Chapter 2 Part 7: When Opportunity Knocks

The play The Scarred Mountain Lodge finally sold out on its eighth performance.
Granted, it was only fifty seats, but the last time Theater Mae had seen a sellout was a full six years ago—before the COVID era.
After so long, seeing a completely filled audience made the director, the playwright, and the actors all beam with smiles.

But did that mean the actors’ lives suddenly changed in some dramatic way?
Not at all.

Just because a fifty-seat small theater was sold out didn’t mean the impoverished lives of theater actors suddenly improved.
At most, it simply meant they felt a little more energized, and found greater satisfaction in acting as they watched the audience’s reactions.

Weekday performances were usually scheduled for 7:30 or 8:00 p.m., taking into account the time it took office workers to get to Daehangno after work.
Actors typically arrived by 4:00 p.m., finished makeup and dinner by 5:00, and began rehearsals at 5:30.

Today as well, after finishing his amusement park part-time job and arriving at the practice room a bit earlier than the others, Yejun sat on the floor stretching, lost in thought.

‘I need to research Pierrot more.’

Pierrot did not speak.
Whether he couldn’t speak or deliberately chose not to was unclear, but either way, conversation was impossible, so one could only infer things based on what had happened so far.

Let’s list what he had learned up to now.

To meet Pierrot, one needed Pierrot makeup and a script, or a book related to acting.
The makeup only needed to be on the face, and the location didn’t matter.

From the second meeting onward, Pierrot offered the role of a different character from the script.

For a play lasting one hour and forty minutes, Pierrot’s rehearsal took five minutes of real-world time.

There was about a five percent chance that Pierrot would send him to the Doll Room.

Exactly four pieces of information.
Even these weren’t completely certain.

Spreading his legs wide and bending at the waist, Yejun rested his right cheek against the floor as he stretched his joints and sank deeper into thought.

‘The Pierrot makeup, too.
I need to confirm whether it has to be drawn directly on my face, or if wearing a Pierrot mask would work.
At least from last time’s test, it seems gloves aren’t necessary.’

In movies and dramas—and even on stage—there were times when the playwright revised the script on-site.
The changes to dialogue weren’t drastic, so memorizing them wasn’t difficult, but there was inevitably a difference in quality compared to performing lines he had already experienced firsthand through Pierrot’s rehearsal.

Of course, this was a solvable problem.
Since the play ran four times a week, even if one performance suffered slightly after a script change, rehearsing the revised lines repeatedly at home would make the next performance perfect.

If this problem could be solved with a Pierrot mask, rehearsals could be done anywhere, in just five minutes.
Exactly five minutes.
Five minutes to rehearse the entire play.

‘I have to confirm this.’

The second point.
Only after meeting Pierrot more than once with the same script could he choose a different role.

Since he had only experimented with a single script so far, he didn’t know whether the first experience was always set as the lead role.
If that were the case, then even for works where he was cast as a supporting role, the first rehearsal would have to be experienced as the lead.

‘That’s fine.
Actors have to analyze scripts anyway.
Experiencing the entire play as the lead helps grasp the overall flow and improves the depth of analysis.’

That had been true this time as well.
Having experienced all four villains except for the vengeful spirit character, Yejun now understood the play better than any of the other actors.

You could tell by the fact that, during full rehearsals, while other actors received various pieces of advice from the playwright and director, he received almost nothing but praise.

The third point.
Experiencing a single play required five minutes of real-world time.

In one hour, that meant he could rehearse the entire play twelve times.
Of course, simply experiencing it didn’t automatically make his acting better—separate practice was still necessary—but repeated rehearsal experiences, piling up dozens of times, gradually solved that issue.

The fourth point.
There was a five percent chance that Pierrot would send him to the Doll Room.

Ten thousand vocalization exercises.
It was an unbearably tedious and boring form of training—but the effect was undeniable.

During his nine years as an aspiring actor, he had occasionally been criticized for his vocalization.
Of course, Dialogue Entertainment focused more on casting for commercial films and TV dramas than theater, so he didn’t receive that criticism often—but those occasional remarks had now turned into praise.

What was truly fortunate was that at first, the probability of being sent to the Doll Room had been over twenty percent.
Gradually, that probability had decreased.

However, there was one suspicious detail.
The text displayed above the Pierrot doll.

‘Pierrot’s Tutorial Level 1.’

If there was a Level 1, that meant there might also be Levels 2 or 3.
Currently, he spent about seven days in real time completing ten thousand vocal exercises—but if he reached another level, adaptation issues might trap him there for an even longer period.

‘There’s still so much information to uncover.’

There was one issue that needed to be resolved first.

An actor was a salesperson selling the product that was themselves.
Even mid-career actors constantly went to auditions—it was the fate of those who chose this profession.

Until one reached the level of a top-tier actor, where production companies actively requested casting, auditions were the only way to appeal one’s charm.

The problem was that production companies never provided full scripts to auditioning actors.

‘Would it be possible to get Pierrot’s rehearsal with only part of a script—just a few fragmented lines?’

Testing with lines from existing films or dramas would be meaningless.
Since the entire story was already known, even if Pierrot provided a partial rehearsal, it could simply be because the whole narrative was already established.
Assuming that this meant unreleased or incomplete scripts were also possible would be premature.

At that moment, a voice broke his concentration.

“Whoa, what are you, an octopus or a squid?
What’s wrong with your body?”

Yejun lifted his head from the floor, where he had been stretched out like a taekwondo athlete with his face pressed flat.
Jeonghwan-hyung, who had arrived together after their part-time jobs but said he was stopping by the restroom first, had come in a bit later.

