Friday, March 11, 2011

Audition Journal #4: Williamstown Theatre Festival

Date: March 7, 2011, 5:15 pm
Auditioned For: A beardy man*. He was not introduced at any point.
Pieces: Bess from Hunting and Gathering by Brooke Berman
Joan la Pucelle from Henry VI Part I
Attire: Green empire dress
Brown leggings
Blowfish canvas wedges
Floral scarf

This audition was announced on Tuesday for the following Monday, which sent me scrambling to find a way to get to Savannah. Just by chance, a high school friend of mine was traveling to Savannah for his birthday, so I was on the road on Thursday. I will admit that I was not the most responsible of actors over the weekend as the attention I paid to my new monologue from Hunting and Gathering was minimal. I was swept up in a crazy weekend of sight-seeing and ghost hunting in Savannah that I had missed during my time as a student. (Probably a good call, as now I'm a bit obsessed with ghosties.) When I was at the house, it was hard to work with people around and with bull riding on TV, but work did happen and Bess found some shape.

In spite of my detour from my normal drilling of monologues to death, I was surprisingly calm when it came time to audition. I checked in with the stage manager and said hi to a few people before finding a spot to warm up next to the elevator. This was a point of some interest to younger students, one of whom asked me in a very concerned voice if I was okay as I was warming up my tweeter on the floor. While it may have made others feel awkward, the warm up left me feeling open, prepared, and otherwise awesome.

When I entered the room, beardy man* said "How are you?" so quietly that even now I'm not sure he said it. I sure hope he did. Otherwise, my "Good! How are you?" came out of absolutely nowhere. He took a moment to sort through some application materials and headshots before I began. For some reason, my slate didn't include my name. Sometimes, I just wonder what my brain is doing as it enjoys a totally different location from the rest of my body. Basically, I pretended that it was normal and carried on. Bess thankfully did not show signs of my late-night ghost hunting and my bull riding obsession. As I was moving on to Joan la Pucelle, I noticed that beardy man* was a bit restless, looking at my headshot and resume, jiggling his feet, but still giving me more attention than the guys from Utah Shakes. It caused me to insist on taking up as much of his time as possible, so Joan may have gotten a little dragged out. That being said, this is the first time I remember being totally comfortable with taking as much time as I need or want. I think I can still work on the same concept for space, but I think that improved this time around as well.

Once I finished, he said thank you and I left, halting slightly as most people I've encountered like to chat for a bit after they audition someone. Not this guy. Turns out most of my peers had a similar experience, so I'm certainly not discouraged. Overall, I think it was a pretty solid performance. Not stellar, but nothing went wrong either (aside from not saying my name). So now my application for Williamstown is totally complete and it's time for the waiting game. Or time to busy myself with other things and forget about Williamstown until they send me their decision.

Meanwhile, Lady Gaga is releasing the most bizarre and terrifying video yet, Melissa Leo says "fuck" in her Oscar speech and there's been a new drug released called Charlie Sheen. What a crazy world.

*But seriously, does anyone know who this guy is? I've looked and asked all over. If anyone knows, give me a holler so this guy can go down in the books as something other than "beardy man" and I don't look like a jerk.

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