So, I'm in Seattle.
I arrived here last night, driving too fast and too late. I had just completed a performance of
Romeo & Juliet and the first reading of MacBeth. I can honestly say MacBeth is going to be wonderful - we have a great cast. Mostly. There are still a few holes. I need to find a couple boys for the younger roles. Oh, and yeah - I need a MacBeth. That's kinda important. There are a couple of possibilities, but I want to be really careful with casting this part - obviously, the entire production kind of depends on him.
So...Seattle. I'm up here for the
Puget Sound (Seattle) Unified General Audition. I've done these before in St. Louis (Midwest), Philadelphia (Northeast), Atlanta (Southeast) and Memphis (I think that was Southeast again - they move around down there.) Oh, and a small one in Wisconsin that was kind of a "warm-up" when I was in college. After moving to the Northwest, I was searching out the regional auditions - it's a good way to get seen by a lot of companies really quickly. This far I've found this one (interestingly called
TPS...) and the
PATAs in Portland, which are in two weeks - and those are really just a local audition, like the WI one or the ones they have going on in MN now. I wish I could find one that covers the whole Northwest region.
I have to say, this one is a bit disappointing. Less than 50 companies (usually they've been 200+) and almost all based in Seattle. It's not really "regional" so much as "local." They don't even have callbacks on site, like the others have had. I'll probably have to come back up to Seattle for each theatre individually as they have their own auditions. Love that three hour drive.
I wonder why this area is so far behind the rest of the country in this kind of audition? Is it because there is more space between cities out here? I mean, where are the little summer stock theatres? They have to be out here. Where do THEY audition? I still like going away for a couple weeks to small towns and doing summerstock - but I'm getting older - my time doing that is limited. I may go back to
New Hampshire this summer, if I can make it make it make ANY financial sense, just to get back to that kind of environment. If I could couple it with a return trip to the
Theatre Barn.... hmmm......
The audition went well. Really well, actually. I was thrown in on the Equity day because I'm an EMC (basically means I've worked at some equity theatres in the past even though I'm not a member) and they needed to use the EMCs to fill in the day. The bad thing about this is that a lot of non-union theatres don't attend this day because they can't cast equity actors. Of course, they CAN cast ME.... *sigh*. The good news is that I got three minutes instead of two. No worries, I figured I'd do my two regular pieces, which are perhaps a tad over a minute each - no need to drag things out. The auditors would appreciate the extra time.
I hit the "time" mark right before my last sentence. What the heck? The only thing I can think of is that they were laughing a lot during the first piece - so maybe I added time holding for laughs? No bad thing, that. And I did go up on my lines once. In the monologue I've been doing for almost 10 years. I guess you're never safe from the memory gnomes.
Now I'm sitting in a food court waiting for a meeting with a director that wasn't auditing today but agreed to meet for lunch. For some reason, this food court is riddled with high school students.
Excellent. I thought I had taken the day off.
These kids are really noisy. I just had a moment of agreement with the homeless man sleeping at the next table. They woke him up - he looked at me and said "I wish they'd shut up." I said "me too."
Seattle high school students are bringing together the homeless and the artists, even if just for a moment. