You Never Know

One simultaneously fun yet frustrating thing about being an actor is waiting to hear from the production staff after an audition. It could take a day, a week, a month. I once received an email asking me to be in a show two hours after my audition. And you might not hear back at all, since many shows don't take the time to contact those they do not cast. It's equal parts hope and dismay. Dreaming and disillusion. And it happens every single time you audition. The cycle never changes.

I tell my students that there are two ways to combat this: 1. audition often, and 2. forget about it the minute you walk out the door. These two pieces of advice serve to work together in that if you are going to several auditions a week, you just don't have time to sit and fret about What If; especially if you are doing the proper prep. And if you let it go from your mind it's always a happy surprise should they call you and offer a role.

I didn't hear back for three days after my callback for Love's Labours Lost at Austin Shake on Tuesday, and assumed I didn't get cast - I couldn't remember how long it takes to hear back, or IF I would hear back at all. I had it good up in the Midwest - I had long been in the position that I no longer had to go to general auditions - directors called me. I knew everyone. They knew me. I invested almost fifteen years up there. I had a career well established. Now, I'm completely starting over here, and while it is exciting to get back up on that horse, it feels impenetrable at times. I admit my impatience with humility.

But, it doesn't take much to get that cycle of theatre bi-polar manic depression going again, this time with a manic episode when you find out, quite out of the blue, that no, in fact, they HAVEN'T cast the show you auditioned for yet, and btw, please come to the callback for the OTHER show this weekend. And then you go DOH! and have a rush of adrenaline all over again. Which is what happened to me yesterday. It's such a high, to know you're still in the running for something and that on top of that, they want to see you for something else as well.

I'm waiting for the stage manager to send me the sides (sides, for anyone wondering, is a term we derive from the Elizabethan theatre, and it means the part/pages of the script from which you will be reading during the callback. In your first audition, you usually perform a prepared monologue that is not usually from the play for which you are auditioning; in the callback you do a scene or monologue from the show's script.). The play is Shaw's Man and Superman. They're reading me for Ann, the female lead.

I told my voice teacher that this is a lot of fun when you aren't banking on it to pay the rent. It's a huge luxury to be able to enjoy this without the desperation of needing the job or going hungry. There are some definite advantages to being older, married, and suburban. I'm a lucky girl.