It is time to come out of the darkness
And allow support guidance and love.




Sun 8/10


It's not all roses in the audition game for an apprentice, some of it is downright unpleasant, especially since I lack training and am doing it purely on instinct.

Take for example an audition I did in Soho. The ad in Backstage listings spoke about either presenting a monologue or reading sides, but they were also looking for interesting people with a story to tell. Being the only seeress in Manhattan is a story worth telling, I thought, packed up my headshot and resume and downtown I went. My first inkling that something was not right occurred when I got there and saw a line snaking around the block. There were no seats in the store-front gallery where we were to audition. That indicates disrespect. Whoever is putting on this audition is only concerned with maximizing their choice, not the well-being of hundreds of actors, who will have a long wait for their turn, standing outdoors on a hot Manhattan summer day.

The art gallery with its glass front to the street allows us to see the actors performing their skits while waiting our turn. Everybody's got a shtick, karate, magic tricks, musical instruments, and the obligatory half naked women showing off their tits and ass cracks. I've decided that when my turn comes, I'll tell him how I stumbled into my profession and talk a little about it. When I finally get inside, perspiring, sweat trickling from my hair, the man greets me and takes my headshot. He immediately sees the word seeress on my resume and asks if I could tell him something about himself.

Yes, but we would need to be in the right setting, where it's a little quieter. Then he asks me to draw a scene with characters, and he wants me to give the characters a reading; he wants me to make something up. You don't make things up in the seeress profession, that's not how it works. He wants something quick and is not willing to listen to what I have to say.

"Why don't I perform a monologue," I say in exasperation. I get halfway through it and he cuts me off,

"Thanks, we'll call you."

Don't bother.

Another audition I apply for is looking for a Hillary-type senator and an older Asian mystical man, like don Juan in Carlos Castaneda's books. I have read Castaneda's books at least 5 times by now and am in the midst of reading them again, so I think there is something for me in this situation for sure when I apply for the audition and am selected, apparently on the merit of my website. I don't know if I will get the part, but I will pay special attention to how power unfolds in the audition. Another hot day; I am the first and only actor at the studio. The room in which the audition is held is an inferno populated by the director/writer, the camera guy and the older Asian actor who will play the wise-man. Looking over the sides he hands me, I am to play the senator at her most entitled, bitch on wheels, mode. We run through the scene once with the wise man not really interacting, but just issuing commands at my character. I'm supposed to start off being sarcastic with the man and then get really mad. My last line being,

"Do you know who I am?" Not a particularly difficult, self- important, bitchy line to act out.

'We'll slow this down," says the director. "Let's block it out.

We get up and, come to find out my character, who was at a press conference with her security detail, all of a sudden, has been transported to a glass cage, and the only one around is the wise man. We run through the scene again and whatever I am doing is not pleasing the director, especially the, Do you know who I am, line. He is curt with me, and out the door I go. On the street, I feel the most abject failure. Whatever made me believe I could act? If I could find a hole to crawl in and hide, I would do so, pull the blanket over my head and never come out again.

Once home, I decide to look at the sides to see how I could have improved the situation. Normally, you're not allowed to take them with you, but in the tense situation of his displeasure with my performance, he forgot to ask for them back. I was glad I had them and folded them neatly, placing them at the bottom of my bag. But now I can't find them. Where are they? Obviously this is not about correcting my performance or I'd be able to find them.

I must look at the power dynamics, which is what I felt would be important in that audition. The imaginary glass box the senator character was trapped in is an apt metaphor for my situation. In both of the above auditions, I was trapped by the glass ceiling women talk about. I knew a lot more about the situation than the men I was dealing with, but was too timid to speak up. Both men were writer/directors trying to create something on the spot, not professional casting directors who know what they are looking for and give lucid directions.

Do you know who I am?

No, they did not. My fault for not speaking up. Not that it would have changed the situation, but I would have walked out feeling a lot better and not taken on the whole blame for what happened.





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