A Characterful EXPRESSION

Kelly needed the job she'd seen advertised, but was she really what the acting agent was looking for?

- Amanda Batham

It was the most peculiar advertisement Kelly had ever come across. They were looking for farm hands and farmers, or people who looked like they could be, to appear in a TV commercial for a well-known breakfast cereal company.

Kelly couldn't help giggling to herself as she scanned the disparate combination of job specifications for the second time. Applicants should be competent singers, preferably having had classical voice training, be comfortable around cattle, and have a 'lived-in' face with a characterful expression.

Kelly had the singing credentials under her belt, thanks to an MA in the performing arts, which she'd completed some years ago in her late 20s. She was at a loss, however, to understand why a farmer or a farm hand would need classical voice training. And did her face look characterful and 'lived-in'?

She pulled a face in the dressing-table mirror and studied her wide mouth, large grey eyes and the small galaxy of freckles running over the bridge of her nose. Her face did have character, but could it ever be mistaken for a farmer's face? And what on earth was a farmer supposed to look like anyway?

Kelly flopped despondently on to her bed. It was hardly her dream job, but the agency was offering a decent wage for less than a week's work and she could definitely do with the money. Her teenage daughter Jem was a constant strain on her purse strings these days, and her ex-husband Toby was in the process of setting up home with a woman he'd met on a park run.

Kelly had started flat-hunting, so they could sell the family house. But she hadn't worked full-time since having Jem, and the job she'd secured in the local library was only temporary to cover a maternity leave.