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July 24, 2005

Big Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow I audition for a former instructor of mine who is now the Artistic Director for one of the two professional theatres in Spokane. I was really nervous about it already, because I frequently feel that the only thing I got out of this program acting-wise was insecure. So I've been trying to desperately figure out what pieces to use.

I wanted to do things she'd never seen before, but one of the side benefits of graduate school is a complete lack of time to work up new pieces. I have, especially while doing the knee recovery thing, read a lot of plays over the last six months, and found hardly any monologues that I want to use for auditions. (Apparently I'm not looking in the right places.) So I'm doing one piece that she saw me do once, badly, to show that I really can do it, and a piece she hasn't seen that I began working up six months or so ago because I felt I needed a new Shakespeare piece.

Anyhow, I've been feeling nervous about this not only because I want to do well in this audition, but also because she'll call me on my shit. "Why are you apologizing? Never apologize for your work." "Are you blocked on the right side? You're holding on to something there." "You are coming on way too strong. You need to find a place for the softness." Etcetera. And just now, I turned on my cell phone and discovered a voicemail from her.

The local paper is doing an article on actors and auditioning, and they want to sit in on a few auditions and interview a few actors. And she thought of me because, as she said when I returned her call, "You're a strong actor and we've already worked together so we have a shared vocabulary."

Yay! She thinks I'm a strong actor!

Shit. She thinks I'm a strong actor.

I'm excited about the whole thing, because along with the audition and the interview, she'll spend a couple of minutes working with me on one of my pieces so the reporter can see how that part of the process works. I love working with her, and I'd eat glass for a chance to spend some more time doing just that. (And my ego is gratified by her compliments.)

But now I'm terrified that I have selected entirely the wrong monologues for that sort of thing, and I really don't have any other options worked up well enough to substitute. (I'm also afraid that she has remembered me incorrectly and will be sorry she made the suggestion once she actually sees my pieces. Or, alternately, that I will suddenly bomb horribly as I occasionally have in auditions, for no apparent reason, and begin acting from roughly 30 miles away. Just because.)

Posted by sally at July 24, 2005 10:22 PM

Comments

Posted by: Terry at July 25, 2005 01:18 PM

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