I'm an Unknown Actress, But Everyone Knows Me

Srrk-.

Genre: Black Comedy

Jinju is twenty-three, about to graduate from college, and supposed to be preparing for employment. Instead, she keeps getting rejected from every internship she applies to. While her friends stack up their specs, she’s seized by the anxiety that she might be the only one stuck in place forever.

And yet, whenever Jinju asks her friends something, they just laugh and run away for some reason...

It’s a healing play that comforts anxious, clumsy youth—yet wrapped in black comedy. A topic perfectly suited for Daehakro.

Myeong Jeha picked up the character introduction booklet placed beside him.

Jin Jinju (23, graduating senior)

“How do you know that? There’s nowhere that tells you!”

A college student preparing for employment. She knocks on every door to become an intern, only to fail every time. Gradually, she begins to feel distance growing between herself and her friends. A character who possesses both naïveté in trying to adapt to society and a sharp, cutting sensitivity at the same time. She suffers daily from an inexplicable sense of anxiety.

Assistant Kim (assistant at the intern academy)

“In an information age, it’s the ones who fall behind who are at fault.”

An assistant who hates many things, but hates questions most of all. He believes only those who keep their mouths shut instead of saying useless things and properly do ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) their share deserve to be treated as human beings.

All humans are parts of society, and only when everyone can pull their own weight without relying on others does the world finally function properly—that’s what he believes.

Coach Lee (instructor at the intern academy)

“Do your one person’s share, your one person’s share!”

Neat attire, sharp speech. A ‘life mentor’ of this era who imparts the ‘skills’ of social life. He deftly delivers lessons into Jinju’s life. It is his destiny to make every human in this world properly do their one person’s share.

“Once the Hallyu ban hits, the early phase will be chaotic.”

The timing was insanely good. As Myeong Jeha gauged how much result Han Yeoreum could draw out of Jin Jinju in this play, he briefly closed his eyes.

It was hard to predict.

“I don’t really like things like this.”

Even as he said that, his gentle voice carried a strangely lifted excitement.

* * *

I worked up the courage to tell Professor Geum Bitgang that I wanted to take a look around the theater once. Unexpectedly, I was given the chance right away.

“Do you like theater that much?”

Professor Geum Bitgang said she had already made a call, so I could go straight in. It was a theater I couldn’t even dream of entering alone in the past.

‘Unless it was a rental day, it was absolutely impossible....’

With a single phone call, I was allowed to enter by myself. The moment I saw the sign that read Evergreen Art Center, my heart started pounding.

Creak-.

When I pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside, a theater covered entirely in darkness came into view. Thanks to flipping one switch before entering, only a single stage light was illuminated.

“Nothing’s changed here at all....”

I knew everything. It was more familiar than the house I lived in. Memorizing the lighting buttons was only natural.

I slowly stepped forward, one step at a time, toward the stage that seemed to emit light.

“It’s really small.”

Compared to the Taiwanese National Theater where I’d held a fan meeting not long ago, the scale was almost embarrassingly tiny. And yet, in the past, this theater had looked enormous to me.

“So, so big....”

There had never been a moment when I could stand at the center. The place where an unknown Han Yeoreum could stand existed only for a fleeting instant.

“Hoo-.”

As I inhaled, the musty odor unique to an underground theater rushed in all at once. The familiar air pressed heavily against my lungs.

“The smell of damp dust.”

I’d smelled it unbearably often. Right before putting on a show, we’d practice here all night long.

Dawn after dawn of drinking coffee like water. We all dreamed the same dream.

“Hey! Someday, let’s all become really, really famous!”

Even when I worked logistics part-time until my body felt like it would break, even when red-faced drunks pointed fingers at me, even when I worked three part-time jobs a day—I hated that I never came to hate acting.

“I couldn’t leave....”

That was why there was a time when I hated Hyehwa so, so much. I thought, like an idiot, that I’d thrown my entire youth away here. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t reach the stage.

“I didn’t want to come....”

Clenching my teeth with the thought that I had to succeed. I couldn’t tell anyone, but I desperately wanted to succeed with this stage on the line.

I wanted to be acknowledged as someone who could stand here.

By myself.

“...In the end, I came.”

Actually, that was a lie.

I wanted to come so badly.

“I really came....”

I gently brushed the stage with my fingertips. The cold, solid floor responded beneath my touch. It felt as though my heart was echoing through my fingertips. Every single cell in my body seemed to be running wild.

Now, I can stand at the center.

Just that thought made my chest burn hot. On the poster, on the flyers, in the program book—Han Yeoreum’s name would be engraved on all of them.

An empty small theater. I kept brushing the stage with my palm for a very long time.

* * *

“What’s with her?”

Three people peered through the slightly open door at Han Yeoreum’s back and whispered with snickers.

“No idea. What’s she doing?”

“Guess she’s not to your taste.”

