So, What Do You Do?

Random Person in Social Context: So, now that I've finished telling you all about my boring old work at a hedge fund/law firm/publishing house/hospital/battered woman's shelter/research lab/senator's office/firehouse/bat cave, what is it that you do?

Me: Um...I'm an actress. Tor? Tress?
(feels pretentious)
Me: I mean, I act.
(still feel pretentious)
Me: I mean, I try to.
(nervous giggle)
Me: Sort of. Ha ha.
(more nervous giggles)
Me: Well, not right now. Really.
(frowns)
Me: I'm a dilettante.
(gets blank stare)
Me: I mean, I'd like to be a celebutante. But I can't. Cuz I'm not a debutante. Or a celebrity. And I like wearing underwear. Ha ha.
(really blank stare)
Me: Gosh, where did my drink go?
(exits rapidly in direction of bar.)

So, as I'm not poised to inherit a hotel chain anytime soon, celubtantery is not what I do. What I do, at the moment, besides struggle through power funk hop hoppaerobics while being outdanced by a badass gang of asian legal midgets, is audition. And I have several coming up this week.

You know, getting ready for an audition is not unlike getting ready for a party that you know your crush is going to be at. You have to look perfect. Be charming. And hope above all hopes that someone really, really likes you. It's an all day process. In the morning, I go to the gym to work off some of that nervous energy and get those endorphins flowing. Plus, Cosmo says that if you exercise the day of a party, it makes your muscles pop out so you look more toned. And then if I wash my hair right before lunch, it will be at its golden sunshiny best by an early evening audition. The hair is important, people - shampoo, condition, volumizing mousse, decide whether or not to go straight or curly (time to plug in curling iron)...and then there's tanning moisturizer, vanilla scented moisturizer, outfit selection, makeup application, perfume spritzing, packing up the headshot, resume, and various time occupying activities (book, ipod, knitting.) And of course, in between the various beauty procedures, running the 1 - 2 minute (depending on how generous the auditioners are) monologue about a million times. So much effort! How little they know. Or appreciate it. And of course I spend all day long whining about how stressful/annoying it all is, which the BFF had to endure over Starbucks today.

The only thing that really gets me is how much waiting is involved. Firstly, you have to budget lots of extra travel time if you're going somewhere unholy - like Brooklyn - like I did today. Nextly, it's sort of an unspoken rule that you need to get there like 45 min to an hour early if you want a decent spot, so you have an hour of waiting outside before the audition "officially" begins, than 1 to 2 hours of waiting inside for your monologue - a 60 second shot a part which (factoring in travel time) you've probably been waiting 3 hours for. The sick thing is, I love that 60 seconds so much it's totally worth it. I actually love auditioning, once I get into it.

Tonight was a doozy. I got there a little early, and walked down to the end of the street, which was at the edge of the water. I had this perfect view of Manhattan at twilight, and I got all mushy, looking at that great big city of lights and thinking how unbelievably lucky I am to live there. No wonder people think it's a place where anything can happen - it really looked magical. So I headed up the hill to see if I could make any magic happen.

I was the third girl there, after a brunette and a redhead. Turned out it was good I went early, because another girl (later) did my same monologue! Horrors. It was such a weird set up. The theatre is a converted church (very cool space) but they did the audition in the gutted chapel space which now must host some kind of kid's program as the walls were covered in glitter collages. And they had us all do the monologues in front of eachother, which is NEVER done. Plus the director was totally silent until he whispered your name at which point you had a two-second whisper conversation so nobody had any idea what was going on. The redhead (henceforth known as Puck) and I bonded over the fact that it was the most singularly bizarre audition we'd been to.

However, I made it to the second round - scene readings - and it all became totally worth it. The basic plot of the show is that Oberon and Puck (from Midsummer) show up in 30s Hollywood to cause mischief. And although I thought they were going to read me for the fresh-faced ingenue, they read me for the dumb blonde bombshell sexpot! I may have to change the name of this blog...anyway, the scene was ridiculously fun, as I got to wiggle around and practice my Marilyn voice, and how can you not love a character who's opening line is "I'm a slut!"

So, what do you do?
I am, potentially, the Slut Queen of Hollywood.

Callbacks on Wednesday - keep your fingers crossed!