Method Acting: An opposites attract, found family romance (Center Stage Book 2) Adele Buck (e novels to read .TXT) 📖

quick smile. “That’s the trick. Make an unusual choice, but ground it in the text. If you make an unusual choice for the sake of being different, you’re just being gimmicky, not doing something anyone will believe. In that case, usually the resulting performance is just bizarre and puts people off.”

They ate in silence for a few moments, and Colin thought about what she had said. If he had ever thought about what an actor did, he would have supposed that they worked more or less from instinct. But what Alicia talked about was a very intellectual process.

He frowned. “So how do you make all these decisions so consciously and yet not end up acting mechanically? How do you bring real emotion into it?”

Alicia’s mouth twisted in a smirk. “That’s the other trick. Once you’ve made all those decisions, you try to forget about them. Exist in the moment. Be surprised. Watch and react honestly to what the other actors are doing. Every night is at least a little different. That’s what keeps it spontaneous and fresh. The decisions you made earlier will come out naturally if you don’t force it.”

Colin tried to imagine manipulating his emotions in the way she was describing and came up blank. He couldn’t.

“Granted, that’s just the way I work. There are lots of ways of getting a good performance. Everybody’s process is different.” Alicia was still focusing on her plate, almost as if he wasn’t there.

His barrister’s brain, almost against his will, pulled up her previous comments about her family, measured them against what she had said just now about how she created character, the decisions she made about her performance.

Something was there. She was hiding something.

“Alicia.” Her eyes flicked up to his face, slid to the side.

“Yes?” She apparently found the fountain to be fascinating. At least from the way she was studying it.

“You don’t need to protect yourself from me. I’m not going to pry into your personal life.”

Startled, Alicia looked at Colin. His brows were drawn together, and he had put his utensils down. “What do you mean? You weren’t prying into my personal life.”

“No, I wasn’t intending to. But it seems like the emotional nature of your job… Some things, some experiences must overlap. Don’t you use personal experience in your work?”

No. We are not going there. Alicia put her fork down, her plate of food half-eaten, her stomach churning. She breathed in carefully, willing herself into a level calm as she looked across the table at him and said, “That way can lie madness. I try to keep my life separated from my work.”

“Ah.” Polite disbelief radiated from Colin’s expression.

“Really? This again?” Hot anger started to replace the nausea in her gut. They were right back to the beginning. He was determined to see her as some sort of psychopathic liar, just because of what she did for a living.

“What ‘again’ are you referring to exactly?” Colin’s measured tones abraded Alicia’s already raw nerves.

“For some reason, you’ve seemed determined to believe that I’m a liar from the moment you met me.”

“I didn’t say I disbelieved you,” Colin said, taking a bite of his lunch and chewing slowly, dark eyes on hers.

“No, your words didn’t say it. But your entire attitude does.”

Colin put down his silverware again and wiped his lips. “Okay. Let’s just say that it’s not that I think you’re lying to me. I think you’re not being honest with yourself.”

Of all the condescending… Alicia’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth hurt. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“My sincerest apology—only one—,” he gave her a small, tight smile, “if I have misinterpreted. But your body language communicates…” He paused for the right words. “Distress quite frequently when you discuss the emotional aspects of your work. It seemed personal, that’s all.”

“And you think you have the right to believe that your read of my body language overrides what I say?”

“Why not? It’s what you did to me.”

Striving for outward calm, Colin took a bite of salad and chewed slowly, wondering how he was going to get it past the knot in his throat. He wondered how far beneath the surface her instinct to walk—or run—away from him lay. Last night and in the sculpture garden he had been able to soothe her. He wasn’t sure of his ability to repeat the trick this time.

Raising his eyes to Alicia, he saw that instead of the defensive fury he expected, she had a strange, almost stricken look on her face. He managed to swallow the mouthful of salad and took a drink of water. He considered saying something, then decided to wait and see what she did next.

Her jaw worked, and her eyes shifted from his face to the fountain and back again. Finally, she said quietly, “You’re right. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair of me.”

The knot in his throat eased a bit, and he breathed a little more deeply, trying to relax. He had been expecting her to leave, he realized. He didn’t want her to, but he had been prepared for it. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if she had: he was intrigued by Alicia, attracted to her, but he knew he didn’t want to fall into the habit of running after her all the time.

“We seem to have apologized to one another quite a bit today,” he observed.

“Hm.” She picked up her fork and began eating again, and Colin relaxed a fraction more. He still envisioned her picking up her napkin, dashing it to her plate, and walking out. “Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?”

He considered the question for a moment. “Neither. Apologies in and of themselves are frequently a social good. So, lack of apologies when they are warranted is a bad thing. But behaving such that apologies are required all the time is also a bad thing.”

“So, do you think today crosses into ‘all the time’ territory?”

He gave her a quick, cautious smile.