You'll Never Work In This Town Again!

I'm still smarting from my last audition. I'm torn between two theories as to why I got cut in the first round:

1. I'm not nearly as good as I think I am. I wouldn't be the first clueless confabulator in show business. For reassurance I fall back on the testimonials, however insincere or equally clueless, I've received from others. Even assuming that I'm actually any good, I may have lost my edge somewhere along the way. I think I've lost a bit of confidence, and that may show, undermining my auditions with flop sweat.

2. The fault ain't mine. In the audition piece I was given I had a joke which was obviously meant to be a climactic laugh line but which I thought was really weak... last-season-of-Night-Court weak. Actually the whole scene was kind of like that Diane Rehm Show skit I posted a few weeks back, only without all the bile. Kind of a clunky "Fair, polite satire" thing. As my friend J'mel would say, it was very "local," as in a local production suitable only for local hometown-pride audiences. Sounds like a blast, huh? So in order to sell it I tried to invest it with the full force of the character's conviction, channeling everything I've learned from Bill Hicks about smart-alecky white guy ranting (which seemed like an on-target character choice). Maybe it sucked, but maybe it was too strong for what is meant to be a non-threatening little satire. You know, a dainty little wisp of a satire. A meek, harmless little fluffball of a satire. A Satirette.

Another guy did a reading of the same bit, and delivered the line with a casual offhandedness that probably worked better than my attempt to "save" the joke with a big chunk of actorly acting (he also gave a subtle and convincing performance, and might be very good in the role). I suppose professional actors have to learn to deliver lame jokes without any visible tremble of shame.

Unadvertised Deals

I went to the mall recently to buy a toy (I searched the net for a more indy toy shop in town, but turned up nothing). It's a couple weeks until Christmas, but it looked like a couple weeks before Arbor Day. Is this due to the recession? Is our consumer culture in freefall? That's probably just what we all need, painful though it may be. More likely everybody's at Wal-Mart. Speaking of which, one of our cast members had her purse snatched in Wal-Mart. She went to security and asked if they got evidence on the billion cameras they have in there, but was told all the cameras are dummies except in the parking lot and electronics. Moral: don't shoplift electronics at Wal-Mart, if you see what I'm saying. Say, don't you deserve some free snacks?

The show's going well, though some of us call it The Sickness Carol since most of the cast is folded in half with respiratory ailments. We're artists whose medium is our bodies, and what more fragile, unpredictable medium is there?

Iron Macbeth

This weekend we began work in earnest on Macbeth for Shakespeare at Sloss. I'm playing one of the third banana roles (A guy named Caithness) and it turns out the director took all the third bananas' lines, cut a bunch and redistributed the rest. After I researched the historical basis for my character, too! I now have pretty much none of my original lines, but the big dramatic wounded-messenger opening speech about how Macbeth's winning the war? I get that part. It's going to be interactive with the audience, which is to say I'm gonna vomit blood on the VIP tables' wine and cheese.

Interpreting Shakespeare is a bit of a challenge. We're not used to following this kind of complicated and compressed verbal rhetoric the way folks were in The Bard's day; I for one can hardly make sense out of the verbiage when I watch or listen to Shakespeare, so I'm thinking hard about how to punch the lines so my meaning's crystal-clear to the audience. My character is saucy and salty, so that'll be fun and keep it from being an applied academic exercise.