Wednesday, 13 August 2003 | Audition

I'm sitting on some loose slats of wood that are stacked in a corner. They're uncomfortable, but I can't think about rearranging them; I'm too nervous, and I'd rather focus on remembering my lines. I know my lines pretty well, or at least I did a few minutes ago, but I'm afraid that they'll scatter at the moment I need them, like roaches responding to the flip of a light switch.

I've been given a form to fill out, something about the sonnet I've chosen, the dates I'm free, and my favorite place in New York, but I'm feeling too panicked to be remotely clever, so I fill it out in a quick, bland sweep. The person sitting next to me doesn't seem nervous. He's wearing a gas station shirt, has a mess of layered brown hair, and is lounging on the slats of wood, in direct opposition to my hunched-over body (which is tearing away at cuticles like it's unwrapping candy). I can see the number on his form; he auditions immediately after me.

The women across from me are quietly going over their lines, rehearsing them with each other in staccato bursts. I can't see their numbers.

The building I'm in is apparently a maze of auditions. I can hear a hint of theater in almost every word that I can make out, and there are layers and layers of mismatched singing voices emanating from hollow-sounding rooms. Pianos, directive words, the same phrase being uttered repeatedly, growing with passion. I feel like I'm sitting on the set of Fame.

My name is called by a guy I've met before. He jokingly mispronounces "Whiteman" and smiles at me to let me know he was kidding; I don't remember how he said it ("Whitman"?), and I don't remember if I thought to smile back. I don't remember much about the actual audition at all, except that I was standing in a small room behind a piece of tape, with a mirror in front of me and a digital video camera pointed at me. I do know that my lines felt limp and lifeless at that moment; I was too worried about forgetting them to make them seem believable.

Post-audition, I'm sitting on the floor in the hallway, wishing I would've practiced my lines until I'd engraved them on my brain, that I would've not stayed out so late the night before, that live performances could be Photoshopped, that I would be instantly good at whatever I tried, that I didn't feel so exposed and disappointed.

The audition room door opens again, and the guy in the gas station shirt skips out, proclaiming, "That was fun!," in direct opposition to my anxiety and my upside-down stomach.

...

That was a month ago; today I learned I got the part. The guy with the gas station shirt is going to be in it too.

...

Unrelated: I put up a few more pictures, from the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island (in June). I missed the actual parade but got there in time for leftover mermaids and rain.