Let’s tear down the fourth wall - Ganghwan said before they began practice. The stage and the audience seats - although these two were physically correlated in space, there was an unspoken wall between the two. The wall that was put up in order to create a reality within reality; to turn a play into another truth - that was the fourth wall.

The actors were able to see the audience. The audience was also able to see the actors. However, there was an invisible wall put up between them. One that allowed both parties to see each other, yet not see each other.

That wall acted like a TV screen. The audience in the audience seats used that wall to separate themselves emotionally since they couldn’t separate themselves physically. They forget about their own reality while watching through that wall, and the actors created their own reality on the other side of that impermeable wall.

“Originally, I thought about doing comedy, but I wanted to hear a more diverse range of stories. A story about all of us, I mean. That’s why I decided to focus on the individuals.”

A black line was drawn on top of the whiteboard. Ganghwan drew a pretty realistic-looking stage. His drawing skills were pretty decent.

“I threw away the topic. This stage will become the audience’s in its entirety.”

Ganghwan put a pointy crown on top of the word ‘audience’.

“The topic of that day will be decided by the member of the audience that comes up on stage. It might be a celebratory story, and it might be a sad story. We just need to follow along and do a short skit and then call someone from the audience to the stage.”

“What if no one volunteers because of embarrassment?” Sooil asked.

“We should prepare safety measures for every play. We’ll scout one person beforehand to come up if no one in the audience is willing to come. That person will be a spy of sorts.”

“It’s all a scheme then!”

“Let’s call it an inevitable part of the play, shall we? A scheme sounds too evil.”

Ganghwan wrote ‘audience first’ on the board.

“You have read the scripts, right? That’s the basic outline. However, this has more elements of improvisation so you’ll need to improve your reflexes. It won’t be good for any of us if we can’t follow along even after a member of the audience comes up.”

After hearing that, Maru asked,

“How are we going to practice then?”

“We’re going to practice the main flow together and then split into different situational contexts. For now, we’ll split it into two big parts, one happy and one sad. The happy part isn’t that difficult, but the problem is the sad part.”

Ganghwan told them to open the script. The three people sitting in front of the whiteboard opened the scripts on their laps.

“I think what’s important in this play is to find out just how far we and the audience can share a pathos together. A play always appeals its strong pathos to the audience. Although people say that the actors communicate with the audience, objectively speaking, the transfer of emotions in a play is one-directional: From the actors to the audience. It is possible for the actors to be influenced by the reactions of the audience, but that does not change the roots of the play. However, it’s a completely different matter for a communicating play like the one we’re doing. It’s bi-directional. We receive the feelings of the audience, and we transfer the emotions back in the form of a play.”

Ganghwan wrote ‘sadness’ in big letters.

“But when it comes to ‘sadness’, there is too much variation. When it comes to happiness, we can just tie everything together and express it. Even if you tie the happiness of winning the lottery and the happiness of having a fulfilling meal, it doesn’t really matter. That’s because, from the perspective of the audience, who are the ones receiving our emotions, they don’t feel much rejection. However, sadness is very picky.”

While Maru nodded, Ganghwan was writing something on the whiteboard. When the marker stopped moving, a new set of words were written on the board.

The death of a lover.

Then he put some space below and wrote: a child that lost 100 won.

After writing the two sentences, Ganghwan turned around.

“Both of these can be classified as ‘sadness’, right? The sadness of losing a lover, and likewise, the sadness of losing money.”

“Yes, I guess we can,” Sooil replied. Ganghwan pointed at Sooil.

“That’s it. That’s the answer. That’s the nuance. ‘I guess we can’. Sooil, what did you mean by that?”

“The intensity of sadness is different between losing a loved one and losing 100 won.”

“Right. That’s what’s picky about sadness. Changing examples, finding someone you love, and picking up a 100 won coin. Both of these can be classified as ‘happiness’, right?”

“Yes.”

“When expressing both of them, would it be strange if I said ‘laughing loudly’?”

“No, it’s not that strange.”

“But that’s not the case with sadness, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Hanna, who was sitting next to the whiteboard, stood up and walked towards the fridge.

“We should get something to drink. Oppa, catch.”

After receiving a drink thrown by Hanna, Maru looked at the board and Ganghwan again. Ganghwan took a sip before speaking,

“Sadness is both inclusive and individualistic. You feel like there’s a clear boundary, but it’s not actually like that. The death of a person and the loss of materials. Putting it like that, the two seem like different kinds of sadness since they’re on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Well, then, from here.”

Ganghwan erased the ‘death of a lover’ and wrote ‘death of a family member’, and then ‘death of a company colleague’ below that.

“Which’s more sad between these two? Ordinarily speaking.”

“It has to be the death of a family member.”

“It’s natural to be more sad about the death of someone comparatively closer to you, right?”

“Yes,” Sooil replied as he put his empty can beside him.

“Then what about this? The death of a company colleague versus the death of a nearby supermarket owner. What if you compare these two?”

“Then I guess the death of a company colleague will feel more sad.”

“Because you’re closer to that person?”

“Yes.”

