Ayami didn’t know much about her predecessors. She’d never seen their faces, and didn’t even know their names. All they’d left behind were a few ballpoint pens rolling about in a drawer, and a couple of sheets of notepaper bearing scribbled curses directed at no one in particular. She was equally in the dark when it came to the foundation that managed the audio theatre and paid her salary. Contrary to general assumption, she had no personal contacts there – that wasn’t how she’d secured the job. Acting roles had become few and far between for her, to the point where she was even struggling to get parts at her repertory company; eventually, when the company itself had become embroiled in management difficulties, one of her fellow actors had introduced her to this place.
No one had come to meet her on her first visit to the audio theatre, and she hadn’t received any guidance about where she was supposed to go. She’d entered the deserted auditorium and waited until someone appeared – the director. She’d been sitting facing the entrance, but still hadn’t noticed him come in. He seemed to have materialised through a door made of light, which hovered amid the floating dust motes and shafts of sun. The director sat with Ayami on the auditorium’s second flight of stairs, conducted a brief interview, and announced that she was hired.
The auditorium had neither a stage nor a screen. Instead, each ‘performance’ consisted of a pre-recorded script being played to the audience, using the sound equipment. This audience, never very large, sat on the sofas and stairs that had been installed around the auditorium. Accordingly, there were no actors, a title Ayami had relinquished now she was merely a run-of-the-mill office worker, occupied mainly with admin. Besides the auditorium, the theatre building contained a long lobby, a tiny library and, to the rear of the library, the director’s office. Ayami spent most of her time in a corner of the library. Once a day, leading up to the evening performance, she sold tickets at the main entrance – these were extremely cheap, cheaper than a cup of coffee – and just before the start of the performance, she went into the auditorium and briefly introduced the play. The last thing she said was, ‘OK, the play will begin now.’ Very occasionally, someone would find their way to the library and ask to borrow a script or pamphlet of a recording, a collection of plays, an actor’s autobiography, or even the recordings themselves, which were stored on CDs.
Ayami had tidied up all the loose ends of the various tasks assigned to her. She’d added up the ticket sales – not a job that took a great deal of time – checked the library’s stock against the database, and posted the necessary documents to the foundation. All that was left was to lock the theatre door and put the key in the lower postbox. Her wages would be paid for that month, and then no more.
The library phone rang. Ayami took a moment to register that it really was the phone ringing, and not the mysterious radio, before she went over to the desk and answered the call. It was the usual enquiry, about the performance schedule for the coming week.
‘There are no performances next week,’ Ayami said. ‘Today’s was the last one; the audio theatre will be closed permanently from tomorrow.’
‘You’re closing?’ They sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Why hasn’t this been reported in the papers?’
Perhaps it had. But all that would have been dealt with by the foundation’s PR team, and Ayami hadn’t been informed of any such notice being printed. Considering its low audience numbers, the theatre’s closure was hardly as momentous an event as the person who’d telephoned seemed to think. At least, not so momentous as to warrant a mention in the paper.
The audio theatre is closing today, which means that from tomorrow Ayami will be unemployed. Of course, the foundation had made the decision several months ago, so she’d had plenty of time to find a new job. She’d been out of the business too long to get back into acting; in fact, that period in her life now seemed less and less real, especially once she’d recognised that she’d never been much in demand anyway. And then there was the unfortunate fact, only recently made clear to her, that her experience working at the audio theatre would be of absolutely no help in finding another job. This audio theatre, managed by the foundation, was the only one of its kind in Seoul. In other words, there was no job even remotely similar to hers; this was probably the case the world over, never mind just in Seoul. Ayami didn’t have a single qualification to her name, anything that might have impressed a prospective employer. Nothing formally confirming her administrative skills or qualifying her to teach – nothing, in fact, that could even be considered an official document. Yes, she’d gone to law school, but had dropped out before the first term was up, meaning the hoped-for diploma never became a reality. She didn’t even have a driver’s licence.
In the downtime between acting gigs, Ayami had waited tables; unfortunately, this side job had been as much of a flop as her main career. The issue with waitressing was that she looked too tall. On top of that, whenever she took an order her face would wear the kind of expressionless mask more often seen in the theatre, and her movements, gestures, footsteps, all gave the impression of being unusually measured, done for dramatic effect. This apparent awkwardness rubbed off on the customers, and their discomfort was plain whenever Ayami approached their table. Most tried to disguise it by asking how tall she was, and her answer would invariably be met by an exaggerated raising of eyebrows and an insistence on examining the heels of her shoes. She always wore flats, without even the tiny sliver of a heel that most shoe manufacturers choose to add. Ayami’s height was, on paper, nothing unusual, yet she appeared taller than she really was, as though she floated a few inches above the ground, a kind of optical illusion exaggerated during her shifts as a waitress, when the customers were almost always sitting down.
As she herself was keenly aware, Ayami’s body was more suited to physical work than to the kind of customer-facing roles that rely on strong communication skills. Acting onstage, she believed, was a kind of physical work.
Knowing of Ayami’s difficulties in finding a job, the director of the audio theatre had advised her to write a letter to the foundation. Given that her contract was with the theatre itself, a separate establishment, she’d had neither the need nor the opportunity to visit the foundation or meet anyone who worked there. All communication with the foundation went through the director. The only exception had been a couple of brief, dry telephone conversations between Ayami and someone from their art department – and those had only happened in cases of extreme urgency. The director thought Ayami ought to send her CV and a cover letter to the foundation’s HR department. A suitable position might come up within the foundation itself, not right then, of course, but at some point, or else, though this was extremely unlikely, they might choose to invest in another non-profit cultural enterprise, or even end up reopening the audio theatre.
‘You could do worse than get in touch with them,’ the director told her. ‘After all, you know they never advertise for new staff – it’s all done through personal recommendations.’
But Ayami didn’t take his advice. It wasn’t that she didn’t need a job, or that she didn’t like the idea of working at the foundation. Though the director hadn’t told her this in as many words, Ayami was aware that he himself had not been able to secure another job; at least, not one with the appropriate salary and status. If it had truly been the case that the foundation felt benevolent towards them, or that such feelings might be elicited by a mere letter, then the director would hardly have been experiencing such difficulties. And if the foundation wasn’t willing to help him, then there wasn’t much hope for Ayami. The director had received a top-class education, held a degree from a foreign university, and Ayami could see he had intelligence to spare. The only black mark on his CV, if there was one, seemed to be his time at the audio theatre, a non-profit enterprise where he’d commanded a staff of one.