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Just to get the heartbreak over with; I didn't get the part.
I knew I wouldn't. I went into the audition knowing I wouldn't, and I left it feeling very good about my performance (and especially the monologue I created on the spot), but I knew I wouldn't get it.
I still held out that small bit of hope, though. The tiny speck of belief that what I thought would happen wouldn't happen, and that I'd be cast anyway. I haven't seen the cast list yet, but the phone call was illuminating. It came from the PA, not from the director, which I found a little telling:
"Hi, Patrick, this is (I forgot her name! I'm sorry.), calling from the theatre."
"Hi (still no idea about the name). How are you?"
"Just fine. Listen, I called to let you know that you did a FANTASTIC job with your audition. Your monologue was incredibly touching, very brave, and so funny! We were all really impressed. And you did a top-notch job with everything onstage. We liked your accents, and your characters, and thought you had a great audition."
A moment of silence
"But...?"
"But the director needs a cohesive whole for this show. His vision is to have a group of guys who are a cohesive unit, who have chemistry together. We were looking for really different 'types,' and I'm afraid you didn't fit into what he was looking for."
"Ah, well. I suspected as much. the director doesn't really consider me 'castable.'"
"Umm...yeah. So, anyway, are you still interested in doing props, like you said on your audition sheet?"
"Absolutely! I lugged the set of Stiff Cuffs around the country, I'd be more than happy to run around finding props. Props are fun."
"Great! I'll let Gail know. And let me say it again; you were fantastic last night."
"Thanks a lot!"
"Please make sure you'll audition for us again. We'd really like to see you back."
"Of course!"
We hang up.
Who says I'm not a good actor? I got to act right then and there!
Every director his own directing style, and ways of approaching casting. Hell, I've cast Mike in just about every show I've ever done, because we work well together, and I love his stage presence. Every theater has its 'darlings,' and I'm fully aware of those theaters I've worked with in the past. I also know the biases of some directors; including one director (not the one I just auditioned for) whom I love, but is entirely homophobic. This person directed a production of Deathtrap in which the male-male kissing scene was cut. The essential, totally necessary, isn't-a-play-without-it kissing scene? Gone. It's like the production I heard about (before I became involved in community theater) of The Wiz that featured an all-white cast.
I'm not even really all that upset about it. I'd love to be in this show, but if my suspicions are correct, then the "chemistry" that was talked about involves a bit of the bias in the above paragraph. Some folks aren't comfortable working with the gays, especially if they have to, you know, touch them.
All idle, bitter speculation on my part. I'm probably completely off the mark, and when I see the cast list go up, it will be three completely different actors than I expect, and I will have to eat my words. And I will, right here in this forum, if I'm wrong.
In other news, I took a nap today!
Nobody is going to consider this a momentous event, except maybe Becky and Laurie, both of whom know that I don't do the nap thing very well.
Usually whenever I take a nap, I wake up feeling more wretched than I did when I laid down to sleep. I get nauseated and headache-y, and my brain feels like it's full of fuzz. Also, I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep at night after a day which involves a nap.
I didn't intend to nap today, even though I was very tired. I went to bed at around 2:30am, and was woken up by the alarm clock at 7am, because I had a dental appointment at 8. Usually, no matter what time I go to bed, I get up around 7:15, so I guess that extra 15 minutes of sleep is somehow essential.
I went to see the dentist (who is, to put it in Kymm's terms, "the bestest dentist in all the land" to have a few small cavities filled. They were basically surface cavities, which is pretty impressive, given the amount of soda I drink. He gave me the choice of novacaine or none, and since I get very little effect out of novacaine, I told him that I'd risk the pain, and if it got bad, I'd let him know and he could shoot me up.
The cavities were tiny indeed, as it took all of 45 seconds for each of them to be drilled out. Only the last one hurt, just a bit, and when I winced, the dentist asked me if I wanted the shot. I asked him how much more drilling there was to do, and he said he was about 90% done. I said to go ahead, and only mewed once when he brushed a nerve.
The rest of it went smoothly. I haven't had a cavity in a long time, and technology has come a long way, because the dentist told me I could eat whatever I wanted as soon as I left the office. Apparently, the light that he used to fix the fillings in place makes them instantly permanent, which I think is pretty cool.
Cooler still was the fact that, since I have no dental insurance until April (when the benefits opt-in occurs), he took 50% off my bill!
I'm slowly realizing that dealing with small businesses is much better than dealing with giant corporations. My eye doctor rocks (and is hot), my therapist rocks, my psychiatrist rocks, and now my dentist rocks! Not one of them belong to an HMO. I think the clinic I go to for most of my medical care is just fine, but there are some areas in which I think it's better to have a more personal touch.
At any rate, I got home, had some yogurt and granola, wrote a 1,500-word story that is also unpublishable (I got hooked by an idea, and went with it), then struggled with a ten-minute play which was only supposed to take me an hour or so to write. Remember the play I mentioned that dropped, fully-written, into my head by the heavens above? Well, I've overthought it, and now it's a steaming pile of poo. It's meant to be fast-paced and funny, and while I can be uproariously funny in person, I tend to get too wordy to hit the right marks when I write. Jette suggested that I get a digital recorder and just record myself doing monologues and then transposing them (I wrote to you, Jette, but the message bounced back to me!), which I think is a fine idea. I always feel a bit weird about hearing my own voice, but I can "think out loud" without having to run to the keyboard all the time and typing out what I just said.
