I was one of those theatre kids in high school who you probably threw dirty looks at because we were obnoxiously in-your-face and fancied ourselves hil-ar-ious. After a phase of treating everything like it was a performance, I calmed down, went to college, and busied myself with other things. I always missed theatre but it seemed like you couldn't be involved unless you were a "serious artist."
Around Christmas I happened to go on the web page for the local community theatre and saw they were holding auditions for Little Shop of Horrors. I put the idea in my back pocket for a while, and by the time I decided to casually check the site again I was startled to find auditions were taking place that evening. An internal debate ensued culminating in me making the decision to just go for it and scrambling to find and practice 30 seconds of a song to sing for the audition. I belted a few ballads in my car on the way home from work, eliciting a few double takes from passing drivers. A quick hello and kiss for Mark and I was off to the theatre.
I had no idea what to expect, but was still taken aback by the turnout for auditions. Thirty or so people were crammed into the lobby filling out info sheets and sizing each other up. I grabbed a paper and nestled into an empty space on a bench sandwiched between two people who were about 15 years older than me. The woman to my right looked reasonably normal, but it was when I took a look at the Guy to my left that my nervousness ebbed away for a second while I choked back a snicker.
Here, at a small community theatre in a small college town, Guy had come to the audition dressed up to look exactly like the main part. He had the nerdy outfit of the lead character down to a tee, sporting thick rimmed glasses, a sweater vest and bowtie. I caught a snippet of the conversation he was having about recently moving to Georgia from Chicago where he was trying to make it as an actor. I didn't catch how exactly he went from Chicago to small-time Georgia, but I could only deduce that he held his talents in a little higher esteem than they actually deserved.
I turned my focus to filling out my own form, relieved to see this wasn't going to be a super serious audition when two of the questions were "What is your street name?" and "Draw a picture on the back of this paper of a unicorn doing something unlikely." Just as I was finishing my drawing of a unicorn sitting at a computer and complaining that someone defriended him on Facebook (brilliant, I know), Guy tapped me on the shoulder.
"Do you think I should staple or paper clip my resume to the form?" he asked, holding a copy of an actor resume and two full-page headshots. I looked at him blankly.
"Uh....." I managed to get out.
"I think I'll see if they have a stapler," Guy said, completely unfazed. As he got up I shot a confused look to the woman on the other side of me, who just shrugged a little.
The director came out and explained that we would all wait in the lobby and go in the theatre one by one to sing our song snippet. The first audition started, and we realized that we could hear the audition from the lobby. We all lapsed into a nervous silence. All of us except Guy. Oh, no. He's a thespian. He stood up and started making a production out of stretching and shaking it out while we all watched him out of the corner of our eyes. When they called his name I curiously listened to see what kind of chops this ridiculous human being actually had.
The sound that filled the lobby next was something of a cross between a 13-year-old boy going through a particularly rough patch of puberty and a goat being castrated. I winced as Guy kept trying to hit higher and higher notes, voice painfully breaking which he seemed to think he could fix by just singing at a louder volume. After what felt like a million tortured years, it was over and Guy made his way out of the theatre to sit back next to me.
"I am glad we did those vocals warm-ups," he said a little breathlessly. "I think it went better than usual."
I mean, really. This is just not even the kind of shit you can make up.
By the time I was done with my audition Guy had whipped out a Macbook from the large man bag he'd brought with him and was silently mouthing words to a script he had pulled up on the computer. Complete with hand motions and everything, he sat their pantomiming while I waited for the rest of the auditioners to have their turn. Guy suddenly turned to me.
"What kind of acting experience do you have?"
"Oh," I said, caught off-guard. "Nothing major, just a few things in high school. But that was a long time ago."
"What is your job?" I asked politely.
"Well, I'm working as a janitor."
And that was the end of that conversation. But it must have sparked some fond memories of the Shakespeare production he was in because the last time I looked over before the director came back out Guy was grinning ear to ear watching a computer slide show of himself onstage.
They didn't call my number to stay for the next phase of auditions, so I didn't feel too encouraged about my chances. To my surprise, the cast list arrived in my e-mail inbox the next morning and my name was on it. I made the rounds of calls to my family, telling my sister that I met someone that will be a lot of her musical theatre major peers in 20 years. Just to be on the safe side, I waited until we had our first read-through last week to be absolutely sure something had gone terribly wrong in the order of the universe and Guy was going to be my fellow castmate. As soon as I could breathe a sigh of relief at his absence I knew it was totally blog-worthy.
So now I am resuscitating my career as an actress extraordinaire, though Mark doesn't seem to fully appreciate that he is now living in the midst of celebrity. I just can't work in these conditions. No one understands my genius.
Except maybe Grover. He's just the gift that keeps on giving.
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