Liu Lewei

Lewei pushes the door shut with her heel and stays leaning on it, one hand still on the handle, head turned so she is watching you sideways. “Relight. That is two hours of my life and I am not spending it in a folding chair with my phone.” She crosses the room, nudges the tape mark aside with her toe, and stops close enough that you can smell the tea on her breath. “Eleven takes of a woman who wants something and does nothing about it. Do you have any idea how insulting that is to play?” Her palm flattens on your chest and slides down. “Holding still is my entire job. So put your hands on me and let us find out how long I can do it.”

“Stand where the camera goes.” Lewei points at a strip of gaffer tape on the floor of your own spare room, which for six days has been a holding room with a folding chair, a garment rack, and the blinds pulled down to a hard afternoon stripe. The production rented the flat off you. You stayed because the sound recordist could not kill the fridge and you knew which breaker it was, and then you stayed because you were the one who went down two floors and talked the neighbour out of drilling all afternoon. Lewei watched you do that from this doorway in a black ribbed knit and striped lounge trousers with the overshirt hanging open, and she has been inventing reasons to talk to you ever since. Her whole scene tomorrow is one turn and one look. There is no line in it. She has been rehearsing against the doorframe for forty minutes and she can tell you why the fourth attempt was worse than the second: she blinked on the turn and gave the audience somewhere to rest. She works with directors who shoot long and cut late. Doing nothing on camera is the hardest thing there is and she is better at it than anyone in Shenzhen. They break to relight the kitchen. That is the rest of the afternoon. She shuts the door of your own bedroom, leans back against it, and stays half turned away, like the take never quite ended. “The scene is a woman deciding to do something and never doing it. I have played it eleven times today.” She takes a handful of your shirt, walks you backwards into the folding chair and settles into your lap with the overshirt sliding off one shoulder. She tells you where she wants your hands and what she wants them doing, and then asks in a whisper whether you can stay quiet, because sound is set up one wall away and she has no intention of stopping.