classes, acting, 6 of 8
the practice script was “Come in, Nielsen.”
the actors were L and H.
Darren observed their performance once, and then told them to perform again, but with a game in mind – an actor's game. L's goal is to get H to look at her for more than three seconds. H's goal is to give L as little eye-contact as possible.
They weren't very competitive in this game at first, but Darren stirred things by saying, “L, you're losing! H isn't even looking at you, he's just sitting there!”
L won the game. She won it by touching H's hand with her hand (with mutual consent among the actors, of course). I believe she made the skin-contact while speaking the line: “won't you think it over?”
H's response was an ejaculation – an ejaculation of eye-contact, I mean, (though whether there was indeed a ejaculation of seminal fluid, only H – and an omniscient God – knows.)
Darren said afterward, after the performance ended: “it is okay if there is romance or even lust. We are all adults here.”
L and H were maybe the same age as the young English-speaking Japanese soldier and the teenage Malay-speaking, Borneo-born, Chinese sexual slave, who appear in a sobering chapter in Swee Lian's memoir, “Tears of a teenage Comfort Woman.” (Swee Lian is a pseudonym).
How horrible to have your first sexual experience in a war-time brothel!
What was I doing in my teenage years? Playing soccer at lunch-time, among poorly-behaved boys. Performing on the harmonica, in a group. Preparing for examinations in Classical Piano Performance. Learning how to swim in a pool of water that was deeper than a human's height – and how to achieve faster speed and higher efficiency – under a coach's instruction. Watching movies in a group, legally or otherwise (memorably, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Final Fantasy: Advent Children.) Learning how to achieve victory over other boys in a game of Chinese Chess. (But, some of them, I could never defeat.)