Hibernation

Let's try to make this happen in the spring.

I attended an open call yesterday for some touring thing for junior through high schoolers. It paid. It paid well. But I wasn't entirely enamored of the idea of taking off on a national tour effective immediately through June, especially after having seen clips of their previous shows. So I didn't practice my monologues as much as I should have. I watched laggy, unsynced 30 Rock on streaming Netflix when I should have been going over my monologues, to be honest. I didn't really prepare for the audition. I basically coasted, and surprise surprise, nothing came of the audition.

Yesterday was the first audition I've attended since the Itamar Moses play, which I did want to do but treated sort of as an exercise for myself rather than a job I truly wanted to book. There were four sides and I latched on to my favorite, the sort of kookiest one, while reading through and practicing the other three but not really thinking about how to make the absolute best impression I could with them. If my objective had really been "get this job" rather than "have fun and do the best you can," I would have strategically focused on the more "normal" side from the same track. Get cast first, then you can have all the fun you want doing outrageous Russian accents and let them pull you back or steer you away from ridiculous directions, once you have the job. But no, I let my first impression be "she picks the crazy stuff and might be fun" rather than "she is appropriate for this play." Even "she is a good actor" is a less important impression to make than "she is appropriate for the project we are casting."

The auditions I'm going to (mostly open calls) are so few and far in between at this point, and I'm working so often at my full-time job that I am rusty, very very rusty, whenever I dust off my monologues (and mix all my metaphors) for auditions. I am out of practice. I think back to the casting process for the one gig I've booked since being here, Cato, and I remember how much I practiced and practiced my monologues for the open call. I had time then, I was unemployed and I think I'd only been in NY for about three weeks. When I got called in to read for Lucia, I memorized the side. This had nothing to do with being a good actor, it was something that had been mentioned in the email as being a plus because of the time constraints on the rehearsal process. I memorized the side to show them I could do what they wanted, not to show them I was a good actor. It was to show them I was appropriate for the project. At the third round, it was a different side to read and I don't think I did anything especially remarkable - I was just doing the best I could with the text at that point. But I remember putting so much effort into this job that I wanted. Most of the things I've been auditioning for - they'd be really great, but I'm not feeling the same sort of desperation to get cast that I was right at the beginning. I don't think that's a good thing.

Part of the problem is that I am out of practice. I have been out of school for two years now, and looking at all the credits on my resume acquired between graduating and Cato, I had to audition for exactly half of them. And, looking at my goals, I don't have any of the qualifications to get seen for, let alone book, any of it: television, film, voiceover? No training whatsoever. I keep saying I don't have enough money to take classes, but if these are my goals, I should be making them a priority. When is this mysterious abstract time in the future when I'm supposed to have the money to do these things? There is never going to be a good, convenient time to start training. Now is the time, that is bloody well why I moved here and it is time to remember that.

So, for the next few weeks I will be doing research into classes, starting with voiceover. On the 19th there is a Bat meeting and one of the Bats is going to be talking about his own experience with voiceover, so I'll do my own research until I hear what he has to say. By the end of January, I should know what programs I want to enroll in if I haven't started them already. February and March are for taking the classes and working the job to afford the classes, and by springtime I will emerge a new beast with new items to add to the "Training" section of my resume.

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, partly because I almost didn't notice that the New Year had crept up. I had totally blinked and missed Christmas. Until January 26th, it is still the year of the Rat, my birth year. I've still got a couple of weeks to make some decisions that count. These are not my New Year's resolutions, these are my winter plans. All you readers (all two of you), keep me accountable.