Chapter 524 (2/2)

There was a method that he took great interest in lately, the ‘internalization of the character’. It was a way of acting after bringing the traits of the character being acted inside of the actor. It was slightly different from method acting.

Method acting was an act of becoming the character itself. In order to sympathize and feel the same emotions as the fictional character, the actor would call out a similar experience or emotion he or she had in the past in order to try and understand the character as much as possible. If they didn’t have such experiences or emotions, they would expose themselves to similar situations in order to do that. As a result, the actor would perfectly imitate the character and taking a step further, would become that character.

Maybe these two were just two different stages in acting, or they might be two different formats altogether. Discussing which one was better was meaningless, it was much wiser to think about which method fit the actor more.

Maru was thinking about how to efficiently use his two ‘selves’ inside him.

The self that fulfilled the acting instinct tended to lean towards becoming the character. That self would reach a stage where he forgot about himself to reach a state of selflessness in order to imitate the character to the limits. If it was not possible to imitate and the expressivity of acting was immature, that self would then burst out all the emotions, forgetting that he was acting and would throw everything out there. The act he did with Joohyun was similar to this. Since he couldn’t dig deeper into a character who became a murderer at a young age, he instantly clashed a bunch of emotions together. Putting it simply, he was relying on Joohyun.

Unlike that, the self that watched everything from a step behind chose not to become the character itself, but to bring the character into him. He tried to understand the traits of that character and analyze them to act out the movements that the character is most likely to take in certain situations. It was clearly different from becoming the character itself. When he looked into it, he found that this was a more traditional way of acting. What he did in Twilight Struggles was similar to this. He dug into the character, but ‘Han Maru’ was at the core of that character.

It did not change the fact that both of them required some basic studying. There wasn’t any act that could ‘just be done’. Acting required expressing what an actor knew, or felt before after all.

“Uhm, seonbae-nim.”

Maru raised his head when he heard a voice call out to him. There was a junior standing in front of him. He had fallen into contemplation while staring at the script without even realizing that someone was in front of him. That junior laughed foolishly before saying that they should eat some snacks. Looks like it was break time. He had a look at the clock. The hour hand was on 12.

‘I was completely out of it, huh.’

He walked over to where everyone else was sitting.

Daemyung made some room for him. Maru sat in that gap. He saw a first year junior smile awkwardly at him from next to him. He had never talked to this person before.

Maru looked at the thirty-two people sitting in a circle. He realized that he had never talked to the first year students. During weekdays when he didn’t have a shoot, he was always making props in the corner, and during weekends, there weren’t any opportunities to talk to them properly since he had shoots. It would be great if the senior-junior relationships were good, but he didn’t feel the need to force himself to try and get close to them, so he didn’t talk to them. Due to this, it seemed that a lot of juniors were awkward with him here.

‘Even I would be awkward if I was in their shoes.’

He was always by himself, and whenever he talked, he was talking to the instructor, so there was no way the distance between them could shrink. Maru picked up some snacks and gave them to the junior sitting next to him, and he flinched when he saw that junior lower his head as he received those snacks with both of his hands. Was he that difficult to deal with?

Fortunately, they were on close terms with the other seniors. Bangjoo seemed to be called ‘hyung-nim’ among the first year boys. For reference, the ‘big hyung-nim’ was Dowook. For some reason, this felt like a mafia organization.[1]

This should be fine. Since he decided to put some distance, this was suitable. It wasn’t like he was going to meet them a lot either.

“Who’s going to be the main character for the film?”

One of the juniors asked. Since the acting club didn’t have any of those strict relationships between seniors and juniors, none of them held back from speaking.

“The film production club will be here in just a bit. We’re going to talk about it then. Though, it’ll probably be Maru.”

“Ah, Maru seonbae-nim, huh.”

Maru looked at the eyes that all looked at him. Some of them had the ‘I see’ eyes, while others questioned ‘why’. Miso declared that she would give her full support as long as they did well. They were probably all greedy for results. Maru in fact welcomed the challenging eyes. It would be no fun if he just snapped their spirits just because he was the senior.

“They’ll probably hold something like an audition, right?”

Another junior asked. His face was even smaller than Aram’s. Oh, how handsome. Maru realized once again that he had zero interest in the new members this year.

“Looks like everyone wants to do it.”

They all replied ‘yes’ as though they were waiting for that line. Daemyung seemed a little surprised by their boldness.

“I’m asking just in case, but who wants to be the main character here?”

An actor always had to be bold - Miso said this all the time, and the juniors all kept those words close. Maru looked at the boys that raised their hands immediately. Out of the seventeen boys here, more than half - eleven of them - raised their hand. A lot of girls also raised their hands as well. Unfortunately though, the main character for this play was a boy. The girls probably raised their hands since they didn’t know about the script, but in any case, they were really eager to do it.

“This was unexpected.”

Although he said those words, Daemyung was smiling in satisfaction. Maru grinned at some of the juniors that looked at him before eating some snacks. He wasn’t overly eager to do this role, but since this was a great opportunity to create a film on equal footing as the director, he did not plan to concede so easily. Of course, if there was someone good, he would gladly hand it over. Having not enough skill in this field of work meant being pushed to a supporting role, or even a minor role.

“Han Maru, are you sure you can keep that main character role?” Dowook giggled as he said those words.

Maru shrugged and looked at the first year students sitting on the other side. There was a boy that was staring holes into him. He didn’t know the boy’s name. He looked like he wanted to duel fair and square or something, so Maru felt quite perplexed.

“Daemyung.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s that guy’s name?”

“Him?”

Daemyung shortly uttered ‘ah’ before speaking,

“Ahn Chihwan. He’s good looking isn’t he?”

“Ah, Chihwan, huh.”

“You should learn their names at least.”

“Yeah. I really should.”

“But Chihwan’s really staring at you. Maybe he considers you a rival?”

“Hey, I already lost to him in the appearance area. If he’s good at acting as well, I’m gonna be sad.”

“There you go, joking again.”

Maru looked at Chihwan. When he met eyes, that boy became startled before bowing. He was very tall and good looking, but his actions were pretty cute. He was the type that would be popular with the girls.

‘He said he wants to play the main character too, huh.’

Maru nodded and looked away.

[1] Korean mafia call their boss ‘hyung-nim’. So you can see it as the first years are calling those two ‘boss’ and ‘big boss’.