Audrey was determined not to let herself get too nervous.
Now that their shop had just closed for the day and she had some time before needing to be at the theatre to audition, she was using that time to go through the script again. Feeling prepared helped to ease her worries.
It was tempting to get frazzled over the idea of standing in front of other people and opening herself up to judgement. Life on Skid Row had given her a lot of practice with worrying about everyone else's judgements about her. But so far, everyone they'd met here was a lot nicer than most of the people back in their old city. Even if it turned out she wasn't nearly as talented as anyone else, surely no one was going to yell at her, or laugh her out of the room. She was not going to let her imagination run away with worst case scenarios the way it once might have.
"Do you know who you'd like to play?"
Audrey looked up when she heard Seymour's voice, and she flipped to the page towards the front with a list of the characters so she could look over it again.
"You don't really get to pick." She said with a shrug that hopefully looked nonchalant. "I guess you can mention wanting to try out for a certain character, but once you've sung your song and read through some lines, you just have to wait and see who they decide you'll play."
"But is there anyone you're hoping for?"
Audrey didn't answer right away, taking her time to read as she tried to figure out how to answer.
She had never gotten a chance to see Guys and Dolls before, but she thought it looked interesting. It was set in a seedier part of New York, so at least that would be familiar enough. At least she wouldn't need to worry about doing an accent, not like the people they had just seen in My Fair Lady. And she could certainly relate to being around a lot of people who seemed to be up to no good. But unlike Skid Row, even the people who weren't too concerned with being on the right side of the law were mostly harmless enough. Some of them even proved to be pretty nice people in the end. That was one of the things she liked about fiction. She found it comforting when things weren't quite as rough around the edges as they could get in real life.
"Well…" She said slowly, her thumb idly tracing over the page. "The main female role is this character named Sarah. She works in a mission trying to help people turn their lives around, and then she and one of the gamblers start to fall in love."
"Are you hoping to play her?" Seymour asked.
Audrey shook her head, quickly shutting the script again. "It's my first time doing something like this. I'm really not expecting to get cast as a lead or anything. I'll probably just end up a background character, and that's if I even get in at all."
"I'm sure you'll get in. And I bet you've at least got a shot at something more than the background." Seymour attempted to encourage her. He thought Audrey had the most beautiful voice he'd ever heard, and he had never met anyone he found easier to like than her. While he didn't know much about showbusiness, he found it hard to imagine why anyone wouldn't want to choose her.
Audrey smiled faintly. She wasn't sure if she would ever be able to think of herself as highly as he did. She had managed to convince herself that being cast at all wasn't such a long shot that auditioning was a pointless waste of time. But it was still another matter trying to think of herself as leading lady material. She'd spent too much of her life being told that she wasn't interesting, and she was too squeaky, and all manner of other insults that had done an effective job of eroding her self-confidence. But in the interest of still trying not to get too nervous, she did her best to believe him.
She just had to remember that she was doing this to enjoy herself. This was nothing high-stakes enough to panic over. She was only trying out for some community theatre. The absolute worst thing that could happen would be not getting into the show. Which would be a bit of a disappointment, but the world wouldn't end. And Seymour had promised that as soon as her audition was over, they would go out for dinner together. Which would be exactly what she needed, because at that point there would be nothing left to do besides wait a few days until they put up the cast list, and enjoying time with him would definitely be the best way to keep herself from spending those few days worrying about whether or not she had been good enough.