Caveman Defense
I was very stressed out about today for a while. I had an audition for Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman in the afternoon AND I had to have my writing five show, Sweet Pumpkin Pie and other Niceties, memorized for tonight. Effectively forcing me to memorize an entire show and an audition piece all in less than a week. I don't know how many of you have tried memorizing stuff before... but it was difficult to juggle memorization with everything else I was trying to do since last Monday.
Needless to say, I woke up quite early this morning and started with some of the more troublesome scenes of the writing five show. After going through the entire show twice, I then worked on my audition piece about twenty times before, after, and during such stupid errands as eating, showering, bill paying, and checkbook balancing. I was so nervous, I left my apartment over an hour before my audition to go up to Belmont (not too far on the El... certainly not an hour and fifteen minutes away). So, because I left insanely early, I got up to the Lakeshore Theatre for my audition about forty-five minutes early. When I got there, I saw two people I "know": Garrett, who's a nice guy who works in the Second City Office; and Marc, who's done his own one-man show at Donny's Skybox and who has been on the Second City Detroit stage and directed... um... something. I don't know Marc personally, but when I saw he was there... I knew I had no chance. Actually, I figured I had no chance before I even got there. But, seeing the competition (mostly men in their mid to late 30s who have about a billion times more experience than I do... who all look a lot more likely to be able to successfully defend cavemen than I am) just reaffirmed in my mind that I wasn't going to get the part. And then I thought to myself: "Look at yourself... you came from Big Rapids, MI... you have no acting training what-so-ever: completely self-taught... and you're auditioning for a ONE MAN show in Chicago. Fuckin' enjoy how far you've come... smell the GD roses!"... and I did. My anxiety washed over me... and I felt so very tranquil. And then there I was, sitting on the floor of the lobby of the Lakeshore Theatre (from right about where that panorama was taken), watching nervous, NERVOUS grown men mouthing the words to the very same audition piece I was about to go perform. And I never felt better. Gellman calls it the "fuck it" adjustment (a phrase he says he stole from Del Close). It's when you walk into an audition you don't care about, and you nail the shit out of it... because you're not nervous, because you don't care. Fuck it. Anyway... I started shooting the poo with two of the other guys there to audition, and I couldn't help but thinking "do they think I'm too young for this? I bet. Are they as sincere about wanting everyone to do well as I am? I doubt it." But it didn't matter because... fuck it. Then it was time for me to go in. Diana Grove handles all the casting of the various "caveman defenders" and she was the one who opened the door and called my name. I shook her hand and she directed me to a waiver form. They were going to film the audition, and was I cool with it? Sure! Why not?! (so if I ever get famous, that tape will, no doubt, be sold on EBay for 15-25 dollars!) I signed the form, hit the stage... and noticed three people in the audience: Diana; her husband Todd, who does PR for the show; and someone... I don't know who he was. I then proceeded to do my piece. And, for two minutes, I owned that stage. At least I felt like I owned it... my piece wasn't perfect, but I would give myself a 9 out of a possible 10 for what I wanted to do (the guy before me gave himself an "8 out of 10 of what I wanted to do out there"... what a dip!). I didn't get Diana to laugh like her email asked ("make me laugh" she said. Yeah, right... you've heard this monologue at least two dozen times today and I'M going to make it funny NOW? Not likely). But I did get the third guy who I don't know to laugh. A couple of times. That made me feel pretty good, actually. And, whatever! There's no way, out of all the talent that she saw today, that I could possibly have gotten that part. So I don't care... I actually did my best; and I've now had one good audition and one bad one. And I know the difference. I'll probably do one more audition (a touring Romeo and Juliet... paid!) and then just forget about auditioning for a while, and just focus on getting myself a stupid job to pay some bills... and on writing, which is something I haven't done in a while.
From that audition, I headed back to Second City (stopping at the Subway on Wells) to run lines for rehearsal tonight. I got up to the Second City around 5 PM for a 7 PM rehearsal, so I had plenty of time to eat, run lines, and run the lines again. Surprisingly, one of the other actors, Kim, showed up at about 5:45 PM. Kim is the girl I like, remember her? There is a similar "fuck it" adjustment made with her as well: She's blonde, attractive, fun, funny, has a great laugh, and went to Yale. Yeah... attractive and either smarter than me, richer than me, or both. She's way out of my league. I'm not even sure we're even playing the same sport... that's how far out of my league this young lady is... but, since I don't care how far out of my league she is, I'm able to talk to her pretty easily. She's actually younger than I am... by almost a full year. Interesting. Then Chris showed up a little after 6 PM... remember him? He's the dude from Notre Dame who I make out with in like three scenes. We're close. And then we ran a whole bunch of scenes together. I was actually pretty good off book, to be honest.
Then rehearsal came. We started off learning the song. It is HILARIOUS! It is seriously an awesome song, and I wish I had a bigger part in it. I'm one of the dead people... Dead Person #2, to be exact. It doesn't really matter that I don't have a bigger part, it's a hilarious song... I lied, I really wish I had the lead. Story of my life, I guess. Regardless, the first half of rehearsal was learning the song... and then we came back and ran the entire show off book. We all did really REALLY well. And I loved messing Kim up by looking at her intently. I'm such an ass. Even Brian, who seemed really worried about it before rehearsal, did really well. And so, all I have to do the rest of the week is misc errands and brush up my lines. What a relief being done with today is! Hope you had as good a Monday as I did.