filed out into the foyer.