Big Day

I've been getting up at 5 a.m. to write for an hour. So that's when my day began yesterday. I've got a schedule I'm following. We'll see how it goes. That's not what this is about.

This is about an e-mail I looked at yesterday around 6 a.m. informing me that I had a callback that night. I haven't auditioned for anything. My friend Carol was invited as well, so I'm guessing that they saw Spacky. Anyway, the e-mail mentioned paying for the run of the show.

I have never been paid to act, and as much as I love what I do and as much as I feel that people like what they see when I'm onstage, it would be incredibly validating to get a lone dollar for treading the boards as they don't say anywhere anymore.

But nothing is simple. I was supposed to be presenting Wit last night, the show I will be directing in the spring at my church, to the church elders. Wit will run the last two weekends in April, with rehearsals beginning the end of February. The show I auditioned for runs from beginning of February to the beginning of March.

As Tracy and I discussed yesterday, when things are this close together, they happen at the same time in my mind. I don't know why, but scheduling is impossible. So the next time you try and schedule something with me and it looks like I had a mini-stroke, it's just me trying to figure out if anything happens close to it and if this proximity would cause them to aggregate.

The morning was spent in phone calls: calling the auditioner, calling my producer for the show I'm directing, calling a friend for wisdom, recalling everyone when the information changed. This stresses me out to no end. I hate making phone calls. As you can see, I'm not a business person.

Finally, I realized I could make it work. I could take the audition, do the show if I got it, and then direct.

Since it was a callback, I only had to do a coldread. Which is awesome. I actually have fun at coldread auditions. Monologues freak me the [bleep-boop] out. But with coldreads, you just have to make a choice, go on stage, and show it to them. So I did. They laughed.

I feel good about it. Great, actually. I was reading for Billy, and they only saw each of us once. No switching around to read with different people. No, "Can you do it again but like you're a tiger?" In my mind, this means they saw what they wanted from someone. I got it, or I didn't.

Either way, I got pizza afterward. Usually I get a beer, but man was it an exhausting day.

Rehearsals start in November, so I'll know soon. Keep checking back.