I’m preparing for an acting audition. As an aging amateur, there are fewer and fewer theater roles I can contend for.
I took classes solely on how to audition. I’ve memorized monologues, learned how to perkily introduce myself, mastered avoiding eye contact with directors and even accepted rejection by celebrating the “experience.”
Yeah, right. My ego insists I’m perfect for every role I seek, even those a more rational person knows I’m unsuitable for.
Getting cast in leading parts in musicals is the toughest. You’re limited to a 32-bar selection and accompanied by a long-suffering pianist. That’s 97 seconds of singing to put yourself on top.
In less than two weeks, I audition for the lead in “Fiddler on the Roof.” I don’t want to be in the background chorus or among anonymous townsfolk. So I take weekly singing classes, study the script and score, dye the gray and visualize myself leading the production.
It’s really all about me.
As French playwright Jules Renard said, “I find when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.”
Some years ago, I took my kids to numerous theater auditions, from hundreds competing to just a few. It was always an interesting experience (which I, of course, didn’t get to watch). My daughter started on stage at age 5, playing the child of the plantation owner in a good production of South Pacific (her brother played her brother), and she “retired” at about age 11. Her brother kept at it for a while until after playing Shrek at age 14.