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I blog. I also mother, wife, create, preserve, recycle, cook, act, quilt, exercise, laugh, write, lolligag, work, volunteer, sing, and sometimes sleep.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

The Glamorous Life

Being an actor is weird.

I'm at home on a stage with lights on me, lines memorized, an orchestra under me, an audience in front of me, taking them on a ride, telling them a story, making them love me or hate me or feel sorry for me...and then they clap.  This feels normal.  This feels right.  Curtain call, actually looking at those faces for the first time, seeing the enthused clapping, the polite clapping, the bored kind of clapping, the too cool for school barely clapping, the joyous standing ovation clapping...that feeling is amazing.  It's a drug.  When it works for you, you want more of it.  But most of acting isn't that way...most of acting is drudgery getting to that point.  And it starts with auditions.

I actually LIKE auditions.  I'm one of those weirdos that sees it as a time to play.  A time to practice, to give a little performance, if you're lucky you get the chance, and if you're prepared and have some ability,  you do a good job and make a good impression..and usually I am good about walking away when they are done.  It's rare that I get nervous, but it happens.  It's rare that I get disappointed, but it happens.  I recognize that I could give the best performance I have ever given and they'll decide to cast a man instead of a woman in the part of "woman" (yes, that happened).  Logic is no road out of Crazytown applies here as well...but it can be a little weird.

Hubs is constantly bewildered at the common practice of "no news is bad news".  The idea that I only ever hear back if I book something, as is the practice, is bizarre to him.  This is where walking away is better.  Less crazymaking.  But what are we left with when we walk away?  Scraps.  Actors get scraps.  So I try to cling to the good stuff, because goodness knows I remember the bad.  I even started a journal to write down each time ANYONE says anything nice to me, a specific compliment that touches me...so that I make myself remember them.  I am not always successful at writing these things down, but I am trying to get better at it, because the good stuff doesn't stick.  When the casting director at my session looks me right in the eye, pauses a moment, and tells me "You are EXCELLENT."  That actually felt real.  Even if she was lying.  Even if I don't book it.  I am putting that in my pocket and I can mark down that moment as a success cause it's what I have.  Until the next curtain call.