Auditioning

I've been working on a theatre piece that is about auditioning, and have thus been going to auditions as kind of a detective, noticing everything that I feel and see during each experience. Today I had a major audition, the kind people prepare for intensely, and I myself had been preparing with my scene partner for several months. Here's what important auditions look like:

We, the actors, arrive extremely early. We've probably been up since before the sun came up that morning.

All around you, you see actors stretching out their tongues, expanding their rib cages, rolling down their spines, talking to imaginary people, listening to their ipods, etc. We are nervous, we are excited, we are scared, we are experiencing strange bowel movements.

There are uncomfortable chairs everywhere. Some sit, some stand. No one talks. If they do, it is in a whisper. There is an unspoken rule about respecting other people's space.

If any regular non-actor people walk in, everyone knows, because those people are never sensitive to what is going on around them and usually say something really loud and inappropriate. They are quickly escorted out. The actors are relieved, we do not want to remember that an outside world exists right now.

In most auditions, there are always the actors who don't care, or who pretend not to care, and are supposedly not nervous. They sit around reading novels or answering emails on their iphones. I didn't see any of those today. What we were doing was important, on some level, to everyone. The building itself demanded respect, and we complied.

In the twenty minutes before the audition, the pair about to go up gets some space alone. It is hard to talk about anything. Some prayers are said. Intellectually we could probably talk ourselves out of our nerves. We know this is not exactly a life-and-death situation. But only an actor knows what the minutes before an audition are like. Rational thought gets buried somewhere out in Kentucky and we are alone with our emotions. Even if we don't want what we're auditioning for that bad, we know one thing for sure: We do not want to fail. No actor is okay with sucking. No matter who or what it's for, we want to do well. We want to honor our character, our talent, our dream.

Someone comes in and tells us it's time. We are escorted to the room, which in today's case was a real theatre. Our hearts are pounding so hard we are certain everyone can hear it. We feel our stomachs wanting to run to the bathroom and get us out of there.

We walk on the stage, which is brightly lit. The "people in charge" are hidden in the darkness of the audience. We see only their silhouettes. They do not speak, they do not make a single noise. We wonder if they're real people out there.

And we begin, usually before we're actually ready to begin, because we don't think we'll ever be ready to begin, and we know we might throw up if we wait another second.

We do it. We either sink or fly, it's hard to tell. An audition is rarely our shining moment. We just accept whatever happens, we hope we didn't suck, we hope our talent came across, we hope we touched the people in the dark safe seats of the audience.

And then, as we exit, there is a sudden sense of loss. Months of work and preparation, hours of nerves and excitement, and it's all over in five minutes. We leave our darling characters, our precious work, our loud nerves, all behind. We are empty.

Maybe we go out for coffee after and talk about it. Maybe we just each go our separate ways. The rest of the day is a daze.

And then, we wait. Who knows for how long. We wait to know if we got it or not. It won't mean as much as the audition itself, usually. Sometimes though, it can feel like our lives depend on getting it.

There is nothing quite comparable to auditioning. As I write this I know that anyone who is not an actor can not understand it, and I search for a parallel, but can not find one. Maybe you can imagine wanting something really badly, and then being taken to court to prove how much you want it, and having to then stand in front of people you can't see and don't know who will judge whether you are worthy of it. And you only have five minutes. When the clock accuses 4:59 minutes, you can prepare yourself to hear a curt, "Thank you." And then you have to walk away, and wait for a letter to tell you if you met those people's expectations or not. I'm sure you're thinking "Only a crazy person would voluntarily choose this life!" Yes, well. We think that too.

I hate it when people tell me I have to develop a thick skin when it comes to auditioning. I have to detach myself from wanting it. I have to see how insignificant those five minutes are in comparison to what my whole career will look like in the end. Do they think I don't know that? It makes me want to laugh. As if I could flip a switch in my heart that makes me not care. As if it were possible to love this a little less.

As my friend Deema described it, after a day like today we feel like we've been hit by a truck. And, I added, peed on afterwards. How to cope? Well, I ate a tiramisu the size of my butt. Went to yoga. Took a long hot shower. Blogged about it. And now I'll go to bed.

And tomorrow I'll wake up feeling somewhat distant from the whole experience, have some coffee, and go about my day.

And when I'm ready, when I feel strong, or perhaps desperate, again, I'll submit myself for more auditions. It's what I do, after all.

And we wonder why actors are all crazy.