Flynn chooses Thursday morning to haul his usual dressing room stuff into the theater. He almost drops his box in the parking lot: it's full of posters from shows he's been in and signed playbills and photos of his friends and family and the odd item here and there.
The cast of teenage boys comprises of only Flynn, Cameron and Zac. It took a bit of organizing and asking the opinions of all the managers nearby before they were finally settled into a four-man dressing room across from the adult rooms, and the teenage girls all situated right down at the end of the hall. The kids were all shuffled into the joined dressing rooms upstairs, which has a direct passage to their schoolroom. They're a bit tight on space, with the theater holding both an actual theater plus management offices and rooms for all the courses and classes, but they'd managed reasonably well so far.
They're supposed to be trying to get in a full dress rehearsal. Flynn's not really supposed to be scheduled for anything until the afternoon, but regardless, he finds himself being hustled down to hair and makeup minutes after he emerges from his dressing room.
"Take those earplugs out and listen to people, would you?" Mr. Harding tells him, leaving him in the care of the makeup crew.
They barely touch him, just adding a bit more color to his cheeks before sending him down to the end of the hall to pick up his flannel shirt and jeans for his entrance in the ensemble. What Flynn really wants to do is plug himself back into his phone and chill in a forgotten corner, or maybe go find Riley to mess with. Instead he's steered up to the stage where his clothes are already in the quick change area. He keeps his attention there for long enough to figure out which are his Andrew clothes and which are his ensemble clothes before focusing his thinking on the school's last football game.
Mr. Harding comes by a few minutes later, finding Flynn sitting on the floor by his clothes, listening to music on his phone. After telling Flynn off for getting his jeans dirty, he then drags him around the stage, mapping out every path Flynn has to take during the show for his quick changes or to find his props before sending off to get a mic.
When Flynn arrives, Riley is leaving, a mic just emerging from under her hair. She makes a face at him before grinning wickedly.
"Heads up," she says, trying to suppress a laugh. "Pain is coming."
Flynn's confused by that, until his hair has been parted and rearranged and combed back into play and he's told that Riley used up the last of the mic tape. No one can find any Scotch tape either: someone comes up with a roll of duck tape and cuts out a sliver to tape Flynn's mic into place.
After that fiasco, Flynn's called up to start running through the show, because some miracle has enabled Zachary to get his shirt torn on something backstage.
Mr. Harding had walked everyone through what needed to be done backstage earlier, so the dress rehearsal goes off almost without a hitch. The lighting crew is already well prepared, and so they get the added benefit of working with almost all the lights. Flynn's finally found his perfect approach to Annie's character in one scene: for some reason that makes him especially happy and he's in the middle of one of his best performances of a number when his sound cuts off mid-belt.
Flynn continues holding the note, but stops looking at Annie and instead looks out at the audience, finding Mr. Harding, who shoots him a puzzled look before turning to find the camera that's feeds into the screen that the sound guys would look at.
A moment later the band stops playing: the conductor makes some sort of gesture that Flynn doesn't quite catch, but he shuts up anyway.
"Well," Annie says. "That was interesting."
Flynn leans back, coming out of his uncomfortable kneeling position. Annie pushes herself off the stage, watching Mr. Harding give up on the video monitors and drop into the pit, taking the shortcut below the stage to the sound people.
Flynn pulls his phone out of his pocket, stuffing his earplugs back into his ears and lying back on the stage, closing his eyes. It takes a few minutes, but Flynn suddenly notices his breathing echoing around the stage.
Mr. Harding marches by, grabbing Flynn's phone and earplugs before Flynn can make a move. "Scene, now," he says. "I want you to finish the act before we get Zachary back out here. Start after the song!"
The bands starts up the soft background music, and Flynn pushes himself back up into a kneeling position, reaching out a hand towards Annie. "Nikki, please," he says. "I'll try, I-"
He's interrupted by a group of people barging through the doors of the theater, with their large unwieldy cameras.
"Cut!" Mr. Harding yells, checking his watch and turning to deal with the people.
Flynn's chased off the stage by one of the assistant directors. He watches from the wings as the cameras are set up in the aisles, and Zachary is propelled onto the stage.
After a while, they start the song over again. All the lights are in play, the sound working again.
One of the adults, Adrianna, appears behind Flynn to watch. "Promotional stuff," she says quietly, suddenly, startling Flynn. "You'll get a shot, but they don't want to run out of time because they're filming the understudies."
Flynn joins Riley backstage, playing blackjack with some of the adults until someone tells them they're done for the day.
The not-quite-mic tape hurts like hell coming off.
<==================================>
The cameras are in the rehearsal room the next morning, their minders out in the hallway while Mr. Harding gives everyone a pep talk.
"We're going to be releasing some behind the scene videos the week before we start previews," Mr. Harding says. "Some shots of us in the rehearsal room, some shots on stage, some pro-shots of some of the songs, and interviews with all the principal cast."
Flynn fidgets, crammed uncomfortably on the floor between Hayley and Cameron.
"Now the adults are more than a bit important in the show," he continues. "We all know that. And we all love you, promise. But we'll focus slightly more on the kids and the teens, because we all know that that's where we'll get more media attention, sadly. So we'll run through all the kid and teen dance numbers today, and then we'll move you guys down to the theater for more filming. Adults... you'll be down the hall working on more choreography until you need to go down for the interviews."
They start off with Lara's number, as more of a warmup than anything. Lara does her bit, and they head into the reprise, where the ensemble comes in and completely ruins the moment. They call some of the adults in for the opening number: one dance number for the kids, two for the teens and then one with both of them. They shout at each other a bit, bring in some tables for the classroom scenes, and then they're heading down to the theater to do it all over again.
Flynn's roped into lugging one of the cameras down, and then he's put in the aisle next to Zachary with Cameron playing their role on the stage in the background.
"So both of you play Andrew?" the interviewer asks.
"Yeah," Zachary says, smiling enough for both of them.
"So what's that like?"
"It's interesting," Zachary says, exchanging a look with Flynn, who shrugs.
"It's cool," Flynn says, smiling too. "Zachary and I have kinda known each other for years, but this is the first chance we've had to really work on something together."
"It's really interesting, in a way," Zachary cuts in. "Because Flynn and I are really different, personality and style wise? And so far we don't have different hairstyles or things on stage, so we play two really different versions of Andrew, which I think it really cool, for us and the audience."
Flynn's never really thought of it that way: it's another highlight of the differences between him and Zachary.
They're asked another question, and Flynn doesn't really have time to absorb it before they're doing another one, and another one, and another. Then they're being pushed onto the stage and Annie is there with them. Flynn feels like they're living in a bizarre rerun of yesterday, running through their duet and then being yanked offstage to be replaced by Zachary.
Flynn really hates that Riley used up the last of the tape.
*dies because NaNoWriMo eww just no*
Leave it to me to have no Thanksgiving homework except in two subjects... and then having those two assignments be big projects.
I'm gonna start churning now, really, cause I'm dying to finish this story cause it's good in my head. SO I'm going to be cutting out a lot of minor events... which kills me but hey.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone :)