Gotta start somewhere

I can honestly say that doing theatre in Kirksville has prepared me, in some extent, for auditioning in New York, because my first one was last night and it was one of the most amateurly-run ones I'd ever attended.

That was not really meant to be a slight to Kirksville or the people running the auditions, by the way. I'd had certain expectations of "doing theatre in the real world" and all it entails: directors dismissing you on the spot or twelve seconds into your monologue because you were too short/tall/blonde/old/plain/pale/etc, lines spilling out onto the sidewalk and stretching around the block.

I got there two hours early, anticipating a line. Not only was there none, but it turned out that the location was to be in the auditorium of a Catholic girls' school. My fear was replaced by a creeping arrogance. I came back about twenty minutes before sign-ups, and there were a few girls waiting.

It was for a "festival" of five one-acts, four of which had parts I could fill, and three of which were directed by the playwrights. The directors set up stations in five different areas in the auditorium where actors would rotate around and do cold readings, which I was prepared for.

I was first in line to read for the excerpt from Waiting For Lefty, with a twentysomething gentleman with a photocopied headshot that looked like he had peered facedown onto the copier and pressed "start." The director handed us the scripts, told us where to stop reading and gave us a minute to scan them. I asked if we could take them outside and read them over with each other first. "No, no, that's all right, you can just read them here," she said.

For the other three I wasn't so lucky; they handed me the script and told me to go when ready.

One of the director-written shows had a character that was so shy she didn't talk, but instead wrote down what she wanted to say on index cards, and was "somewhat of a clairvoyant," and at one point we had to gather around her and mime looking at what she was predicting with belief/disbelief while two other characters exchanged dialogue.

The ratio of females to males was about 12:1. That was about the odds, I found, of their ability matching their headshot quality. Except for that first guy, they all had lovely headshots.

I'm really, really not writing this to make fun of anyone. I enjoyed being involved in Kirksvillian theatre, and these people were very kind. Yes, they were amateurs in every sense of the word, in that they were doing it purely for the love of directing and sharing stories theatrically with others. And, yes, I was also hoping for something a little bigger and better; I came here to start acting professionally. I wanted a little challenge. But I suppose if there's anything I should have learned here, it is "just because it's New York, doesn't mean that it's always going to be bigger/better; it only means that there will be the full platter of extremes," from hollow extravagant Broadway to the greenest of newbies.

There is another next Tuesday. I'm really hoping for that other extreme.