Audition: Getting Even With Shakespeare, a one-act play as part of the WinterFest 2010 festival.
Champions Studios
Note for the future: If there is a Non-Union open call from 6-9:30 ever again, DO NOT arrive anytime after 6pm. It's not like a party, you're not going to look like a douche if you're the first one there.
I saw "Avatar" that night, which is the source of my tardiness, but still if I'd hauled ass from Lincoln Center as soon as I got out of the movie, I could have gotten a decent slot. As it was I got there around 6:30 and all the slots were full, as well as a list full of write-in slots that went well beyond 9:30. Hopping on the bandwagon, I signed up for 10:45pm.
So now I was stuck with a dilemma, the Should I Stay or Should I Go question.
Normally, I feel like I would have just shrugged my shoulders and went home, accepting the fact that I got there too late and they wouldn't be able to see me. But I'd just seen Avatar in 3D, and spent a good three minutes in the middle of the movie crying because I wasn't IN that movie. Seriously.
So I was in the mood to audition for something.
I made a brief Starbucks run, grabbed a corn dog from Papaya dog, and I decided to hang out. If someone didn't show up, if people decided not to stay, you had best believe I was going to slip my ass in there.
As it turns out, the people running auditions were incredibly generous with their time. There was no one coming into the studio after them, so they said they would stay until closing, which was at 11pm. They bumped a few people to this morning, but they said they'd see as many people as possible.
I stuck around, played around with my phone and doodled in my notebook. The studio across the hall from auditions were having some kind of dance battle for inner-city teenagers. Awesome. It was like a clown car the way lines of kids in big puffy Northface jackets just kept piling in that room, and every time the door opened the hallway filled with thumping bass and the sound of "Hey! Ho!"
There were these three sassy black ladies in charge who sat in the hallway, and every time some kid would come out of the room, they'd grab him by the arm, lead him down the hall saying, "Keep it moving, these people are auditioning!"
Now, having attended Benjamin Cardozo High School, I happen to know that having that many teenagers packed into one room dancing to hip hop music was a bad idea, and it was only a matter of time before something happened, which in a crowded hallway like that in Champions Studios, would no doubt erupt into a stampede like at that America's Next Top Model call when someone yelled, "bomb."
Thankfully, it wasn't until about a quarter to ten, when most of the people waiting to audition had gone home and there were only a handful of us still sitting in the hall. A parade of kids came up to the door to join the dance party, and then all of a sudden, someone's up in someone's grill and before you know it:
Gang Warfare.
Well, it was actually like Little Miss Gang Warfare, because the fight was between two twelve year olds.
The sassy black ladies were very quick in using force to drive the rowdy teenagers out of the hallway, but I do feel bad for the girl whose monologue was interrupted by a chorus of, "Say it to mah face! Say it to mah face!" coming from the outer hallways.
Their tactic was brilliant too. They all had those bathroom air fresheners, like Lysol, and they just started spraying the girls with them. First in the torso, but when they wouldn't back off, they went for the eyes.
It was hilarious.
Needless to say, that was the end of the dance party.
I was one of the last people to audition. There were only two girls after me, one of whom had a Saturday morning slot, and was just hanging around on the off-chance they'd be able to fit her in. I'm sure they got her in right after me, because as I'd predicted, not everyone stuck around.
My monologues seemed to go well. They laughed, which after five straight hours of monologues, is surprising. For my Shakespeare monologue I decided to do Hamlet's "To be or not to be," but as one of those girls on "My Super Sweet Sixteen." I figured if anything else, it would be memorable.
And I was right, because they just called me an hour ago to call me back for one of the roles today at 1:30.
Sweet.
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