They were supporting actors from who had happened to be drinking nearby. Someone who spotted Han Yeoreum entering the theater uploaded a photo to the group chat.

[LOLOLOL That’s Han Yeoreum, right?]

When they heard the news that the great actress Geum Bitgang was putting on a comeback production in Daehakro, everyone went wild.

A master who truly cared about acting really was different. She didn’t value only what was visible to the world, and stubbornly clung to good works. That was how they felt.

A senior any theater actor would want to follow. The supporting actors of took immense pride in that image, as fellow theater actors.

[What? Already filming a variety show? lol]

[Concept-addicted shit, fucking insane T_T]

That was why Han Yeoreum became even more hated.

A rising actor who took the lead role while riding Geum Bitgang’s parachute and leaning on JC ENM—there was no way she could look pretty.

“Hey, let’s go.”

A freelance actor who’d been acting in Daehakro for ten years already, Tak Jeongyun, hated Han Yeoreum the most out of all of them.

‘She’s not even serious about acting....’

Cast as Assistant 1 in , Tak Jeongyun had worked incredibly hard from the moment this script first circulated in the theater scene. She analyzed and analyzed it until it was practically tattered.

‘You’d already have stacks of scenarios even if you didn’t step into this field.’

The thought that someone’s desperate dream could be used as mere image-making for someone else, then discarded, made her stomach burn.

“Unni, doesn’t this seriously piss you off too?”

“Honestly, yeah. It’s like she’s doing theater just because of variety show filming.”

“Right! I really hate bringing cameras to rehearsal. Professor Geum Bitgang alone would be more than enough promotion....”

The actors chattering on either side of Tak Jeongyun were also cast as supporting roles in this play. The actors playing Jinju’s Friend 1 and 2 were full of complaints.

“Whatever. Once the play goes up, the reaction will speak for itself.”

No matter how good you act in front of a camera lens, theater was different.

On a stage where NGs were never tolerated, Han Yeoreum would inevitably receive scathing evaluations from seasoned audiences.

* * *

I quickly did a first read-through of the script for .

“The locations change a lot....”

From university to academy, from academy to workplace, from workplace to Jinju’s room, then back again—academy, academy, academy, repeating.

“There’s no single big incident, so they chose to change locations a lot.”

Even so, given the nature of a small theater, props would be kept to a minimum. As for stage devices, it was just a single round platform divided and rotated.

Jinju’s room consisted of a folding mattress and a blanket. The academy had a whiteboard and a small podium placed in front. And the university had no stage devices at all.

“A high-difficulty play that forces the audience to focus on the acting....”

I felt like I understood why Professor Geum Bitgang had called me as Jin Jinju. A play themed around the pain of one’s twenties had to draw empathy from its viewers.

To do that, Jin Jinju—a graduating college student, one of the ‘most ordinary common people’—had to be portrayed in the ‘most ordinary’ way possible.

In a small theater where the spotlight was focused entirely on the actor, it meant memorizing an enormous amount of lines while playing an ordinary character without excess.

Jinju No, seriously, how are you supposed to pass an internship? Is there some condition I’m the only one who doesn’t know about? Basic conversational ability in Thai, Hindi, Vietnamese, Russian, and Spanish, a forklift license, neat appearance with skin that doesn’t care about cool tone or warm tone and a short mid-face, physically healthy enough to throw a 160 km/h fastball and play soccer as a left-footer, and on top of that, a tarot master who can read the interviewer’s love luck, marriage luck, and job-change luck—is that the kind of person who can be an intern?

I flipped the page.

In black comedy, heaviness has to be one of two things. Either it’s laid throughout the entire play, or it’s shown occasionally as a single blow.

‘You can’t let the character carry too much weight.’

A comic character that offsets the quietly laid heaviness.

This play was like a game unfolding at a marketplace. On bare dirt with no stage devices, laying down a single straw mat, wearing masks, you had to make the audience laugh.

In black comedy, the most terrifying thing is the moment the audience doesn’t laugh.

“If you’re not careful, even scenes blatantly inserted to make people laugh might not land....”

I had to check the other characters too. Jin Jinju’s line count was overwhelmingly large. Even if the audience didn’t laugh, Jin Jinju absolutely had to make them laugh.

“I can’t lose the rhythm.”

I recalled the sound of the audience’s laughter I’d heard from backstage. Which parts of which plays had drawn the biggest laughs, what kind of ad-libs the revolving-door audience members had written positively about in their reviews.

‘I thought about it every single day, over and over....’

It wasn’t difficult. I’d been imagining the moment I’d stand on stage, thinking about how I would do it if it were me.

“Alright.”

I was glad I knew several good ways to make an audience laugh. For now, I focused on memorizing every single line of Jin Jinju’s.

‘Because ad-libs that can make an audience laugh only come out when everything is perfectly prepared.’

It was the first time I’d ever looked forward to a script reading day this much.