Auditioning, and a new set of posts to come

Your Humble Blogger has talked a lot about the community theater experience. Or my community theater experience, anyway. I’ve talked about rehearsals, about learning lines, about blocking, being directed, seeing reviews. I haven’t talked about auditioning.

I don’t like auditioning. Well, and it’s more complicated than that, of course. There are parts of the audition that I really enjoy. I like cold reading—it isn’t actually cold reading, of course, and I’ll talk about that in a bit, but when we read scenes from the play, it’s a lot of fun. I don’t mind doing audition monologues, although I haven’t had to do one recently; community theaters don’t rely on those very much.

What I dislike is the bit where we all sit in a room filling out the form and playing with the pencils, reading over the sides they have provided for the not-quite-cold reading, and surreptitiously counting our fellows who are after our parts, curse them. And as I have not (yet) really got to the point of being part of the bigger community, I don’t have the enjoyable experience of running into former castmates and catching up. I have the far less enjoyable experience of sitting there eating my liver while total strangers in the room greet each other and catch up on gossip about other total strangers.

But what I really dislike is the unhappiness in those rooms. It’s the main reason I decided I wouldn’t enjoy being a professional actor—not that I could have made a living at it, anyway, but if I could have, it would have meant constantly being in those rooms with all those people who are desperate and unhappy, sweating out the chance of a part, any part. Community theater does not have that much tension in those rooms, although there is quite a bit. We all want the parts, and there aren’t enough parts for all of us, and we know it.

The good part is that Your Humble Blogger is really quite good at auditioning. This is for a bunch of reasons. First and most important, I’m a very fast reader and I have a bit of a trick memory. That means that when they hand me a scene, I can read it very quickly to get the shape of it, make some decisions about what to do with it, and then read it several more times while I’m waiting to be called in. And because of my trick memory, when I’ve read it several times, I can remember the gist of it and big chunks of the actual words, which lets me look up from the page and make eye contact with the director and (if there is one) my reading partner. Or to use the page as prompt, even, getting through big chunks of the thing with only occasional glances at the page. That seems to be impressive, and certainly it gives much more of a sense of what I can do if I get the part.

The second advantage is that I work in a library. This means that I can almost always get hold of the script before the audition, as long as it’s a fairly well-known play, which is what community theaters tend to do. And because I read quickly, it isn’t a burden to skim through the play, getting an idea of the shape of the play and the characters, and to guess which scenes are likely to be read at the audition, and then I can prepare those. These past couple of weeks I have auditioned for Lost in Yonkers, A Trip to Bountiful and Uncle Vanya. That has been interesting (I may talk about the scripts in a separate note in addition to the Book Reports I’ll have to do individually), but the key thing is that all I’ve had to do is go up to the P section and grab a copy, unlike my competition which presumably must make separate trips or shell out actual money to prepare before the audition.

The third advantage is that I’m male; community theaters tend to have more actresses than actors. Not always, of course: the Uncle Vanya session I was in had twice as many men as women, but usually it’s an advantage.

So I go into auditions with a certain confidence in my advantages. I still know I might not get a part, but frankly with all the advantages I have, my odds aren’t bad: since getting back into shows a few years ago, I have auditioned for eight plays and got only two rejections. Or, well, two plus. It’s like this.

I auditioned for Yonkers three weeks ago. I got a call-back for the next week, which was very encouraging, and then after the call-back I didn’t hear for a few days, which was not. Then another director (who was connected to the theater that did Enchanted April last Spring) called up and asked me to read for a part in Bountiful, and I figured, what the heck. And then I saw that Vanya was auditioning the night before, and figured, you know, what the heck again. Then the director of Yonkers called to say he was having trouble deciding and would have another call-back. Very confusing.

After the auditions for Vanya and Bountiful, I wasn’t sure what my preference was. I don’t particularly like any of the three plays. Of the scripts, I would put Bountiful third. On the other hand, the director of Bountiful is well-connected and so on; that would probably be the best for connections for doing other shows later. On the other other hand, Yonkers is within walking distance of our house, and although both the others are around fifteen minutes’ drive and thus not altogether unreasonable commutes, walking distance is actually a big plus. And then, Yonkers is funny, and I like to get laughs; no laughs in the others.

Vanya said they would call on Tuesday, Yonkers double-call-back was set for Wednesday, and Bountiful said they would call on Thursday. Well, Vanya did call on Tuesday with a very nice rejection, but then Bountiful also called on Tuesday with a part. And he wouldn't wait until Thursday for me to try for Yonkers again. So I took the part. I have to call Yonkers now and withdraw. Phooey. But then, cool! I have a part.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.