February 22, 2005 Leaping A lot of folks say there's nothing interesting in meta-entries; writing about writing, or journal entries about journal entries. In the DVD age, we have commentary tracks that can be turned on or off at will. I'm taking that idea and doing the same thing. If you want my daily entry, just stay right here. If you have an urgent need to know what I'm thinking about the journal, follow the occasional link I'll toss up for a "Behind the Scenes" look at the whole process of keeping a journal. There's nothing truly fascinating in there; mostly a brain dump about last night's entry. I just wanted to get it out, but you don't need to read it. Behind the Scenes isn't password-protected; it isn't meant to be the "private" side of this journal. It's just where I'm going to put meta-content, just so it doesn't clutter up space in my "real" entries. Hey look! A headshot! Okay, it's kind of lame and really unprofessional, but I just didn't want the inevitable Polaroid being my only image at the theater tonight, forevermore. It takes a lot of work to get an angle in which I don't look entirely awful. Laurie tried taking headshots of me for about a half-hour last night, and none of them came out just right. It's not due to any lack of talent or technique on her part, it's just a matter of an unphotogenic face meeting a piece of photography equipment. Anyway, my one project today was to create a headshot (of sorts), an acting resume, and write a piece to perform as part of my audition today. The headshot turned out to be easy enough, after I found the right picture. I'm sure a professional could do much better, but I don't know how much acting I'm going to be doing, so it seems silly to have a box of headshots lying around as I age. The resume was a little more difficult, if only for the fact that I've played multiple roles in multiple productions, which I really wanted to highlight, as this play has a lot of different characters to perform. Finding out all nine roles I played in The American Clock or the four I played in Working wasn't easy, as my long-term memory for facts like that has never been the greatest. With the help of google and some brain-digging, I got together a decent resume, then printed out the headshot and stapled them together. The piece to write turned out to be a little difficult at first, but really not that hard in the end. The audition notice said, "People auditioning will be required to present a story about themselves that they can tell in their most animated, engaging manner (no longer than 5 minutes)." I thought of just adapting a journal entry into a story, but I wanted it to be truly funny, truly engaging and really capture the attention of the casting committee. I remembered a story that I haven't told a lot of people, because it's vaguely embarassing, deals with my past forays into promiscuous activities (this one is set in my late teens), and is kind of dirty. Perfect for this show, which is all about being naughty onstage. I wrote something out, rehearsed it a couple of times throughout the day (with the kitchen timer making sure I had it in under 5 minutes), and felt very prepared to go into the audition. What I had was very close to pure stand-up, but that's what the director would want, right? I rushed to get to the theater on-time, and found that, other than the casting committee and the director, I was the only one there. This didn't bode well. I work best when there's a big audience, especially when I'm trying to be funny. Laughter is the easiest gauge as to how you're doing in a show, and with just a table full of judges staring at me, I'd feel kind of uncomfortable. Luckily, four more guys showed up (I don't know how many people auditioned for the show last night or by special appointment), and we settled in to be assigned things to read and the order in which to perform our personal pieces by the director. The first thing he said was that The Compleat Works of Wm. Shakespeare (Abridged) is a very interactive show; that although the players use characters from the plays of Shakespeare, the real highlight is the chemistry among the cast members themselves, and with the audience. In that vein, he said that he hoped the stories we were going to tell would not only be funny, but would also tell him what kind of performers we could be without a script, with different audience members who would react in different ways. "I had someone audition by special appointment who was absolutely hilarious," he said, "His spiel was polished and funny, but it was a stand-up comedy routine. There was no interaction with the audience, no feeling of connection. I'm not looking for something that's just funny, I want to see your personality." Oh, shit. That "perfect" piece I had written and rehearsed was exactly what the director said he didn't want. All the planning, the taking of an extra day to figure out what I should say, at what angle I should approach things, was thrown out the window in an instant. The director gave us all a few minutes to prepare, and went to set up some paperwork. I went into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on my face. Think, I said to myself. Think. You're an improv. actor, you can improvise! And...nothing. I turned away from the mirror, sure that I would come up with some lame story about the dogs, or worse yet, end up using a routine that the director specifically said he didn't want to hear. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to suck, and could hopefully make up for this bit of the audition. As I opened the door, something struck me. God Said, Ha! For those of you unfamiliar with this piece, it's a standup comedy routine that former Saturday Night Live performer Julia Sweeney created while her brother was dying of cancer, and she was diagnosed with cancer at the same time. You would think it would be a weep-fest, but she manages to take heartfelt, hilariously funny moments from that awful time and use them to create a show that's truly unique. (Come to think of it, I'll have to get that disc...it's great inspiration.) I knew what I was going to say onstage. I was the first to arrive, so I was called onstage first. I introduced myself and said, "the director asked me what I've been up to these past couple of years; that I seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet. Well, now I'm going to tell you." I started with the first glimmers of my major depression, took them down into the subway station where I teetered on the edge of the tracks, waiting to jump in front of the next passing train; in the ambulance with me on the way to the mental institution; the conversation that I had with my partner fifteen minutes after getting of that awful place and having him tell me that he had cheated on me every single night I was going through hell with truly crazy people, and blaming me for it. "He said, 'When you look at it, this really falls on your shoulders. If you'd killed yourself, there wouldn't be a relationship, because you wouldn't be here.' Which has a logic to it...on VULCAN! What kind of sick wing-nut would tell someone who is still wrapped in his winter coat, blinking from the sunlight he hasn't seen in three days and aching to eat food that's not served with a plastic spoon that he's just spent every night that he was away getting his rocks off with a different guy? And you know what I said to him? My response to this hostile, passive-agressive little piece of garbage sitting in front of me, blaming me for his inability to keep it in his pants? 