There were about five of us gathered around the three moderators, our Director/Drama teacher standing behind the two leads, Matty and myself. We had just finished our Moderated performance of The Crucible, as in only minutes ago, and were now waiting with bated breath to hear what they had to say.

There were three of them, which was strange. Usually only one was sent to a remote city, or two if they had a lot of schools to do but had ended up both free to do a certain job. Our teacher/director, (casually known as Ms Stokes throughout the school, known to us more as Aunty Lou, known fully as Mrs Louise Stokes-Chapman) hadn't seemed surprised to see the three of them though, but had informed us of how strange it was, and with a knowing smile she had left it at that.

We were crowded around the three, the lights were still dimmed and the rest of the cast were packing up behind us. The performance had been held at our school during the end half of the day while the first half had been a last minute rehearsal. We were still in out costumes, stage makeup still on, my hair still a mess since my character had just been in jail and the noose was still swinging from the closing lines.

The Moderators were looking thoughtful, but smiling at the same time. Different smiles, they were actually happy smiles. This usually never happened. Moderators always had the façade of polite interest, emotions legally not allowed to show anything else, but these three; I didn't remember their names at the time, were smiling and looking pleased with themselves.

"Well done!" the eldest, an aged and yet graceful lady stepped forward, and all three of them looked as if they actually meant these words, and weren't just saying it to be polite. We were all smiling, still eager to act, run, be active; we were all hyped up on adrenaline still.

"Keep on smiling, you have reason to. That's all we can technically say about your performance." Said the second moderator, "This is generally where we'd leave it without saying anymore…but…this is a special case."

We looked at Aunty Lou. Special Case? What could that mean? Her knowing smile made us savvy to the fact she already knew, and didn't look upset about it at all, (unless she was highly skilled in looking politely happy, and as a good drama teacher, that wasn't impossible) but still, something let us know this wasn't a bad issue.

More and more members of the rest of the cast were joining us in ones or twos now, even though they had been told they weren't allowed. Aunty Lou didn't look like she was about to turn them away though.

"As you know, The Crucible is a widely used Year 12 text throughout Australia and in other countries as well." The third moderator now spoke. This seemed to be his area, possibly the reason to as why he was there at all in the first place. "For a while now we've been trying to work out how long lived The Crucible's time will be in the ranks of the text available for Year12 and further studies, but we've recently decided that it has years yet left on the shelf. 10 years, possibly more, most likely. Another study we did then showed that students who just read the script had generally lower marks than those who saw it as a play. Those who saw it as a movie got the lowest marks of all, since the movie is completely different from the text in some of the most pivotal parts, and those who acted it out did of course, the best, since they understood it on so many more levels."

At this the five year12 PES Drama students exchanged a smile with their teacher, before returning their attention to the Moderators.

"We want to change this. People rely on the movie too much because they can't be bothered to read. We can't exactly make a new movie though, one closer to the script…"

"So, we have decided to make a touring version of The Crucible. With most of you, as the cast."

It took a while for this to sink in. Behind us there were shrieks of happiness as some of the younger members hugged and slapped high fives, but us five stood there as still as stone whilst an even larger grin spread over our teachers face. From behind I was tackled by another member of the cast and then I broke into a happy smile and hugged him back whilst the rest of the Year12s pilled on. We couldn't believe it. Us? Touring Australia doing The Crucible? My very favourite play I had ever read and known of, and this was at the perfect timing, we were finishing Year12 in a few months and then what? Only one of us five had even applied for a Uni, and the rest of us were just going to work, or travel maybe…and-

"Calm down, calm down…" the moderators were laughing along with us. "We should have given you the bad news first. The only thing is, not all of you can be in it. Your version is slightly different to the script in parts, which is fine and worked well, but if you're going to perform it simply for students to learn the play for their exams and class study, then it has to be exact."

At this we all calmed down a little, but that wasn't any big deal, and it made sense to us all. We had all linked arms, or were holding hands, the whole cast was gathered there now, and the three moderators were already like part of our family now as well, simply by bringing the good news.

"What do you mean by 'not all of us can be in it'?" one of us asked. She was one of us Year12s (one of us main four, the fifth to our group was a student teacher and vaguely our age, so he counted as one of us for most of the time) who had been moderated until just minutes ago, and always liked to question everything down to the last cm before she could be happy (or upset) with something.

"Well, some of your characters are played by two actors and actresses, whereas we don't need that. If we're going to be paying you all to act these characters…" the moderator paused again at our happy squeal at the thought of being actually paid for these roles. "Then we want to get our monies worth out of you. When we have our cast organised there will be one person to each character." At this I exchanged a look with a girl in a year younger than myself, Caitlin, since she and I shared the character Elizabeth Proctor. In our version, she would act one show, then I the next, then she would, then I would and so on. Whilst the other would act, the other would sit on the side of the stage (the cast who wasn't acting on stage at the time were arranged in seats around the edge of the stage, according to whether they were for or against the McCarthyism nature of the underlying-…ignore me, I don't make any sense when I ramble on about the underlying levels of our production, but basically we sat on opposite sides of the stage according to whether we were 'good' or 'bad' and the other Elizabeth Proctor would sit and knit or something. Now, there would only be one of us, how were we going to be able to handle that? What if she got the part- …No. We would not get into that again. I linked arms with her and we turned our attention back to the Moderators.

