Auditioning For Life

Webster’s defines audition as “a trial performance to appraise an entertainer's merits”. 
I would posit that the word entertainer is unnecessarily restrictive: an audition could be anything in the spotlight of human interaction.  People audition each other for relationships. Local businesses audition for a spot on the mental list of shops you’ll return to. Hell, little old ladies audition for neighborhood grandma.  Kids audition their teachers but often they get stuck with pre-casting.  Dysfunctional families try to recast and rewrite after the show’s opened. We’re all auditioning!  

Spoiled for Real Life
an actor gets
a chance at that limited run
to put on a hat 
then just take it off again 
actually, no—take that back—
not spoiled
only hyper-aware
that the process of pulling together a show
is fraught in the same way life is
you’re still going to scour the Callboard listings
in repeated attempts to prove otherwise
the show is a crap-shoot
but that Audition might not only be
controllable: even better,
it might be portable. 

A well developed ability to tune to the vibes you pick up in Life serves you well in the theater, hence the comment heard amongst actors: ‘I could use that’.  How global might this tendency be?  A mere shift in focus, a flick of the karaoke switch and wow, those folks who are generally petrified at the thought of appearing in the spotlight are up there shaking their booties. It fills a need, it’s harmless and safe. Why else would karaoke be so popular? In the continuum of human exhibitionism some of us are poised razor sharp and others can charitably be called a bit dull, but we are all destined to participate unless we’re comatose or dead.

This brings up the specter of autism, which RAINMAN made a household word? There are indications that whatever makes a ‘normal’ person (read auditionee) get out there and go for it is a function lacking in autistic people. We’re back on that same continuum in this consideration. We all have to perform on a daily basis.   As a subset of people who might be attracted to show biz (or art, music, dance—you name it), an immeasurably complex set of neural firings sometimes leads high-functioning autistics to find release in the practice of performance. Even without the necessary chops to do the social thing in a typical manner, they pull out inner resources at will and in a dark room with people watching, transform themselves.  The link between this magic and everyday life is that in some fashion we are all ‘on’ as a condition of existence.  Looking for love, gigs, cheap thrills, satisfaction, answers. Or employment.

When besides the Depression, have so many had so much need to primp, puff up and almost prostitute themselves to ‘get the part’?  It should be obvious that your average HR directors are not going to be swayed by tarty behavior any more than those people behind the table at the far end of the room are going to love you more if you come in stark naked with spoons around your neck.  If anything, your level of desperation will not read ‘authentic’, it will simply make them uncomfortable.  A friend has recently told me, in the kindest terms, that she thinks being friendly in a job interview situation is a trap. There’s a very fine line between a professional happy face and the kind of disclosure that gets you back out on the sidewalk wondering what happened. 

In any kind of auditioning, of course, the more you practice, the more accustomed you become to the ups and downs, the subtle signals that the thing is over, the hash is slung, the fish is fried. You’re toast or you’re not, there’s no going back. Or there are the really fun times where you don’t have a clue—like the end of that second date when the fellow sits there next to you in the car and sez, ‘well, I’d jump your bones, but I’m seeing someone else at the moment.’  Your brain goes, ‘well, if we GOT to the jumping bones part and I found out you were seeing someone else, you wouldn’t HAVE any bones when I was done with you.’ Now see, the vibes were such that he probably intuited that anyway.  No harm, no foul.

Ask any actress what the gender ratio was at her last open call. Stop any soprano and ask whether in her next life she’d rather be a baritone. These are difficult questions, but they become even more bothersome as life progresses.  Of course, with some, male or female, the quest for a job is not relevant; it’s retirement that is an issue and how to enjoy it while still healthy enough to travel, play golf or hold your water til you make it to the facilities.  For actors, it’s the parts that dry up.  Should you resurrect that favorite monolog from five years ago? Not likely, anymore than you can submit a resume from ’98. So whether it’s sport or livelihood, you’re watching the folks on the moving sidewalk and wondering when or if you might try jumping on.  Again.  ‘Cause you know you’re gonna spend your life working that audition trail.

Out & About The SF Bay Area

Ici on est toujours gai! The 27th Annual SF International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival runs June 12-29. The SF International Film Festival from April 17 through May 1st snuck into town with such luminaries as Dustin Hoffman, recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award for acting, and Robert Altman, who gets the big Director prize, the Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement, except it’s not called that anymore at the desire of Kurosawa’s family: it’s now called the Film Society Award, no particular reason given.  Some of the films screened are already in general release, such as Patrice Leconte’s The Man on the Train and John Malkovich’s The Dancer Upstairs. Malkovich’s directorial debut is more politically risky than Robert Duvall’s recent Assassination Tango and Javier Bardem is certainly prettier than Robert.   

Speaking of risks, how much moxie does it take to stand up in front of your parents, a panel of judges and ESPN, not once (hopefully), but repeatedly—until you make one infinitesimal mistake and boom! you’re out.  Jeffrey Blitz’s Academy Award nominated documentary Spellbound follows some families with youngsters who have a talent for spelling that has brought them to the pinnacle:  the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. The contest was inaugurated in 1925, in fact we get to see the first winner, (the word was “gladiolus”), who says his father was so moved by his son’s victory that this typically unemotional man leaped onto the stage and embraced his son. Amazingly, as well-made documentaries always seem to demonstrate, the filmmaker has either gotten help from the gods or just knows how to pick ‘em. How else to explain that out of the millions of kids who enter, down to the thousands who go to the next levels, and the 249 who go to Washington, out of the ten kids he follows from the finals, the winner is in his group (her winning word: “logorrhea”).  This could get boring pretty quickly, but the filmmaker knows what he’s after—real people, from all sorts of socioeconomic/ethnic backgrounds—who clearly just are into this crazy relationship with words. Not necessarily English, either. We watch contestant after contestant ask the judges for etymological references so that they can figure out how English has borrowed from French, German, Italian—you name it—as it obviously gives them a great advantage to know how a word has been devised.  My favorite was “viand” (pronounced with a long i).  The young woman thought for a moment, then skewered the judge with a piercing look and asked if it had a relationship to the French word for “meat”, which of course is exactly what it means in French.  As soon as he gave the affirmative, she gave a triumphantly quick spelling and returned to her place amongst the rapidly emptying chairs. 

Triumphant is word that aptly describes Sarah Jones’ one woman show Surface Transit.
I know I’ve slammed some performance single participant efforts in the past, even though my credo is ‘if you cain’t somethin’ nice, don’t say anything’, because they just irritate me something powerful, especially coming from women.  When the good stuff hits, then you are in awe—no doubt, no equivocations. Ms. Jones (no relation, that I know of), has got some antecedents in Moms Mabley, Whoopi Goldberg, Anna Deveare Smith, Tracy Ullman and Lily Tomlin, and coming up fast, Margaret Cho. These are all brilliant women and Sarah Jones can step right in and hold her own.  Is my reaction a gender thing?  Must be a component in there that does speak to the distaff side.  Somehow we must own what she is saying from a battle of the sexes standpoint, especially when she crosses over to characterize the men with such withering accuracy. The fine points of her body language are unerring.  I have to admit that I had not heard in its entirety the song that she finishes the show with, but girl, do I get it now: Your Revolution (Will Not Happen Between These Thighs). Sorry, boys.

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 © 2003 Claudine Jones

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