Day 350…
The cat can, again, no longer walk across the carpet without getting stuck on it. When he gets to the wooden part of the floor he clicks. When he yawns and stretches out on my lap, if I’m not careful he can draw blood.
I cannot believe that it is claw-clipping time again. It’s been nearly three months, but it seems like we just did it last week. Aside from a zoom call late tomorrow afternoon, I have nothing at all scheduled for weeks to come so I don’t have any excuse whatsoever not to do it.
Last night I finally broke the silence on the topic and mentioned it out loud and Michael abruptly said, “I know,” before I’d even finished my sentence. He has to film another audition sometime today, so I will wait until he’s done before I bring it up again.
At best, auditioning is an awful process. Actors spend a huge percentage of their lives preparing material that nobody will ever hear or see.
I’ve spent months if not years of my life sitting behind a table watching a steady stream of nervous, resentful, hopeful, angry, anxious, confident, desperate, defiant, prepared, unprepared, busy, skillful, and green and experienced performers parade in front of us with the hope of getting a job.
We give them pages and pages of material to prepare that we may never hear. When they walk in the room, we might dismiss them before they even start - too tall, too short, too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too attractive, not attractive enough, too this, too that.
For years, to show off their voices, everyone who came in sang One Fine Day. Then it was Runaround Sue. Then it was something else. I don’t know if they were all just coaching with the same person who recommended it or if the common choices just came out of the zeitgeist.
Sometimes the opening chords of a song like Unchained Melody started and I’d think, oh no, please not this. Unchained Melody goes on and on and on and nothing happens. It worked once with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore but only because they were sexily throwing a pot and one of them was a ghost. When the eighth hopeful person comes in during an audition day and starts singing it, it can take every shred of energy I have to stay present and listen to how they are singing and not what they are singing.
Sitting behind the table, we would pray that everyone would do well because we needed them to be good. So many people would be totally undone by their nervousness or they wouldn’t have prepared the material well enough. Sometimes they would fall apart in front of us.
But then, somebody would come in and everything would click. They may have been new or may have been in several times before but for whatever reason, this time they were exactly who we were looking for.
Plenty of ridiculously talented and completely prepared actors have come in over the years, sometimes over and over again, have blown us away and then never gotten the gig.
Living with an actor, especially one like Michael who works his tail off to prepare, has made me aware of what it is like to be on the other side of the table.
Actors rarely hear how they did in an audition. Good audition or bad audition the response is either a crushing silence or, very occasionally, a job offer. Feedback isn’t all that useful because it is rarely honest, just polite.
Someone auditioning may spend hours and hours working on Unchained Melody with a coach who is charging them $120 an hour. My asking them to sing something else just because it bores me is nothing short of cruel. I have a job and they have a job. I’m not there to be entertained. I’m there to listen.
At one point, for some reason, I was asked to prepare a list that reflected the people who were possibilities for one day playing a role in the Broadway production of Jersey Boys and those who would likely only ever be considered for either the tour or one of the regional sit-downs. The Broadway company, as the flagship production, was under much more scrutiny than the other productions were. Often the people cast were people who had done well in one of the other companies. In addition, the Broadway company tended to skew older because of how long it had run so actors coming in had to match that.
The day that I finished the chart, THREE people who I had listed on it as being ‘not on Broadway’ were offered Broadway contracts. In each case it was an unforeseen replacement. Someone in the cast hurt themselves, someone suddenly quit to do another job and someone else needed a leave to be able to tend to a sick relative. There wasn’t time to audition new people and we needed to cast from our pool of alumni.
That day taught me a long overdue lesson.
First of all, all three people ultimately did wonderful work and looking back I don’t know why on earth I thought that they wouldn’t.
What I learned was that it serves nobody to try and control people artistically. People change, grow and learn. Actors who don’t seem to fit with what the show’s perceived vibe is, either age a bit, or improve their skills a bit, or seem to jibe better with other new cast members and suddenly they fit perfectly.
The advantage of auditioning from home is that Michael has control of what the people who he’s auditioning for, see. In an in-person audition, you have one shot. Countless outside forces, the subway, the weather, a competitor in the waiting room can throw you off. At home, Michael can keep filming until he’s happy with what he’s done.