Oh, yeah. Back to the nap. After getting flustered and aggravated by the fact that I could write a short story that was of no use to me at all but couldn't get through a ten-minute script that I had fully worked out in my head, I decided that I was just plain tired, so I went upstairs, put on some soothing music and laid down, intending to just chill out for awhile.
Two hours later, the phone woke me up. Mom called to see how my dental appointment went. I said, "Oh, shit! I overslept! I missed it!"
Thoroughly confused, Mom said, "Pat, you left the house before me. Unless you fell asleep on the road, you did not miss it."
I then realized that I wasn't chilling as much as sleeping very hard for a couple of hours. And I felt pretty good afterwards. No nausea, no headache. I was energized. If naps are like this, then I'm all for them. I must have been doing them wrong before.
You know, I can change my own oil, I can pick apart JavaScript without the benefit of having taken a class, I can solve word-searches with amazing accuracy, but I don't know how to take a nap properly. It's weird, where talent lies.
I got up, had some lunch, and checked my work voicemail, since I had two interviews set up for today. I got a message at around 2:15 that one of the scheduled appointments was sick, and couldn't make it. This candidate's interview was scheduled for 4:00.
I'm willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt; she could have gotten a stomach bug or a migraine that came on suddenly, but calling less than two hours before you're scheduled to interview for a job, asking to reschedule? It just doesn't sit well with me. I'll reschedule sometime next week, and gods know that this person will probably be the one we hire. You just never know.
Suddenly having an extra two hours to kill (the other appointment was scheduled at six), I opened up my script writing program and dashed off a ten-page script idea that I've had ever since I read a collection of David Ives' plays. The script only uses four words total, but covers a year in the lives of two people, plus a "chorus" of sorts. It could be a truly interesting concept, or it could be seen as a glorified acting exercise. I'm going to let it sit for a couple of days and then take another look at it. Most likely, I'll have to see people perform it in order to know if it works well. (Mike? Molly (if you're reading)? Interested?)
I felt much better, having accomplished something, and gathered up my stuff to go to the interview. I left early, worrying that traffic at that hour would be difficult.
I needn't have worried, I got there about 40 minutes before 6, so I sat up front and chatted with Lara about nothing in particular. We waited for the hour to arrive, and it passed, and then some more time passed, and at about 20 past, we got a call from our candidate, saying that he was stuck in traffic and would be "a little late." Considering he was already 20 minutes late, "a little" was a bit of a euphemism, but again, I'm willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
The interview went well, from the standpoint of Lara and I getting into a rhythm of question-asking together. She tends to do well at the opening questions, I hit the specific questions (my favorite being, "why do you want to work nights?"), and we give two different perspectives on how the company and the job works. I think, if nothing else, any candidate we interview gets a sense of how it would be to work under us, which is more important than just being given the usual interview questions.
We set the candidate up for his skills assessment test and I took my leave (the test usually taking any candidate at least an hour), and headed over to Laurie's house, where we watched Lost (fantastic story about Sun and Jin...I really thought this was one of the better-written episodes of an always-engaging series) and Alias (well, there weren't any wigs, but there were many accents, so it was worth it. I'm sure there was a plot, but I don't watch Alias for the plot). We also watched Wife Swap, which, despite being a silly concept, always manages to be entertaining. They always manage to find such extremely different families to swap.
I left and listened to Milla Jovovich's album The Divine Comedy. I know she's done the Resident Evil movies and is a highly-paid model, but she is a really good songwriter. I wish she'd release another album. I'm sure she makes enough to self-produce.
The last thing I did today was done in the middle of writing this entry. I saw the moonlight on the snow while going into the kitchen, and decided to see if I could get a picture of that. It didn't work out so well (I still have yet to read the manual entirely), but I played around with darkness, and managed to come up with two shots I really like:
This is Chris' backyard, taken from my back deck. I like the way the porch light spills over the snow, and the shadow of the fence. It's a little blurry, which I think means I need to buy a tripod.
This is just the underside of Mom's computer desk. The blue light is from a fancy USB cable, and the green light is from the modem. If you don't look at it too specifically, though, it's a pretty neat abstract.
Finally, an administrative note: The Links Page has been updated to include Jette (who I linked to above, so she doesn't get another link...three is just overkill), Tamar (whose journal I always seem to lose, and she's too good a writer to let that happen), and Carol Elaine, who is a reader and a correspondent and also a damned fine writer. I'm new to her blog, but I like what I've read so far, and plan to go back to the first entry and work my way up to today.
And with that, it's time for bed. The nap didn't seem to affect my sleep schedule at all; it's about 2am and I'm about ready to go to sleep. Maybe I'll try another sometime in the future.
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Patrick's Daily Journal