“Then what about the death of a supermarket owner and the death of a fruit market owner? Under the assumption that you are close to them equally.”

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t it be difficult to say which one’s more sad?”

Ganghwan nodded.

“The farther away the person is from your own fences, the less intense the sadness gets. To use an extreme case, think about the death of a man in some country you don’t know the name of. You wouldn’t even feel anything. It’s always like that. Even if you turn on the TV right now, you’ll see death tolls rising due to something. Some traffic accident killed someone, some fire caused N deaths, someone committed suicide, et cetera. Although they are all ‘deaths’ in context, the sadness we receive is….”

Maru, who received Ganghwan’s gaze, spoke,

“Not that sad at all, actually. You don’t even care.”

“Right. The death of a complete stranger might impact you even less than losing a 100 won coin.”

Ganghwan wrote one word on top of the words he wrote.

“Sympathy. The objective of the play we’re planning to do now is to have the audience sympathize with each other’s sadness. Of course, if the audience decides to tell a story about something good that happened to them, we’ll follow along. We’ll make it sound more cheerful. However, what I’ve always been thinking about when preparing this play is the sadness of each individual.”

“This time, you’re shooting towards the extreme minority again. Well, I guess all you’re interested in is the honest side of mankind and their taboos,” Hanna spoke while sighing.

Maru understood why Hanna sighed. When he didn’t have any money in hand, Ganghwan did all sorts of plays. The story of a man who won the lottery, the story of a dad who suddenly got a child. The story of a jobless man who fell in love.

After filling his wallet with the romantic comedies that work really well in Daehak-ro, he would leave and do really depressing plays as though they were the ones that he really wanted to do. Maru still felt the chills from when he watched a video of Ganghwan’s ‘Human Repayment’. The contents of the play were one thing, but the last scene left an incredibly bad taste in his mouth. It showed the end of a laborer who threw himself off a bridge without any signs of making a comeback, without going through any filters.

The reason that play left a bad taste was not because the main character died, but because it wasn’t even sad, or worth being remembered by someone. That emptiness that didn’t even become a tragedy made him think about a lot of things.

“So that’s why the background is a doctor’s office,” Maru said as he closed the script.

Ganghwan smiled and started erasing the board.

“If it goes well, I think it will become quite controversial for sure, but will it go well?” Sooil asked.

He wasn’t asking whether the play would be good or bad, but whether it would be successful or not. Maru wanted to know that as well. Whatever the play was going to be, this project was started in order to tell the mass public about acting just like the amateur acting class. Although he said that they were going to do happy plays as well, he was practically setting everything up so that the participating audience would tell a sad story, so he wondered if the audience would participate at all. Standing in front of complete strangers and talking about their own honest stories on stage? It might be easier if it was something that everyone could laugh about, but if it was a sad-enough story that that person would have to bite their lips just to talk about it, it wouldn’t be so easy.

Also, acting in tandem with such an audience wouldn’t be so easy either.

“Don’t worry about the results. What matters is doing it.”

At that moment, Hanna muttered from the side.

“Hey, we don’t have a large budget to work with. The people from the association don’t have a huge interest either. The reason we scouted you two was because oppa belongs to JA. Otherwise, he would have handed out pamphlets and be done with it. That’s the reason this play contains all of his desires. He can think with his dick because no one fucking cares.”

Sooil chuckled when Hanna said those words.

Normally he would be shocked when a woman said a word related to a man’s genitals, but Hanna was an exception. He was so used to it that it didn’t feel weird at all.

“Hanna, watch your words. Also, this will work. People these days don’t have a place to talk about their worries. But we’re setting up the stage for them. We’re urging them to talk. People will talk about what they think on the inside. In any case, let’s finish talking about the overall format and talk about the details now.”

* * *

Junmin read some news regarding the entertainment industry on a web portal while drinking some red tea. The top news was about the disbanding of the girl idol group Blue. So it was finally happening.

“Looks like Yellow Star must be having a hard time. It would be good if their agency creaks and they spit out Ahn Joohyun.”

One of the actresses he wanted to recruit for a long time was Ahn Joohyun. He regretted it so much when Yellow Star took her while he was distracted.

Next to that was an article about the president of a production company who disappeared with more than 10 billion won. He sighed when he read about this news. This had brought tremendous losses to him. Leaving aside Geunsoo, Jiseok[1], who was supposed to climb the ranks, had suffered a setback thanks to that. He had picked that movie after rejecting everything else, yet that went up in flames. No one could find the location of the president that committed the scam, so everyone thought that he wasn’t in the country.

Junmin clicked his tongue as he scrolled down. At that moment, an article at the bottom of the screen caught his eyes. It was a short article by a nameless internet journalist. When he clicked on it, there was a familiar face, and a short article was written about it.

-Drama’s renewal of viewing rates. Brought by a young actor?

Han Maru’s face was among the other child actors of other series. The journalist wrote that the moment of Maru’s interrogation was the moment that set the record.

“So he’s doing his worth by himself, huh.”

Junmin faintly smiled as he drank his tea.

[1] Author probably meant to write ‘Sooil’ instead. Jiseok belongs to Yellow Star.