The Callback
Two best friends auditioned for the same role. One of them just got the callback.
Good for: acting class, drama audition, two actors
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A shared apartment kitchen, late evening. MAYA has just seen the email. DEV is doing the dishes and has not. They have been best friends since drama school, and this is the first time they have wanted the same thing.
Characters
- MAYA - Late 20s. Got the callback. Wishes she could be purely happy about it.
Voiced by Kore · Premium voice
- DEV - Late 20s. Did not get the callback. Working very hard to be a good friend right now.
Voiced by Charon · Premium voice
The Scene
DEV
You've checked your phone eleven times since dinner. Either they emailed or you've got a new boyfriend.
MAYA
(quiet)
Dev.
DEV
Oh. It came.
MAYA
I got a callback. Thursday. It's between me and two others.
DEV
That's great. Maya, that's really great.
MAYA
You don't have to do that.
DEV
Do what? Be happy for you? I'm being happy for you. This is my happy voice.
MAYA
They kept you in the room forty minutes. They kept me in there for ten.
DEV
Yeah, well. Maybe they just liked watching me fail for longer.
MAYA
I almost didn't tell you tonight. I sat in the bathroom and practiced saying it like it didn't matter.
DEV
That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. You practiced. For me.
MAYA
Ten years, Dev. Ten years of splitting rent and running lines at two in the morning. I'm not losing that over one part.
DEV
It's not one part, though. It's that it's never me. You know that feeling when the elevator doors close and you were almost inside?
MAYA
Yes. I know exactly. I watched you book three national commercials the year I couldn't get a callback for a cough syrup ad.
DEV
(a beat, then almost smiling)
That was a very good cough syrup ad. You would have hated it.
MAYA
I would have been magnificent in it.
DEV
Go get the part, Maya. And when you're famous, tell them your roommate taught you everything.
MAYA
Deal. Now dry your hands, we're running my sides. You're reading the detective.
Original scene written for the Line Echo scene library. Free to perform in classes, auditions, and self-tapes.
lineecho.app/scenes/the-callback
How to play this scene
The beats
- Banter hides the dread until Maya's single "Dev." tips it, and the joke drains out of him on "Oh. It came."
- Dev performs support and both of them know it: "This is my happy voice" is the crack showing.
- The real wound surfaces on "It's that it's never me" - the fight is about years of near-misses, not one part.
- They repair through their own shared language: "Now dry your hands, we're running my sides" pulls them back to normal.
Playing it
Maya wants to keep the friendship intact more than she wants the win, and Dev wants to be a good friend while the envy leaks out anyway. Both are protecting the same ten years from opposite sides. The scene lives in the subtext, because neither says the true thing directly for most of it, so the effort of not-saying is what you play.
Common mistakes
- Playing Dev as simply bitter instead of someone working hard to be generous.
- Making Maya apologetic and small; she is fierce about the friendship in "Ten years, Dev."
- Dropping the humor, which is how these two survive, so the affection underneath disappears.
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