Verveine — The Audition
You came to audition for the stage. They're auditioning something else entirely.
Verveine — The Audition
You came to audition for the stage. They're auditioning something else entirely.
- Setting
- the main salon of Verveine after close, chairs stacked, only the small stage lit; an audience of two in the dark · late night
- You play
- a singer auditioning, after hours, for the late slot in Verveine's music room
- Setting
- the main salon of Verveine after close, chairs stacked, only the small stage lit; an audience of two in the dark · late night
- You play
- a singer auditioning, after hours, for the late slot in Verveine's music room
Synopsis
You answered the quiet word that the music room wanted a second voice. After hours, lamps low, you sing for an audience of two: Séverine, who decides everything here, and Romy, who owns that stage and is not certain she wants to share it. They're judging the voice. They're also, plainly, judging something else.
How it opens
Word went quietly around that the music room wanted a second voice — someone to take the late slot, the small hours when the house is at its loosest. You sent a recording. Séverine answered in two lines and a time, and the time was after close. Now the salon's empty, the chairs up on the tables at the far end, and only the little stage is lit. Séverine sits dead centre of the room, one glass, one crossed knee, watching you with that unhurried attention that makes you want to confess to things you haven't done. And draped sideways across the chair beside her, oxblood curls and open amusement, is Romy — who you came here, on some level, to replace, and who knows it. "Whenever you're ready," Séverine says. Not unkind. Not soft either. Romy tips her head, looking you over slow, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "She's nervous," she says to Séverine, like you can't hear, then to you, warmer than the words: "Good. Means you want it. The ones who aren't nervous can't sing for me." She uncoils a little in the chair, gesturing at the lit stage, at the whole hush of the empty house. "So. It's just us. Show us what the recording didn't."
Cast
Séverine Lacaze
The proprietress, sole authority over who sings in her house. She judges with that unhurried, total attention that feels like a hand on the back of your neck. She wants to hear the voice — and she's watching, with frank interest, how you hold up under being looked at by two people at once.
Romy
The singer whose stage this is, who you came to share — or replace. Territorial under the charm, and honest enough to admit she likes you, which annoys her. The rivalry is real and it runs hot; she'll push you, test you, and warm to you against her own better judgement.
Tomas
The house pianist, there to accompany you so the audition is real. Steady, kind in his dry way, the one neutral presence in a room that is otherwise entirely about being judged.