With each audition, it seems, he adds a new piece of equipment. He has lighting, stands, and a portable backdrop that he can create a whole home studio with. He just bought the new iPhone to be able to use its much-improved camera. He also has a group of actor friends who are willing to read the same scene with him 20 or 30 times because when they have an audition, he will do the same for them.
At the moment, we are relying on Michael getting television and film work, so whatever it takes, it takes. He feels guilty about spending the money on the new phone but if it makes him look better, it is well worth the investment. As much as I’d like one of the new phones, myself, I don’t need it, he does. I can wait for mine until I am back to work, and we have more money coming in.
This year, actors who are auditioning for film and TV are getting better at self-taping. Ultimately, though, it is hard to cast a live performer after just seeing them on tape. People who pop on film sometimes disappear when they are on stage. On the other hand, sometimes people who are magnetic onstage don’t register at all on film.
It seems to me, though, that we will be seeing far more theatre auditions being done on tape. Certainly, the initial calls which are mostly about getting a sense of who the person is and what their voices are like could be done on tape.
Self-taping would certainly help not only the people who have moved out of the city this year but also those who’ve had kids. Amidst all of the loss, this year, our theatrical community has welcomed more children into our ranks that I can count. The longer we are kept from working, the more, I am sure, will come.
Maybe because it is suddenly a beautiful sunny day, I feel like I want to go to work this morning. There’s a weight that the cold grey wintry weather adds to the day that makes me glad to stay home on the couch. When it’s this nice outside, though, I don’t want to do that as much.
The news on television these days is focusing on the passing of the COVID relief bill and the Senate confirmation hearings for President Biden’s Cabinet. It very much feels like business as usual in the best possible way. Yes, the arguments are infuriatingly partisan but there’s so much less insanity happening that I don’t feel like I am missing anything when I turn the set off.
The insanity is not completely gone, of course.
Ron Johnson is a Republican Senator from the great state of Wisconsin. Yesterday on the Senate floor, he used his time during the hearings on the January 6th insurrection to support the wild conspiracy theories that it wasn’t the ex-President’s supporters who stormed the Capitol, but rather members of the extreme left merely posing as members of the extreme right.
Why the left would try to disrupt the results of an election that they won, is not a question that seems to have occurred to the good Senator. This is the same guy who accused Speaker Pelosi of instigating impeachment proceedings to cover up her own guilt. What she might be guilty of, Senator Johnson couldn’t say.
This idiot is a United. States. Senator. That should mean something. He should exemplify the best in us not the worst. The people of Wisconsin deserve better. We all deserve better.
It feels like the season has changed. Temperatures are meant to be generally warmer this week and there are some clear sunny days ahead. More rain this weekend, but no snow for the moment.
It’s like that first day inside a classroom when it’s nice outside and you realize that summer break, even though still many weeks away, is at least on its way. Your heart quickens and the schoolwork gets just a bit easier knowing that as much of it that there is, it’s finite.
I would be more than happy to spend today inside a rehearsal studio listening to a steady stream of One Fine Day, Runaround Sue and even Unchained Melody.
A friend of mine and I went to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday and aside from Van Gogh’s Starry Night, I couldn’t tell you anything else that we saw. We wandered around and talked about stupid things. And we laughed.
It seems to me that so-called “normal life” is still at least a year away. But it feels like there is something new on the horizon - not our normal life and not what we’ve been experiencing for this past year but something in-between. Maybe not everything we had in 2019 but with luck, more than we had in 2020.
I’m ready for it.
In the meantime, I have the rest of the day to get ready to clip the cat’s claws. He’s curled up against the radiator and twitching in his sleep.
The cat might not think so while it’s happening, but he will be much happier when it’s over and he has shorter claws. He has no idea what’s ahead of him.
Neither do any of us, really.
For now, though, it’s a beautiful day and Michael has an audition so I’m going to clear out and leave him to it. My organized stage manager mind has plenty of suggestions about what he should do, but I am going to keep all of them to myself.
You can’t control art and I wouldn’t dream of trying to.
Enjoy this beautiful day.
❤️Loved this post!! Aren’t we all one Unchained Melody? ... yes, it is a glorious and beautiful day outside....🌞💞