Ancilla L
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The Director.
🕑 Added 2023-07-06 07:06:12 +0000 UTC
As soon as he calls for the scene to be wrapped up, I collapse onto the chair behind me. My feet are throbbing but I wouldn't dare remove these shoes until he tells me that I can. A young woman resets my hair and shines my face with a brush I can only hope has been washed this week, the process of having my face painted has always seemed so otiose to me, but it's an ill of the trade. This trade expects you to have the skin of a lifeless porcelain doll and an emotional range that goes from monk to madness, and back, in one second.
"This time I want you to really focus on your feet," I hear him, and open my eyes to see him standing over me, "It is one of those days for this character, she is on her feet all day and she comes home to be made to serve her family...one she loves, but her feet hurt more than that today, where is the pain? Why can I not see it in you?"
The last line was almost delivered in anger, with the snide satisfaction of truth disguised as mendacity. I don't understand how he cannot see my pain, the gravel and peddles he put in my shoes have been bearing into my soles all day and every inch of my feet is throbbing like a distinct entity. Every point of pain feels like a buoy at sea, flashing signals of distress into the silence.
"How can you not see my pain?" I ask, "I cannot think of anything but my feet."
"That's the problem!" He shouts, getting too close to my face, "You're thinking of *your* discomfort, this beautiful actress on this expensive set, you cannot get past the inconvenience of your discomfort. How dare I do this to the princess, huh? I don't want to see your pain, your pain is meaningless, show me *her* pain."
Despite myself, I understand what he is saying. He is something of an obsolescent creature, and while his methods are spoken of in whispers of condemnation, I find myself drawn to his style of work. I find myself drawn to him. Over and over again. I stand up and take a few deep breaths, I can sense the distance between us increasing, I can feel the lights come on and the world go silent as every eye and camera in the room is focused on me. It's been so many years since I have been doing this, I still feel like I will never get used to this. I put all of it away from me for a bit, you have to be able to do that in order to become someone else, you have to suspend everything you are and rebuild from someplace so deep inside that after you're done, finding yourself is actually difficult, sometimes, impossible. I walk around the room in counted steps, every twist and turn is blocked by him, I speak the words that were written for me, and I become the pain of the feet of his character. This version of myself. By the time he calls for the end, my head is spinning from the immersion, I cannot even make it to the chair, I fall onto the floor. I hear a dozen feet shuffle in my direction, and stopped, by his.
"Do not help her up," he addresses the unknowable feet, before changing to the tone reserved for me, "That was better, now stand up and do it again."
He has me do it five more times and by the end, I have forgotten my pain, I have even forgotten that these feet are mine. When he calls to wrap, I weep into the chair, kneeling on the floor with my forehead resting on the old velvet. All the people in the room ignore me, the way they avoid me as they step all over the set makes me feel diaphanous. I am sure they cannot even see me, they would walk through me, if I were just a little more transparent.
"Let me take you home," I hear him say, his hand placed on my shoulder.
He pulls me up and hugs me. It is a comfort so alien, I squirm in his arms, but that is customary with him. I never know who I am getting. In all these years I have learnt that who he is will depend on who he is directing me to be, and in all these years I have also realised that no matter who he is being, I will comply.
"You may change first," he says to me, "But..keep the shoes, we are walking home."
I am too exhausted to protest and too trained to drag my feet so I disappear into my green room without a word, and reemerge in a different dress, carrying the same pain. He takes me by the arm and we exit from the back, several people stop him on the way to ask questions and read out from stacks of paper they carry around, but I do not hear them at all. Even the unctuous and transparent sycophancy seems to flow through me and into the gutter of my mind. As we walk in the direction of the apartment we have rented while we film, he lets go of my arm and holds my hand. It is tender and seems to adumbrate a most terrible fate. As we approach the building, he walks faster, and I follow suit, if for no reason other than the hope that when I am inside our fleeting home, I may get to be on my hands and feet instead. As I walk towards the elevator, he pulls me back.
"Stairs," he says.
I beseech him with my eyes but he seems so irked by the mere expectation of leniency that I stare at my feet and start to go up the stairs. It's only three floors, but it feels like I am climbing an insurmountable peak, and when I do get there, I'm likely to fall off the cliff. He hums and whistles as I focus my entirety on lifting my feet and not dragging them. By the time we get to the flat, I collapse against the door. It's not just the pain, the exhaustion is so insidious. He opens the door as I lean against it, letting me fall to the floor right beside it, I scream out loud. I am not protesting the pain, I am protesting the audacity. He kicks me.
"You do not get to break down until she gets to break down," he cries out loud, through gritted teeth, "You let it all out when I tell you she needs to let it all out, do you understand me?"
I get back on my feet and nod my head. I reach out to him, I hold him by the shoulders and kiss him. There is something lacking in the way he kisses me back, it's as if he isn't kissing me at all. As if he doesn't remember my lips from the last time, as if I am new to him and he doesn't know every little secret my body houses for him to discover. It is strange, really, to be wanted, explicitly, because you are not being yourself.
