February 13, 1998
This young man, DAN, had a lot going on. The part was a juicy one, lots of drama and angst and pathos. Dan had been molested as a fifteen year-old by the head priest of the parish (or so he believes wholeheartedly). The sides faxed into my apartment were 18 pages long, 11 of which were to be prepared for today's audition, including the meeting/confrontation between the grown-up Dan (me) and the priest. It was a lot to digest, process, memorize, rehearse, prepare in one evening, especially with an X-Files audition earlier in the day. But I guess my job is only going to get harder in that regard. We hope.
I spent a lot of hours working on the three scenes that were to be prepared and I focused heavily on the third one, the confrontation. I felt it would be in my best interests to be able to cry as he confronted his past. Now, this is not something I can just pull off at the drop of a hat. In fact, I have really never been able to cry on cue. The closest I have come in the past was during The Hot L Baltimore a year ago and those tears took about ten minutes to generate in my eye-balls. So this would be a challenge. But as I worked on the lines and ran the scene at home, I reached the point a couple of times where I could bring out that depth of emotion. I then focused a great deal of energy toward getting all of the lines in the third scene, including some long, difficult monologues, completely memorized so I could turn in a solid performance. By the time 2:30pm rolled around, I felt a bit unsure, but ready to tackle the challenge.
The curtain never rose on that performance.
I drove out to Canoga Park where the auditions and subsequently the callbacks (if successful) would be taking place. I hadn't seen Sheila Guthrie in a while so it was good to see her. She works in Jeff Greenberg's office and I was happy they had called me in for a drama since I had only done sitcoms for them.
We did the first scene and I felt very good about it. Sheila seemed to like it. We did the second scene and I felt it was solid but Sheila made a few adjustments to it. She wanted to see a more bottled rage in the character basically. And so we did the second scene again and I tried to incorporate the bottled rage aspect. No dice. Something about that second reading didn't ring true to her. And that was it! My audition was over. All of the hours I had spent working on the third scene, all of the anxiety and preparation for the crying, all the time and effort wasted. It made me so mad. All of the things I could have done last night and today instead of agonizing over that scene. Instead, I prepared the "lost scene" from Nothing Sacred, on the cutting room floor before a single breath passed my lips.
So what's the lesson? One, I guess there's hope for me being able to
generate tears while performing. Never got to try it in the office,
though, so it could just be an at home phenomenon. And two, as the
roles get more significant, the hours I am going to have to put into
this job are going to escalate. And when I don't get the part or even
get to do the scene, the let-down is going to be all that much
greater. What do you do? Same thing I've been doing for six years
now, I guess. Look ahead to the next one.