70/100
preparation priority
I cleared my throat. Dear god please help me. Why are these damn stage lights so bright. Dramatic pause. It’ll come to you. Just breathe….nothing. Nada. A slightly longer dramatic pause. Maybe if do something with my hands that’ll jog my memory. Nope that didn’t do it. Let’s clear the throat again. Oh crap. This is it. My mouth is painfully dry all of the sudden. There is not a single word or syllable you can throw out. You need to surrender. End the pain for everyone. This is awful. Everything sucks. How did we get here?!
“I’m sorry, Frank. It’s just gone,” I say with shame, half genuine and half forced.
“That’s it?” He asks, stupefied embarrassment and pity in his voice.
“Yeah, that’s it. I’m so sorry.”
“Well, okay then,” he says while scribbling something down on the notepad in front of him. He couldn’t look me in the eye.
I make a beeline for my bag and head out the door quickly. My feet carry me past my friends in the hallway, through the lobby, and out into the fresh air. My head hung low. I felt gross. What the hell just happened. At 20 I’d already stacked up quite a few bad auditions but that one just took the cake. It was painful, embarrassing. Totally blindsided.
Rewind to the night before as I frantically pace my room in an attempt to stuff a whole Shakespearean monologue into my head. Stupid iambic pentameter. Stupid rhyming. What in the shit do these words even mean. Who cares. That old dumb dumb is dead and we shouldn’t even be doing this stupid play.
None of it really mattered. I just needed to get the words down in the right(ish) order. After all, I was a senior and one of Frank’s favorites (or so I told myself). He was my academic advisor. He directed me before. I had him for most of my theatre classes. Of course he was going to give me a legit role. This audition was just a formality, let’s be honest.
By the time I walked into the theater building on Georgia State’s campus, I had that monologue 70% memorized. Not ideal but I had done a lot more with a lot less in the past. So, ya know, no sweat. After signing in, I moseyed over to my theatre friends in the hallway outside the green room. We saw each other every single day in class. We were constantly in rehearsals together. Most of our spare time was spent hanging at each other’s apartments. We were probably going to get high later that very night. Nevertheless I’m sure we embraced like long lost relatives, as theatre kids are wont to do.
I could have practiced my monologue in those spare minutes before the audition. Maybe I could have bumped that 70% up to 72%. But as I always say, if you ain’t got it by now then it ain’t gonna happen. Which is mostly true. So instead I sat in the midst of a bunch of theatre nerds and gossiped.
After some time, the stage manager calls my name. I reflexively jump up, grab my bag, and walk into the theatre, headshot and resume in hand. It’s only then that I start to get a little nervous. Only then do I worry that 70% might not carry me. Only then does it dawn on me that I’m not as prepared as I could be. It was, quite literally, too little too late.
The drafty theatre air hit my skin. After some chitchat with Frank, I walk on stage. At this point the nerves really start to ramp up. The stage lights are hot; house lights are down. This feels more legit than I would like. He asks what monologue I’m doing and I tell him. I neglect to mention that it’s some bullshit I found online the other day from a play I’ve never read from a playwright I don’t understand. Soon, though, Frank would be able surmise all of this.
He tells me to go ahead whenever I’m ready. Deep breath. You got this. I start speaking. The monologue rolls off my tongue (the 70% of preparation was front-loaded). You’re doing great. This bullshit is about love and a flower or something. Reciting it is like singing a song in a foreign langue. As long as I hold onto the rhymes and sounds, I’ll be fine. I got this. Everything is fine until -
BAM!
Silence.
Nothingness.
Oh shit.
What’s the next line. Oh god. It’s okay. Breathe. Don’t rush this. Fuck what the fuck is the fucking next line. Holy god please help me!
To the uninitiated, this is called “going up” on a line. As a performer it’s a terrifying out-of-body experience. It’s being inhaled by a cloud of total blankness. A void. You can’t muddle your way through because there isn’t even the tiniest thread to grab onto. There’s nothing. Suddenly you don’t know what you’re doing, what play this is, how you got there, what’s happening, or who you are.
Going up isn’t reserved for the novice. Experienced actors can get hit with this too. It can happen when you’re so deeply enthralled in the moment that you totally lose a sense of what’s supposed to come next.
But mostly it happens when the lines aren’t there to begin with…
In a career first, I break down and ask Frank if I can start over. He was a little startled by this because it was an amateur move, not really my style. Normally I would wiggle my way back to the script. But, again, this is Shakespeare. It’s hard to wiggle. He agrees to let me start again.
Big deep long breath. Here we go. The words are flowing. The images are happening. Love. Flowers. Rhyme schemes. All the stuff. Everything is fine until -
BAM!
I went up again in the exact same spot. I physically could not remember the next word much less the next line. There was absolutely nothing in my brain at that point other than terror. Shame and adrenaline took the reins. System overload. I had to admit defeat.
When the cast list went up on the theatre doors a week later, I had the audacity to be shocked at the bullshit role I was given. I was going to play some yokel who died on page 19 of the script! This was unjust and cruel. I deserved better! I was a senior dammit! The irony here, of course, is that being cast at all after that fuckfire of an audition was an act of wild generosity on Frank’s part. Ahhh…to be young.
I never want to be caught at 70% again. Not with my art. Not with my relationships. Not with things that matter. The world and day jobs and taxes and rules and traffic and niceties and social media and emails and societal conventions and chores and loose acquaintances, those things, those things can get 70% (if they’re exceptionally lucky). But the real things, the true things, the structural DNA of the life that I want to live, those get 100%. Anything less feels like a shitty audition.