The complaint rehearsal

Text C: an original fiction extract.

Milo volunteered for the visitor-centre training day because he wanted more acting experience. The organiser, Lena, gave him a card describing a customer who had missed a boat trip. His job was to play that customer while new staff practised responding. The card said he had followed an old leaflet to the wrong departure point. Milo added a furious expression and a habit of interrupting. He imagined the staff would remember his performance long after the session.

In the first rehearsal, a trainee named Bea asked to see the leaflet. Milo waved it above her desk and announced that his entire holiday had been ruined. Bea waited, then asked what he had hoped to do after the boat trip. Milo said that was irrelevant. He had prepared three increasingly angry speeches and did not want a practical question to interrupt their order. When Bea began explaining the options, he demanded the manager. Lena stopped the exercise before the manager could arrive.

Milo expected praise for making the situation difficult. Instead, Lena asked what his character needed. He pointed to the card: a missed trip. She asked whether missing it was the need or the problem. On the back was another sentence which he had not used. The customer wanted to reach the island museum before one o’clock, because a friend was meeting him there. The boat was one way of getting there. Milo had turned every possible answer into an occasion for another speech.

They tried again. This time, he gave Bea the leaflet and explained the meeting. She checked the practice timetable, identified the changed departure point and offered two routes described in the training pack. One involved a later boat and a walk; the other used a different service but left less time at the museum. Milo asked which would get him there before his friend left. Bea checked the connection rather than guessing. The conversation became slower in places and much less dramatic.

At the end, Milo wanted to say that the second version had been too easy. Before he spoke, Bea explained that it had helped her more. An irritated customer who still answered questions felt believable. A person who rejected everything without listening gave her no way to test whether her explanation worked. Another trainee said Milo had looked genuinely doubtful when she mentioned the walk. He had not intended that expression. He had been working out whether the character’s shoes would be comfortable enough.

For the final round, Lena asked Milo to play the same visitor with a quieter frustration. He kept folding the leaflet, straightening it and folding it again. Bea noticed and asked whether he wanted the route written down. He said yes. After the session, he wrote notes in his acting book, but not the furious speeches. He wrote what the visitor wanted, what he was afraid of missing and why an answer might be hard to trust. Lena invited him back for another training day. Milo asked whether the next card would include the backstory on both sides. Then he turned it over before she could answer.

You are Milo. Write the words of an interview for the visitor centre’s newsletter. The interviewer asks: “Why did you volunteer and how did you begin?”, “What did the rehearsals teach you?” and “How would you prepare for the role next time?”

In your response:

• explain your initial aims and the way you first played the customer
• explain how Lena’s feedback and the trainees’ responses changed your understanding
• explain how you would prepare and perform the role in future

Base your response on Text C, developing its ideas in your own words. Write about 250 to 300 words. Up to 10 marks are available for reading and up to 10 marks for writing.