Over the past two weeks I’ve been auditioning for the Shakespeare play, “As You Like it,” that the campus Shakespeare group is putting on this year.

During the first audition we went in individually and performed a speech from a play. About a week later a list was posted on the bulletin board of people who were asked to come back from a second audition. Because a much larger amount of guys tried out than girls, over half the guys were asked back, but less than a third of the girls.

This time, instead of auditioning separately, we were put in groups and given short scenes to practice and perform. First I was with my roommate, Madge, and some junior girl whose name escapes me at the moment, performing the scene from “As You Like It” found here: Scene 2 Act 5, (lines 74-121)
I was a hopeless Orlando, Will a woebegone Sylvius, the Junior girl a spurnful Phebe, and Madge the cunning Rosalind.
However, I only had three short lines, so it wasn’t that exciting.
However, after we performed that for Soren (the head of the group and the audition judge) he paired me up with Julia and had us do another scene from “As You Like It”
Scene 5 act 3, (lines 1-37)
The first time we just tried to do it normally. Then he told us, after we had performed it for him, to go back and practice it again, this time over-doing it so much it was bad and making myself tragically pathetic and Julia enourmously cruel. So our dialogue (with screenplay) looked something like this:

ACT III SCENE V Another part of the forest.
Enter SILVIUS and PHEBE
SILVIUS Sweet Phebe, do not scorn me; do not, Phebe; (falls to knees)
Say that you love me not, but say not so
In bitterness. The common executioner,
Whose heart the accustom'd sight of death makes hard, 5
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck (bows head as though waiting for the final blow)
But first begs pardon: will you sterner be (looks up pleadingly)
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops? (kisses hem of her dress)
Enter ROSALIND, CELIA, and CORIN, behind
PHEBE I would not be thy executioner: (snatches dress away)
I fly thee, for I would not injure thee. 10
Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye: (looks scornfully on Slyvius, who looks up with mounrful puppy dog eyes)
'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,
That eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,
Should be call'd tyrants, butchers, murderers! 15
Now I do frown on thee with all my heart; (she rudely shoves Sylvius to the ground)
And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee: (she kicks Sylvius several times as he lies, destroyed, crying on the ground)
Now counterfeit to swoon; why now fall down; (Sylvius staggers to his knees, leaning on the ground with his arms)
Or if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,
Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers! 20 (Sylvius looks very pained)
Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee: (Sylvius holds his hands over his heart)
Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains
Some scar of it; lean but upon a rush, (she scratches his arm)
The cicatrice and capable impressure
Thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes, 25 (she lifts up his palm in scron)
Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not,
Nor, I am sure, there is no force in eyes
That can do hurt. (all said in a very very very cruel heartless scornful voice)
SILVIUS O dear Phebe, (beggin)
If ever,--as that ever may be near,-- 30
You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, (still sorrowful and mournful)
Then shall you know the wounds invisible
That love's keen arrows make. (his head drops as he sinks from his knees to the ground)
PHEBE But till that time (Phebe gently and deliberately lifts his head up with her finger)
Come not thou near me: and when that time comes, 35 (she slaps him across the cheek (hard) sending him to the ground)
Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not;
As till that time I shall not pity thee. (Julia stalks away while Sylvius curls up in a pathetic little ball on the ground.)

Because we had to practice this, I ended up getting shoved and kicked a lot, and slapped 5 times. And she didn’t fake it (I told her not to), so when we did it for Soren, he gasped at that point she did it so hard. My cheek was pretty red for quite awhile, but it was very fun. I should fin out in a few days if and what part I have.