Come to think of it, he must have been thinking for too long.
Stretching was essential for someone who used their body, but too much could have the opposite effect.

As he stood up, a slight pain shot through his pelvis.
If Jeonghwan-hyung hadn’t interrupted him, he might have strained his joints while lost in thought.

Jeonghwan-hyung, wiping his hands briskly with a towel from the practice room, spoke.

“I ran into Younghwan upstairs.
He said today’s sold out again.
Man, how many sellouts is that now?”

“Three.”

The Scarred Mountain Lodge ran for three months.
They were already a third of the way through.

Three sellouts weren’t particularly impressive numbers.
But since it was their first full house in a long time after COVID, the other actors were buzzing with excitement.

Jeonghwan-hyung nodded, then suddenly clicked his tongue and asked,

“You got your paycheck, right?”

“…..”

Paycheck.
Yes, it had been deposited today.

Whether theater actors were paid per performance or monthly, the money was usually distributed in three to five installments over the contract period.

As rookies in a small theater troupe, Jeonghwan and Yejun earned 30,000 won per performance.
With four performances a week, that was 120,000 won per week.

Sixteen performances a month.
By simple calculation, that should be 480,000 won—but the problem was the rehearsal period.

Assuming forty-eight performances over three months, that came to 1.44 million won.
Dividing by three would make sense, but since one month was spent rehearsing, it was actually divided by four.
In other words, 1.44 million won spread across four months.

That meant 360,000 won per month.
After deducting the 3.3% withholding tax—11,880 won—the monthly pay came to 348,120 won.
That was what both Jeonghwan and he received.

There were rumors of places that paid even during rehearsals, but Jeonghwan-hyung said he’d never met anyone who actually experienced it.
In South Korea, the only profession with a lower annual income than a nun was that of a theater actor.

Jeonghwan-hyung pulled over a chair and sat down.

“You’re only doing one part-time job, right?”

“Yes.”

From the amusement park, he earned about 1.3 million won a month—roughly 1.25 million after deductions.
Adding about 340,000 won from theater income brought the total to just under 1.6 million won.

It wasn’t comfortable, but it was manageable.
Back when he belonged to a major agency that pushed more practice instead of personal part-time jobs, he had earned even less.

“You do a few more, right?”

“Yeah.
No fixed gigs—mostly day labor jobs here and there.”

Yejun lived alone, but this hyung had a family to support.
His wife helped by selling kimbap they prepared together the night before, early in the morning.
Somehow, they managed to get by.

But living wasn’t just about having enough money to eat this month.
What kept people going was hope.
Many theater actors lacked even that.

Jeonghwan-hyung clicked his tongue and said,

“I talked to a hyung I used to know yesterday.
He moved into musicals.
He’s a pretty good singer.”

“Musicals pay better than plays, right?”

“Usually, yeah.
For rookies, it’s about 50,000 to 100,000 won per show.”

Musical performance fees varied widely.
Even mid-career actors often earned 500,000 to 1 million won—but the problem was that large musicals rotated two or more actors per role.
Since they didn’t perform every show, even mid-career actors couldn’t live stably.

Jeonghwan-hyung continued.

“He said an idol actor who can’t act for shit got the lead role this time, and his fee is 100 million won per performance.
One hundred million.”

“…..”

Honestly, it didn’t feel bitter.
They weren’t paid that much because they could act, but because bringing them in created ticket power.

No matter how skilled an actor was, if they lacked name recognition, audiences wouldn’t come.
It was unavoidable.

Jeonghwan-hyung scratched his head and said,

“Do you think our day will ever come?
Haha, look at me—thinking about money before acting.
Guess I’ve still got a long way to go.”

This industry still clung to the nonsense idea that an actor needed to be hungry to act well.
That was the reality of this world.

Yejun shook his head.

“Actors who say money doesn’t matter are all lying.
You need to earn enough to survive before you can say that.
If you can’t even do that, of course you’ll be sensitive about money, hyung.
That’s not wrong.”

Jeonghwan-hyung smiled gently.

“That actually makes me feel better.”

He really was a good person.
Someone who did his best, both as an actor and as the head of a household.

Yejun sincerely hoped things would work out for him.
The day would surely come when they performed not in a fifty-seat theater, but a five-hundred-seat one.
For him—and for me.

Rubbing his palms together, Jeonghwan-hyung said,

“I’m doing a profile tour this week.
Want to come with me?”

“Which area?”

“Around film companies.
Maybe six places on Saturday?”

“Sounds good.
Let’s go together.”

When he belonged to an agency, the company handled things like this.
Without one, you had to run around yourself.

No actor landed roles by sending out a few profiles and waiting.
You had to visit a hundred, two hundred places just to get a single call back.
Even then, it was usually just an audition offer—but opportunity only came to those who moved.

He planned to review his profile again once he got home.

‘I don’t know why this opportunity came to me,
but this time, I’ll definitely grab it.’

Just then, Younghwan’s energetic shout echoed as he ran up the stairs.

“Hyungs!
Rehearsal’s starting!
Hurry down!”

Sold out again today.
Only a fifty-seat theater, but it wouldn’t be long before they went to meet the audience who had filled every seat of the space they could offer.

Yejun slapped both cheeks with his palms, focusing his mind, and headed down to the underground theater.

Opportunity only reaches out its hand to those who are prepared.
As Yejun poured all his attention into the performance at hand, the unknown presence called opportunity slowly began to move toward him.