Chapter 18 Audition
This is a pure monologue, the most tragic and one of the most challenging scenes in the later part of the whole play.
It does not have heart-wrenching cries, nor the passion of war and battle.
What it needs is the strength to ignite the last flame in the dead silence of despair.
It is the young shoulders that are determined to carry the weight of the entire country when the mountains and rivers are crumbling.
Ji Guanyu's heart sank to the bottom in an instant.
It’s not that Ji Guanyu looks down on his niece, but since his niece debuted, she has only played small love stories, and she has never played this kind of role before.
Ji Qingyao's face turned pale in an instant.
She never expected that her uncle's luck was so 'good' that he accurately picked the scene where she was least confident.
But the arrow is on the string and must be shot.
Under the scrutiny of everyone, Ji Qingyao gritted her teeth and stood in the center of the vacated space.
She took a deep breath, tried to calm herself down, straightened her back, and her eyes instantly became sharp.
"Everyone!" she began, her voice deliberately raised, with a mock sonority, "My royal brother has passed away in the southern border, and the barbarian army is about to arrive at the city. Our Great Yan is in danger of extinction!"
She has a good command of line delivery, with clear and powerful pronunciation.
His eyes also tried hard to scan the people in front of him, as if he was really reviewing thousands of troops.
But...that's all.
Wang Xing watched her performance, his brows furrowed tighter and tighter, and finally he sighed almost inaudibly.
This is totally wrong.
Ji Qingyao plays the role of a queen who is accustomed to power and is giving a lecture, rather than a young princess who has just lost all her support and is pushed to a dead end by fate.
Her performance has form but no soul.
“…I am willing to sacrifice my blood to my mountains and rivers!”
After reciting the last line, Ji Qingyao finished with force, striking a pose that she thought was extremely beautiful, with a teardrop squeezed out of the corner of her eye at just the right moment.
After the performance, the conference room was filled with dead silence.
In the awkward silence, Ji Guanyu closed his eyes in despair.
He could already foresee how his elder brother would teach him a lesson tonight.
"It's your turn, Shi Qing." Zhou Yuanwei propped up his head and spoke with interest.
He wanted to see how much of a surprise this woman who had infatuated his nephew could bring him.
Shi Qing stood there quietly, lowering her eyes slightly.
A few seconds later, when she raised her head again, her entire aura had changed.
The feeling belonging to Shi Qing disappeared. Her shoulders were no longer straight, but slightly collapsed, with a kind of fatigue and fragility after long-term fear, and her whole body was dead silent after being completely enveloped by great grief.
She didn't look at anyone, her gaze seemed to penetrate the wall of the conference room and fall on the distant and bloody city wall.
"Everyone..."
She spoke.
The voice was not loud, even a little hoarse, with a hint of uncontrollable trembling in the ending tone.
This slight tremor instantly pierced the defenses of everyone present.
This is not acting.
This was the wail of the little princess who had just lost her last relative in the world and was pushed into the court by a group of ministers with ulterior motives. She was using all her strength to make such a cry.
"My royal brother...died in southern border." Her voice paused, her eyes quickly turned red, tears gathered in them, but she stubbornly refused to let a single tear fall.
That kind of extreme forbearance and repression can tear people's hearts more than crying loudly.
"The iron hoofs of the southern border are about to reach the outside of the city."
Her hands unconsciously clenched the corners of her clothes, and her knuckles turned a tragic white from excessive force.
Everyone at the scene subconsciously held their breath.
"But this is Kyoto! It's the root of Great Yan!" In the silence, her voice suddenly rose, and the hoarse tremor burst out with a fierce determination to perish together with the enemy. "As long as I stand here! As long as you all stand here! Great Yan will not perish!"
She almost screamed out her last sentence with all her might.
"I am willing to sacrifice my blood to my mountains and rivers!"
The moment the words fell, a flame of despair and madness burned in those clear eyes.
What she saw was not the people in the conference room, but the dark mass of enemy troops under the city wall and the thousands of frightened people behind her.
Her tense body was shaking violently, and the tear that had never fallen finally slid down her pale cheek.
At that moment, she was Qi Yue.
Ji Qingyao's face turned pale instantly. She stared blankly at Shi Qing, who seemed to be glowing, her body swaying.
At this moment, she clearly realized that she had lost.
Sheng Han's eyes were already red.
He clenched his fists tightly, his nails digging deep into his palms, his eyes fixed on the thin figure not far away that burst with infinite energy, and his heart ached slightly.
Shi Qing completely brought him into that desperate world, and his heart and eyes were filled with heartache.
"Snap! Snap! Snap!"
Zhou Yuanwei was the first to come out of his emotions, he stood up, clapped vigorously, and admired her. Shi Qing's acting skills were indeed amazing, and he was also lucky enough to have a sign-in treasure thanks to Sheng Han!
The other people in the conference room were also drawn out of the play by the applause and offered appreciative applause.
Wang Xing stood up excitedly, looking at Shi Qing with sparkling eyes: "That's right! It's absolutely right! This is exactly the feeling!"
When he was going through the script, he was worried that the emotional outburst point of this scene would be difficult to grasp and it might take a lot of time to get it right. He didn't expect that Shi Qing could perform so well in such a short time.
He could already imagine what kind of surprise Shi Qing could give him when he faced the ministers on the day of the official filming, with the costumes and makeup ready.
When Shi Qing heard the warm applause, the feeling that belonged to Qi Yue faded from her, and her tense nerves finally relaxed.
He loosened his sweaty palms and slowly exhaled a breath of foul air.
However, just when everyone thought that the result was beyond doubt, Ji Qingyao's unwilling voice rang out again.
Ji Qingyao blushed: "She can act well in a monologue, but she may not be able to act well in a romantic drama."
"Why don't we try some romance, Shenghan?" Ji Qingyao raised her eyebrows.
Sheng Han is notoriously bad at acting in love scenes. Although his mother has always wanted to bring them together, this person is like a blockhead who doesn't understand what people say. However, as his childhood sweetheart, she is confident that she can act better than Shi Qing, who has never met him.
"This..." The excitement on Wang Xing's face froze, and he looked at Sheng Han hesitantly. This was indeed the problem he was most worried about.
As soon as these words were spoken, the flames of gossip were rekindled in the eyes of those present who knew Sheng Han's shortcomings.
Indeed, Sheng Han won the Best Actor award at a young age, but romance scenes are his Achilles' heel, and he has no CP feeling with almost all the actresses he has worked with.
His film "Search", which won him a Grand Slam, cleverly avoided this shortcoming because the emotional line was entirely a monologue of the protagonist.
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