'I'm sorry.' Yeah, 'I'm sorry.' I apologized to him for having the audacity to be mentally ill. Luckily, I smartened up shortly thereafter and as of right now, I feel like Sue Hawk on the first episode of 'Survivor.' 'If you were lying on the ground, dying of thirst, I wouldn't give you a drink of water. I'd leave you there and let the vultures eat you...' Sorry. I still have some hostility issues to work out. But at least I'm no longer apparently on crack. Zoloft is an amazing thing." That's not the best part of it. I don't remember the best parts of it, because I was on a roll, just speaking from my heart, telling my story, and interjecting the occasional barbed comment or hilarious moment. Gail, one of the casting people (and someone with whom I've worked with in "Naked Brunch"), gasped, "Oh, no!" at a couple of the things I said, and fell back in her chair howling at some of the others. The other guys in the audience howled as I jumped around onstage, talking about the hospital stay, "It was like Girl, Interrupted combined with Fear Factor, only without Angelina Jolie to be my best friend or Joe Rogan to tell me to eat a bug for fifty thousand bucks." I ended with, "And that's where I've been for the past two years. Thanks very much for waiting for me to come back," and hopped off the stage. I got applause. I got BIG applause, considering there were only seven other people in the room from me. I wish I had a tape of that, because it would really work as...something. I don't know what, but it's worth trying to remember. the director asked to show him who we were, and I showed him. The other monologues were good (one guy talked about his resemblance to Ben Franklin, another had a great story about a chihuahua his grandmother owned), but I won that round. In fact, I rocked the fucking house. I was on-target with every single piece, from the actual Shakespeare monologue to playing Ophelia like the craziest loon ever seen onstage. I showed my acting partners how to do a "good" bad Scottish accent, "Play it like Scotty on Star Trek." for the MacBeth scene. I even handled the "curve ball" thrown at us at the end of the audition. the director handed us cards with horoscopes on them to be read in different ways. I had two: one which had to be read in a German accent, the other in a British accent. It took me a few minutes to get down the German accent during our prep period, but I nailed it finally and went in to watch the other guys. The guy just before me had to use a French accent, which threw off my German accent as I was sitting there, watching him perform. When I got onstage, I said, "excuse me," and quickly sung: Hast du etwas Zeit fur mich Dann singe ich ein Lied fur dich Von 99 Luftballons Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont... "Okay, I'm ready," I said. I think Gail was the only one who actually got what I was doing, but if bad German pop music will help me remember what a German accent sounds like, so be it. As I said the other day, I only went through with this audition to prove to myself that I could still do it. I have no expectation of being cast. I let myself go through the, "Damn, I was good! Wait, I sucked! No, I rocked! No, I went too fast. But I nailed all the accents and my timing was perfect. But he'll never cast me; he'll probably ask me to run props," monologue that runs through every actor's head after an audition. I wanted that show, badly. I finally had to put Danielle Dax on my CD player and sing loudly just to get those damned thoughts out of my head. By the time I got home, I was still going back and forth about the audition. Mom said, "Did you run into people you knew?" I said yes, but that I thought I did really well on the audition, and went through, "He might not have liked this, but he looked like he liked that..." with her until she said, "Don't get your hopes up too much, Pat." Isn't that the point of taking risks? Getting your hopes up? I know the old adage saying, "If you go into it with no expectations, you can't be disappointed." But I also believe that if you don't allow yourself some expectations, you'll never go for anything that's really important to you. That feeling of dread, of ebullience, of a great high followed by an incredibly crushing low all in the span of a couple of minutes is what it's all about. I don't care if you're an artist or a corporate executive or a wildlife enthusiast or a pastry chef. If you don't allow for at least one great expectation once in awhile, you're living the way I'd been living for so many years. Will I spiral down into a mind-numbing depression if I don't get this role? Absolutely not. It's a piece of community theater, and while I'd love working with the director and the crew at ACME, there will be other roles in other venues if I don't get this one, or even if I do, when this is over. And that piece I wrote and rehearsed and then didn't use? It's now stuck in a file folder called "Stories I'll Never Tell My Mother." I have about 90 minutes' worth of material in my head that I can turn into a one-man show. It would be raunchy and silly and naughty and just the thing for one of the local theaters (called "The Theater Offensive"), if I get it right. Taking that leap; looking over the edge of the cliff and deciding that it's okay to step off, because you know the wind will blow in just the right way to cushion your landing, without a net, without a safety harness, is what I'm aspiring to right now. Every time I've taken a chance, I've gotten more out of it than I expected. From little things like calling a cousin to bigger things like telling my boss that I absolutely had to change schedules; when I put myself on the line, I've come through to the other side with nary a scratch. I think that's pretty damned cool. And to the director, if you're reading this, you'd be a fool not to cast me!