There IS something I can write about and it'll only take a second.
Auditions. But not just any auditions. Auditions where they want you to both read from a script and improv broad physical comedy at the same time.
Case in point, my recent "third-time's-a-charm?" disaster audition for the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. One look at my resume will tell you, even if you've never worked with me before, that I'm PROBABLY a top-drawer Shakespeare actor seeing as how that's all I ever DO.
The initial audition was dynamite.
The callback was not.
You're screwed either way. If you try to nail the physical comedy in the cold reading, you have to put the script down to do it, you stop saying the lines, then there's the awkward moment of picking the script back up and finding your place. The rhythm gets completely thrown and the scene doesn't work. The casting guy assumes the flatness of the scene comes from the fact that you're not a good actor. And you don't get cast.
Or you can just do light physical comedy so you can keep your place in the script and keep the scene trotting along and a brisk and lively pace. But then the casting director is disappointed that you didn't do more physical stuff and figures you must not be a creative person or a very funny comedian. And you don't get cast.
So the only way around this is to have memorized the scene in advance--but since you don't know which scene you're reading you just better be prepared to do the entire play--and have it all staged before you show up for the callback.
Or be a robot.
Frustrating.
3 comments:
Ahhh, you probably did much better than you thought...
Are you telling me you don't have all of Shakespeare's works committed to memory yet? And you call yourself a serious actor!
Quick, give me Gloucester's opening speech in Richard III! And while you're doing that, do a double-time tap routine, juggle some flaming bananas, and renovate a bathroom!
I mean, if you can't do that...I just don't know if you can make it.
Fork, you could lift your pinky finger and be funny. And you have great hair. And from what I hear, (mostly from you) great abs. They're crazy to not cast you. I think any Shakespeare comedian should have great abs. They obviously don't know what they're doing.
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