Chapter 009
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the actors’ performances that first caught people’s attention.
What captured everyone’s gaze was their appearance.
The young, vigorous men swarming the stage.
Some of them had even stripped off their tops.
Defined muscles twitched as if they had just finished exercising, and their skin glistened with sweat.
But above all, what drew the eye was their uniformly handsome looks.
“Ugh…!”
Not even a groan should escape.
The good daughter Elysee covered her mouth.
At that moment, Elysee had already forgotten the fact that this was a play.
To be precise, almost every audience member there had.
Everyone gathered here was so distracted by the lighting they had never seen before, the handsome looks of the male actors, and their youthful energy that they forgot their original purpose of critiquing the play Louisa had made.
Of course, just for a moment.
It was brief.
Soon, an audience member who had been acting refined while badmouthing Louisa earlier spoke up.
“As expected, they are the men Louisa picked.”
Even as she heard those words, Elysee couldn’t take her eyes off the male actors on stage.
She didn’t want to miss a single line they spoke.
“It’s the Montagues.”
“It’s the Capulets.”
“Those fools.”
“Idiots.”
But something was a bit strange.
This was different from the plays she knew.
Of course, she hadn’t seen many plays. The usual plays she knew were those held in the backyards of inns for commoners.
However, among the actors who performed there, some were quite successful.
They mostly spoke while looking kindly into the eyes of the audience and used to emphasize each word loudly and exaggeratedly.
Just like the bard actor who appeared earlier.
Yet these young actors only talked among themselves. Looking into each other’s eyes.
They occasionally looked toward the audience, but even then, they spoke in flat voices that weren’t exaggerated, just like when Elysee talked with people around her.
And yet, they could be heard clearly.
That made it feel even stranger.
A voyeuristic sense of immersion, as if she were really eavesdropping on the conversation of handsome young men chattering in front of her house.
Unknowingly, she was drawn deeper and deeper into the play.
“This is exactly the Princess’s taste!”
It was then. Someone behind her grumbled again.
Elysee felt angry.
While Elysee was thinking of numerous curses internally, a woman who clearly had the same thought as her shouted.
“Let’s be quiet there! It’s distracting!”
“What’s so great about this play that we have to be quiet!”
It was then that someone shouted.
The youths of the two factions, who were noisily bickering with each other on stage.
That is, the Capulets in red and the Montagues in blue drew their swords as if they would clash right away.
However, while the gentle-faced Benvolio Montague was trying to stop them—.
“The Capulets and Tybalt!”
Someone on stage shouted.
Simultaneously, a man dressed in red representing the Capulets appeared on stage, leading other red-clad Capulets.
A man radiating a dangerous and seductive aura from his sharply slanted eyes and long, thin lips.
Tybalt Capulet, from whom an unknown arrogance could be felt.
“……!”
Above him, a red light flashed past very briefly.
Red light.
Symbolizing the Capulets.
At the same time, the audience became silent.
This time, no one mentioned Louisa’s taste in men.
That was because it was a bit ambiguous to say this man was handsome. He was handsome, but not so handsome that one would stare blankly.
If one were to be picky, one could even say the extras around him were handsomer.
And yet, he absorbed people’s attention strangely. Since he was wearing red clothes and had an arrogant expression, one could feel at a glance that he was a main character.
The red light even signaled that fact.
The man who appeared with the red light drew his sword with an arrogant voice and challenged the Montagues to a duel.
“Cowardly Benvolio. Draw your sword at once.”
Simultaneously, a sword fight broke out between Benvolio and Tybalt on stage.
It was a real sword fight.
They weren’t choreographing movements with exaggerated motions as if dancing, like she had seen at the inn; they aimed right for the ribs and the throat.
‘Is this really acting?’
For a very brief moment, Elysee wondered if she should stand up from her seat to save the actors.
Especially the Benvolio actor who had stolen her gaze so strangely!
Even the audience member who had shouted “What’s so great about this play that we have to be quiet!” earlier murmured.
“Shouldn’t they be stopped?”
While everyone was whispering, the play proceeded.
Fortunately, the actors were all safe, and soon the lord of this region appeared to stop the youths’ fight.
People were at a point where they had almost forgotten that this was a play.
“If anyone draws a sword again in Verona, I will have them executed immediately.”
After the actor who spoke in a stern voice exited and the disturbance settled, sighs escaped from here and there in the audience.
“Whew…”
Of course, such relief didn’t last long.
Because another actor soon appeared.
Appearing at the edge of the stage, he stood leaning against a market stall with a crooked posture and a face that looked uninterested in all this commotion.
But that alone was enough for everyone to look at him.
Unlike the other actors, he had his hair loosely disheveled and was just standing still with a face that looked rebellious to anyone—.
‘This is handsome on a different level.’
It was true. Everything she had said earlier about the actors being handsome was a lie.
Elysee realized.
If the word ‘beauty’ were made into a person, wouldn’t they look like this?
This time, even Elysee couldn’t hold back a groan.
“Ugh…”
Whether her father was there or not, she couldn’t help it.
She heard her father clicking his tongue beside her in disapproval, but Elysee didn’t even glance that way.
She just focused on the fact that that man was the next head of the Montagues, Romeo.
A man who doesn’t intervene in stupid fights.
A man who looked like a statue and even had a rebellious charm.
“Is it still early morning?”
That man murmured.
As if lost in his own world, Romeo raised his head.
