Rehearsal for the Play Mirror
At Yeon-woo's words, Im Seong-su asked back with a look of pure incomprehension.
"Huh? A theater troupe?"
Yeon-woo confirmed it with him again.
"Director, you still haven't found a side gig in Daehangno, right?"
"Yeah. That's right. There's no new program starting up, and the film I was supposed to join doesn't crank in for another half year, so I figured I'd come out and look for something to fill the time."
"Half a year is perfect. Then shall we head inside and talk it over?"
Im Seong-su nodded and followed Yeon-woo up to the troupe's office.
Once the lighting director had been swept upstairs and settled onto the office sofa, Yeon-woo mixed a cup of instant coffee and handed it over.
"Yeon-woo. What is this office, and what on earth is this talk about a theater troupe?"
"Well, you see..."
Yeon-woo gave a brief rundown of everything he was preparing and asked for Im Seong-su's thoughts.
"So you're saying you and your friends started a troupe and you're about to put on a show?"
"Yes."
"Whoa... Is it because you're young? How did you even come up with that? Small-theater work, at this stage of your career..."
Lighting Director Im Seong-su, who had watched Yeon-woo make his debut as a high-schooler, simply nodded, thinking once again that geniuses really did think differently.
"If you'll hire me, I'd be grateful."
"Okay. We've just locked in the best lighting director there is."
Im Seong-su snorted a laugh at that.
"If you say 'let's work together,' a whole truckload of lighting directors would come running."
"Rehearsals are almost in the final stretch. Want to start coming in from today?"
Yeon-woo pointed toward the stairs leading down to the basement as he asked. Im Seong-su stared quietly at the tip of that finger.
Like most men his age, the older he got, the less he did anything on impulse. As the head of a household with people depending on him, he had been grinding through the same endless daily cycle until he was worn thin.
He had only been talking with this young actor for a few minutes after running into him by chance, yet in that short span he felt as if he had been invited into some unknown world.
And standing at the entrance to that unknown world, Im Seong-su nodded.
"Let's go. What did you say the troupe was called?"
Watching him, Yeon-woo grinned.
"Saebyeol. Theater Group Saebyeol."
Im Seong-su followed Yeon-woo into Theater Group Saebyeol's little theater.
"Yeon-woo, where did you suddenly disappear to... Who's the person with you?"
"This is the lighting director who'll be handling the lights for our troupe from now on."
"...Out of nowhere?"
The friends were startled by the lighting director Yeon-woo had simply marched in with, but they offered greetings first.
"Hello!"
"Ah, yes, yes. Hello."
Just then the door to the little theater opened and Jin Yu-han walked in.
"Sorry I'm late. Yesterday I just couldn't skip out, so I was drinking until dawn..."
The members nodded that it was fine.
As of yesterday, Jin Yu-han's musical Deyandor had closed its final performance, and the idea of one of the leads skipping the last cast dinner was unthinkable; they had half expected him not to show until late evening.
"Still, you got here earlier than I thought. I heard musical-team dinners are legendary."
When Yeon-woo asked, Jin Yu-han shook his head with a queasy look.
"I'm still a little woozy."
At that moment Lighting Director Im Seong-su peeked out from behind Yeon-woo and looked at Jin Yu-han.
"...Yu-han?"
"Hm? Director Im?"
Apparently Im Seong-su and Jin Yu-han already knew each other.
Yeon-woo nodded to himself as he watched them.
Well, both of them have been working in the industry for years. Of course they've done projects together.
Im Seong-su looked back and forth between Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han.
"...So the two of you are sharing a stage? In this tiny little theater?"
"Ah, I forgot to mention Yu-han because we came straight in."
"What is this..."
Behind them the friends and the two theater actors quietly nodded, understanding Im Seong-su's reaction perfectly.
Yeon-woo looked at the lighting director, whose mouth was hanging open.
"Director. Why don't you watch the rehearsal first?"
"Mmm..."
Im Seong-su kept glancing between Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han before finally collecting himself.
"...If we're going to do this, we do it right. You said start today. Who's been running the console?"
At the question, Ha Jae-hun, who had been seconded from Jeong Cheol-min's troupe, raised his hand.
"I've just been winging it with what I picked up over someone's shoulder."
"You've had a rough time of it, then. Mind if I go up and take a look at the console?"
"Of course, Director. Just head up this way."
Im Seong-su followed Ha Jae-hun up the stairs behind the audience seats and stood in front of the lighting console in the control room.
"I'll need to watch the play from here and figure out how to handle the memory work."
Yeon-woo smiled as he heard the lighting director speaking from in front of the console.
Memory work meant adjusting the intensity and color of the fixtures for each scene and storing the cues in the console.
With a professional on board, the scenes would definitely reach the audience more effectively.
As Im Seong-su looked down at the stage from above, the actors took their places.
He had only wandered out looking for some side work to fill the time, and now he was standing here watching the small-theater acting of the hottest young stars in Korea. It still felt unreal.
Baaam—
A simple sound effect announced the start of the play, and the seconded actor Ha Jae-hun opened the first beat.
"The ship is departing now. Is there anyone who hasn't boarded yet?"
From the far right edge of the darkened stage, Jin Yu-han came running in urgently, hand raised.
"Me! I need to board! Please wait just a moment!"
Watching that entrance, Im Seong-su shook his head.
The house is going to lose it right from here. Jin Yu-han pops out at the very start.
He ran a quick simulation in his head.
Hmm. If they hit the next line right away, it'll get buried under the screams from the audience that just saw Jin Yu-han. I'll need to follow him slowly with the light from farther out and control the tempo.
