fandomhigh | Drama, Monday, Period 4

"Good afternoon!" Lito said to his students, once they were all assembled in the front row of the auditorium, because seriously, this was drama, what did they need a regular classroom for? "I am Mr. Rodriguez, and I will be your teacher. I'm afraid I am a bit new at this, so please bear with me. Now, drama is an art form, yes? It's about making people believe something is real that isn't. It's about...well, it's about lying. So that is what you're going to do this week. You're going to lie to me. It's an improvisation exercise. Introduce yourselves. Give me your real name, because I need to check you off on this roster, but anything else that comes out of your mouth should not be true, and it should be convincing. I, for example, am a pharmacist from Barcelona who was recently working in San Francisco, before I discovered my passion for the stage." He sounded very convincing, and stood one hundred percent prepared, with some assistance, to convince them this was true. Or they could Google him on their phones. "Now, you," he said, picking a student at random. "Who are you?"

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As you do.

Listen, and start thinking up your backstory.

Untruthfully.

He's here for you.

Lito could use a TA or two! If anyone's interested they can volunteer in the appropriate thread, or if you think it would be OOC for your character to volunteer, let me know here or in e-mail and they can get drafted next week.

Ezra Sagishi

Kathy Li

Garik Loran

No, Lito, don't give Face permission to make things up, it'll all end in tears.

"I'm Ezra Sagishi," Ezra said. "So named because of Ezra Pound. I hail from a highly academic family from Wisconsin, and in my spare time I like to tend to a little bonsai garden on my dorm room window sill."

Lying? Lying was easy as breathing. It was a survival skill Ezra had had to pick up a long, long time ago.

Edited 2015-08-31 17:53 (UTC)

Kathy immediately started writing ideas down, trying to come up with a plausible backstory. Was she overthinking this? Only by a lot.

You had only yourself to blame for the painful display of deliberate, impossibly bad acting that was to follow, Lito.

"I'm Garik," he said, standing awkwardly and addressing his chest instead of the room.

"I'm from..." There was a pause as Face did a very bad job of trying to hide the fact he clearly was looking around the room looking for inspiration. "...Pantolomin."

Another, longer pause. "It's a planet." Beat. "In space."

"Oh, bonsai," Lito said with what appeared to be genuine interest. "Tell me more about your bonsai garden."

Coming up with a backstory was easy. Selling it was not.

"My name is, umm, Kathy Li, and I'm a--a junior. I'm from Seoul, but I just moved to America to live with my aunt and uncle? Umm, not because there's anything wrong with my parents! I just want to attend an American university--oh, wait, no, I do, does that count?" She was blushing now. God, she was bad at this. "I mean, I wanted--want!--to attend Duke University, and my family thought I should live in America for a bit before deciding."

She came to a stumbling halt, still scarlet. This was very hard, yes.

Lito studied him for a long moment before telling him, "My friend, either you have tried harder when you were convincing your mama you didn't steal the cookie when you were three, or this is also a lie, no?"

Anders

Face was too busy facepalming. "Of course a planet's going to be in space," he muttered.

"I'm sorry, I've never done this before," Face lied with complete, embarrassed sincerity. "I blanked and all I could think of was pants and space."

"I'm Anders," Anders said, getting the last few details of his lie straight in his mind. "I'm from Starkhaven. My parents are merchants and they sent me here because they caught me in bed with the stablehand."

He wasn't a bad liar; it went with how much time he'd spent running away.

"Taking inspiration from the things around you isn't the worst idea," Lito said encouragingly. "You just have to be careful not to end up with a name like 'Curtain Spotlight.' Now, tell me about life on Pantolomin, yes?"

April

"Okay, breathe," Lito said kindly. "You want to avoid hesitating, and sounding like you're asking a question. You're telling me something about yourself, not checking to see if I'll buy it, yes? 'Um' is a big tell, so try to avoid it. //And if you can't sound anything but American, don't try to pull off being from Seoul.//" Yes, thank you, Sun, for your somewhat blunter input, given in flawless Seoul-native Korean. "Would you like to try again?"

Thorin

April was positively delighted about this assignment, but her chosen persona was much more reserved to the point of creepiness. She adopted a low, monotonous voice and raised her eyes the bare minimum to appear awake. "My name is April and I collect spiders and scorpions," she droned. "I like watching dental surgeries on the internet. And I'm from Canada."

Her brightly colored clothing didn't quite jive with the character, but her performance was pretty good.

Okay, this whole exercise seemed to be without any merit. Which would be why Thorin was aggressively frowning throughout the entire thing.

"I am Thorin, son of Thrain. My home is..." He sighed in annoyance. "Khazad-Dum. My family are all miners."

There. He lied. And it was awful.

"Well, I hope the stablehand was worth it," Lito joked. Maybe half joked, because: his teenage nightmare, right there. "Where is Starkhaven?"

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Drama, Monday, Period 4

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During the Lecture

Introduce Yourselves

Talk to Lito

OOC

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