It was a moment that took everyone’s breath away.
* * *
‘The reaction is much more intense than I expected.’
I was a bit taken-aback while watching the audience’s reaction from backstage.
That was because during the battle scene, some audience members tried to intrude onto the stage, and when Romeo appeared, some women actually made groaning sounds.
‘I had forgotten for a moment.’
That in this world, people haven’t seen this kind of acting.
That they haven’t seen this kind of lighting either.
‘I am the first to use pin lights in directing in this world.’
Thanks to that, since there was nowhere that sold them, I had to do a bit of legwork to make them myself.
The lighting used today was lighting made from ore.
Ore.
In this worldview where there are no light bulbs, it was a mysteriously glowing stone.
However, there weren’t many places that handled this ore.
In the first place, since it was a rare and expensive item found in places like ancient caves, general households mostly used candles.
Meaning the efficiency was low.
But I knew of one place that handled this item.
‘You’re buying ore? From me? Not some other strange items?’
Rudy’s night tavern.
In this place, auctions were held in a basement without any windows.
Since people would all suffocate if candles were used in that underground cave, ore was mainly used.
Rudy had a listless face at my words that I would buy ore.
It was natural since ore was a relatively cheap item compared to the things handled in this shop.
‘Yes. And commission the blacksmith you usually go to when manufacturing various strange items to make a black blackout cylinder. Attach glass in front, round glass like this. Tell him to attach colored glass for two of them. One red. One blue.’
A blacksmith.
I couldn’t believe it even as I spoke.
Normally, this would be done in a snap if I went to Cheonggyecheon.
An item where a bulb is put inside a blackout cylinder and glass is placed in front to gather light.
Precisely pin lights and baby lights.
That was it.
This was theatrical lighting that didn’t exist in this damned old-fashioned era.
In the first place, the ‘pin lights’ and ‘baby lights’ I was looking for are scattered as finished products in Cheonggyecheon if it were South Korea.
‘No, it’s not a money issue, but why should I do such a favor? It’s a hassle.’
Rudy spoke listlessly, but I knew a way to make Rudy move.
‘That’s because I know you touched a woman you should absolutely never touch. Shall I go and tell that woman’s husband?’
Rudy is a man with many weaknesses.
He will be useful for a long time.
‘No. I will go and commission it immediately. Anything else you need?’
‘Men. Several with good bodies. And a few who seem like they would be interested in acting and fame.’
What was left after that was precisely the auditions.
For roles like the older actors and the bard, I could just pull from the actors originally belonging to the troupe.
It didn’t matter if they performed expressively.
For the bard, I had to find an actor with a beautiful baritone to handle Shakespeare’s famous sonnets.
But the young actors were different.
‘I have to please the audience’s eyes at their first appearance.’
So that they marvel a bit at Louisa Maecenas’s eye, badmouth her subtly, yet find themselves unavoidably drawn in.
I filled the extra male actors with such handsome and well-built guys.
But Tybalt, Benvolio, and Mercutio needed faces that perfectly fit the roles.
Because, like Leo Pier, I had to make up for their slightly lacking acting skills with an overwhelming atmosphere radiating from their appearance.
If I didn’t understand Shakespeare’s script and didn’t have a clear directorial direction, it could have been a difficult casting.
Shakespeare’s scripts are so poetic that even in modern times, there were directors who didn’t understand them properly.
They looked at numerous existing reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s works, roughly followed them, and then failed.
They only look for people similar to existing actors.
But I am different.
I knew the Tybalt, Benvolio, and Mercutio I wanted.
The arrogant Capulet who hates Montagues more than anyone, Tybalt.
The gentle Benvolio who has a cowardly side of not taking anyone’s side while calling himself a pacifist.
The playful idler who actually has a cowardly and weak side inside, Mercutio.
I found the three and gave them intensive acting practice.
‘The acting only reached about 80% of my expectations.’
Even though I had practically no expectations to begin with.
Tybalt was an actor with poor memorization, so he even stumbled on his lines a couple of times.
Looking at the state of the rehearsal, I thought the audience would burst out in complaints.
But lo and behold.
“Tybalt is a bad guy! But he’s handsome!”
The audience cheered for Tybalt.
That’s right.
As of now, these audience members have no standard for evaluating method acting.
Far from complaining, the people didn’t even notice Tybalt’s mistakes.
Because they were drawn in so hectically.
‘They are completely immersed.’
I clenched my fists while looking at the eyes of the people staring straight ahead with sparkling eyes.
It worked.
Every part I directed went as I wanted.
A thrilling euphoria shot through my entire body.
Every time people were surprised, laughed, and marveled at the directing I put effort into, I felt as if I had become a god.
With the weapon called a stage, I could make all these people laugh and cry.
That was me.
Me, Shin Geurim.
A woman who loves and knows plays better than anyone.
“…Are you nervous?”
And then, someone whispered behind my back.
It was Leo, who had stepped into the backstage for a moment.
He had an expression like he wanted to tease me, as I was busy slightly opening the curtain and looking out.
Even though he was actually shaking like a leaf himself.
I shook my head.
“No. It’s not that.”
“……?”
“I’m crazily happy. I didn’t know it would be this good even here—.”
I looked at Leo steadily.
“I love it.”
For a moment, Leo’s eyes wavered.
An unidentifiable expression spread across his face.
But I didn’t have the leeway to care about him.
I had to appear right now.
Louisa Maecenas’s Juliet.
