She smiles politely, but I can tell she hates me on a soul level. I completely understand.

My knees feel weak. I haven’t been on a stage in a long, long time and screen acting is completely different.

The scene begins with a short monologue from him, and then, as Isabel, I say under my breath, “There was another way. You didn’t take it.”

I choose to sit at the table rather than stand, adding dynamics to the scene. Making my character look more powerful in her certainty and stability and his character, Jason, looming and desperate.

He steps toward me, putting a hand on his chest and saying, “You think this is easy for me?”

Instead of shivering and stuttering, I smile up at him. It disarms the actor and he looks unseated.

“No, I don’t,” I say coolly, imbuing a subtext that Isabel thinks Jason is too stupid to find anything easy. I wait until he’s about to speak, thinking I’ve forgotten my line, then I say, “I—”

It unseats him again. “Y-you think I like being this kind of man?”

There’s a nervousness there now. It’s better.

“Of course not.” I drop my chin. I am saying: Who would want to be a man like you?

The scene ends as he does some stage business, getting a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and chugging it before storming off. But this time he’s anxious; he almost walks the wrong way off the stage. It plays.

It’s kind of awful dialogue. Exactly the sort of show that makes outsiders hate drama kids: acting for actors and no one else.

The room erupts in applause, and Professor Lehman stands. “Brava, Meg! Brava!”

I laugh a little at the use of brava. I’ve missed the silliness, the pretension of theatre.

I get off the stage feeling strangely energized. I end up staying another hour as they run the scene again and again, trying to nail it. Maureen lies at my feet, seemingly never unhappy with where she is.

I sit in the audience with the other students and watch as they take notes and try, hard, to break through to the other side. To try to find the reality of the story.

When they run it the last time, the girl playing Isabel does better than I did. I genuinely get chills when she smiles.

This is why I love acting. Because it’s playing. It’s learning. It’s on-the-spot energy that changes and evolves.

I thank Professor Lehman, who thanks me back, and then I slip out before the class is over so I don’t end up in a conversation I don’t know how to have with someone who thinks she knows me.