"How would you organise and decide who gets which part then?" Ashley asked as she was another person who was doubled up with a character. She played Mary Warren and was maybe two years below myself, and she shared the character with the girl who had asked the first question, about how not all of us could be in it.

"Auditions of course." The first moderator said with a knowing grin as we all groaned. We had done more auditions to last us a lifetime at the end of the year before to earn the characters we had now. One of the main reason to as why some of us were sharing a character now was the decision had been too hard for Aunty Lou to make.

"But don't worry about the auditions for now, they won't be held until a few months after everyone's final exam. So concentrate on them first and then we'll be in contact to discuss the finer points of the auditions." I exchanged a look with the male lead, Matty. We knew of how harsh and personal some people could get when their personal subject was overshadowed by another. Other courses wouldn't be happy to know everyone here now only cared about their Drama. There had probably been a lot of debate to as whether we could be told about this before our final exams at all, since they would guess we would all probably focus on our auditions instead of our final exams now. I knew at least that I would, especially since I really wasn't planning to go to Uni or not. I would be practising my parts over and over again so I would win the part of Elizabeth Proctor fully and completely, all to myself because deep down, I knew I wasn't good enough for this touring version. By the look on Caitlin's face though, I knew she had the same plan. She was in the year below me, so she didn't have to exactly worry about Year12 exams, which were quite different from Year11 exams. Ours were two hours longer for example, each and every one of them.

"Will it be open auditions? Can we go for a part we didn't have before?" Taysa asked, an annoying, obsessive girl in a younger year who had the part of Goody Putnam. I could tell she wanted my part; she had auditioned for it in the first round auditions at the end of the year before for the fact she wanted nothing more than to cosy up to Matty, the male lead.

"No." Aunty Lou cut in, thankfully. "Only those under review will go through auditioned."

"Only those who are doubled up on a part, and no, you should stick with the part you have here…unless you really want to try for a different." She exchanged an uneasy look as if she just realised this could and probably would get a whole lot messier than it should have. "If you feel like you have to though…go for it." One of the moderators reiterated. "Also…to be truthful a few people will also have to audition since we're not quite happy with their standard of acting…they might be replaced with the other Crucible cast from one of the schools down south, but don't worry!" she tried to reassure us, as most of our faces seemed to give away out feelings of horror at the thought that we might not be good enough. "There's only about three…perhaps five of you, who are in that group. Also, there aren't too many other performances of this recently so there's not much competition. Most of the parts we won't choose from here are smaller characters, but we'll get to that at a later date. Your teacher can explain it all to you in length. Our plane leaves in a few hours, so we really have to go, but we'll be in touch…once again, very good job, all of you."

And with that, the three moderators left, our Aunty Lou walking them out.

"My god…" I whispered, and was swept up into a hug by my co actor and script husband, and was quickly joined by Caitlin, my co Elizabeth and Andrew, who played Judge Danforth. Who could be what you would call my illegal boyfriend, I guess, he was also the student teacher, but I'll get to that later.

"We're going to be famous!"

I don't even remember who said that, but at the time I remember thinking, hang on, no way could this even be possible. Us? Well, the 'us' which was eventually chosen? Tour Australia acting out The Crucible for Year12 English and/or Drama students and anyone else who was studying The Crucible for whichever reason? Live a life of just acting?

"Would we actually get paid?" Kieran asked in my ear, sounding disbelieving. So he was having the same kind of thoughts as I was, about the future already before we even changed out of our costumes and got back to our classes. I had barely even had lunch yet!

"It's not about the money." Andrew and I snapped back, rolling our eyes. It was about the acting. But right now, life was about classes, and we had to get back to them. Our moderated performance had taken place halfway through the day after another short rehearsal. We had been excused from classes to be a part of it, and now, most of the cast could go home since it was the end of the typical day of classes. As a year12 student though, I now had an after school class of Design Practical, and I had to get to it, I was already about 10 minutes late and I still had to get out of my costume and try to calm my hair down and get the stage makeup off. Also, I wouldn't say no to something to eat. Caitlin had Theory of Knowledge with one or two of the other members of the cast, Alysha had a music class, Matty usually had sports but instead was coming with me to Design so he could get a lift home with another guy called Matty (who we usually called Smeagol instead to avoid confusion) and Andrew was coming with us to Design as well since he was helping me with my Practical. We were a family, we had grown to be one, and you practically had to when you almost lived together for more than half a year. Every Saturday and Sunday at least, every week we would meet from 8am until 5pm, and that was the schedule at the very least. Since we were doing the play for our Year12 Drama as well (that's why we had just performed it as a Moderated piece after all) we usually rehearsed it in class we well, and then quite often we would have extra meets during lunch times or after school for smaller groups or pairs. We did the play as a Whole School production, but it had grown to become the Year12 piece, and most year11s or Year10s who were apart of it got marked for it as well in the end.

And now, perhaps they were breaking us apart. Scraping those who weren't so good, and keeping the rest. Flying us around the country and-

…maybe I should just start from the very, very start, and go on from there. I expect you're all very, very confused right about now.