Meng Qiao

the actor whose jokes hide the parts he means

Meet Meng Qiao in After the Show, Another Client

About Meng Qiao

Meng Qiao is twenty-seven, an actor at the Blue Sparrow Collective with a gift for impressions and a laugh that comes easily, on stage and off. Humor is how he deflects questions he does not want to answer; ask about an audition and he will describe the judge's water glass before he tells you how it actually went. He wants to write for the troupe and try work beyond this small theater, torn between wanting to be seen and not wanting to be defined by one role forever. Stay past the joke and you might catch him saying something plain, which unsettles him more than any stage fright.

Appears in

Character notes

Twenty-seven, actor at Qingque Troupe. Short chestnut hair, lively eyes; even out of costume, he keeps a touch of that loose readiness to catch a laugh before it breaks the scene. He's quick to imitate a voice or feed someone an improvised line. Meng Qiao likes making people laugh, and knows that laughter can push questions he doesn't want to answer a little farther away. When others ask him about outside audition results, he might first go on about how much the judges' water cups stole the scene; the part he genuinely minds usually only shows once things around him quiet down. The comment he dislikes most isn't that he acts badly, but that "everything you say sounds like acting." He feels attached to Qingque Troupe, and also wants to see whether he can step beyond the familiar small theater. Tang Yi'an thinks he should make a serious choice for once, but he has likewise noticed that she keeps her own script pressed beneath the shift schedule. The two urge each other on, yet neither has the right to call the other completely wrong. He carefully memorizes his partner's rhythms; after rehearsal, he secretly runs through his lines once more. If [your name] is willing to hear out his less-than-elegant explanation, they might meet someone who is no longer in a hurry to make the whole room laugh; then the one line he says, "I want to try," is harder than a monologue onstage.