Im Seong-su began scribbling furiously in the notebook beside the lighting console.
The play continued; the setting shifted to the interior of the ship, and all the principal characters appeared.
Lights came up across the whole stage, revealing the set.
Oh-ho. Arranged like this to suggest the ship interior with almost nothing.
And the further the story progressed, the more interest lit up in Director Im's eyes.
Yeon-woo had met the director on a drama set, but Im Seong-su had started as the junior of the lighting team at the Seoul Arts Center in the late nineties and had decades of theater experience under his belt.
He had never formally studied playwriting or stage design, yet the knowledge he had hammered out on the job was every bit as sharp as a professional's.
You only see as much as you know, and reasons for every placement began rising in his mind.
They're handling entrances and exits naturally by opening and closing the cabin doors. And it's not just that. The structural side looks thoroughly calculated too. Who designed this stage?
The story advanced until Woo Seong-sik, playing the captain, was discovered as a cold corpse in the captain's cabin.
"All right, the body absolutely must not move. Not even a twitch."
Kim Ju-hyeong's own turn had not come yet, so from the audience seats he ordered Seong-sik, with a writer's eye, to stay perfectly still.
"G-go get the guest from cabin four! When I spoke with him earlier, he said his job was detective!"
Kim Jun-su raced to Yeon-woo's room, which had been set apart at the very front of the stage, and flung the door open.
"Detective! You need to come right away!"
Watching the acting, Im Seong-su tilted his head.
That kid looks a bit light on experience, but he's not bad at all. Did they bring students from an acting academy?
Even the three friends' acting, considering they were playing minor roles with few lines, was surprisingly solid.
Of course, the blood, sweat, and tears Jin Yu-han had poured into raising them to that level were unknown to Im Seong-su.
When the rehearsal reached roughly the midpoint of the play, they took a short break.
Im Seong-su, notebook dense with notes, came down from the control room into the house.
"I haven't seen the whole play yet, but I have a few questions. Mind if I ask?"
"Of course, Director. And please speak comfortably. We're all in the same boat now."
"Ah, is that really all right?"
When the man who was clearly old enough to be their father asked, everyone nodded.
"Who designed this stage...?"
Yeon-woo raised his hand.
"I did."
"Oh, Yeon-woo?"
Im Seong-su was mildly surprised.
When they had introduced themselves earlier he had heard that Ha Jae-hun and Kim Se-yeong had come from a regional theater troupe, so he had assumed one of them had done it, or that they had brought in a specialist.
"Expressing the cabins as a row of partitions makes entrances and exits easy for the actors, but I also thought maybe you deliberately..."
Yeon-woo nodded at the director's words.
"Yes. I structured it that way because of presence."
"Ah, just as I thought."
The friends tilted their heads.
"Huh? You never told us that. What do you mean, because of presence?"
Im Seong-su answered for him.
"Looking down from above, Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han's presence is so strong that I felt the supporting cast could easily get swallowed up."
"Ahh..."
The friends nodded in understanding.
More than once or twice they had felt that even while they were delivering lines, the natural command of the stage belonged to Yeon-woo or Yu-han simply standing still in the background.
"But in a partitioned structure, the moment a door opens, the force of that architecture pulls the eye first to whoever is inside. I think if we add the right lighting, we can solve most of the presence problem."
While the director spoke, Ha Jae-hun flipped through the densely noted notebook and marveled.
"Wow. You worked out this many memory cues in that short time?"
"Ahem, well, this is my job."
Yeon-woo nodded.
"I told you—the best lighting director there is."
"Ahem, no need to lay it on that thick..."
Im Seong-su scratched the back of his head bashfully and continued.
"And you only pulled Yeon-woo's and Yu-han's rooms forward, with no walls..."
"Yes. There are a lot of monologue scenes alone in the room, story-wise."
Im Seong-su grinned as he looked at Yeon-woo.
"That's not the only reason, is it? Balance of power. It's perfectly symmetrical."
From the house seats it might not be obvious, but the view of the stage from the high control room formed a clear shape.
"Yes. I used an ellipse."
"So you did design it deliberately. I figured as much."
The friends, hearing this for the first time, tilted their heads again.
"Hey, we use this set every single day—why can't I understand a word of this?"
"I don't get it either. What's an ellipse all of a sudden?"
Jun-su and Seong-sik looked at Ju-hyeong the writer, who shook his head.
"Huh? I don't know either."
"If the writer doesn't know, what are we supposed to do?"
"Ask the troupe leader."
Yeon-woo scratched his cheek as he answered.
"It's not really information you needed to know, so I didn't mention it. Usually Korean stages are arranged in a circle to focus on the protagonist. A circle has one center point."
"So arranging it as an ellipse means there are two center points?"
Yeon-woo nodded.
"Exactly. An ellipse is a shape with two foci. Set it up this way and, naturally, as we move into the second half, Yu-han and I standing on those two points will oppose each other and deepen the conflict structure."
The friends stuck out their tongues.
"...Have you been secretly studying directing behind our backs?"
"Well, I'm pretty interested in theater."
The time I spent watching every kind of play overseas is longer than you've all been alive.
At Yeon-woo's answer, Im Seong-su's eyes lit up.
"This is going to be fun to light and focus."
The kind of fire he had only felt in his younger days was rising again.
"All right, shall we start the second-half rehearsal again?"
At Yeon-woo's words everyone nodded and moved back to their places.
And after that, with schedules packed so tightly there was no time to waste, the day of the first performance finally arrived for the members of the troupe.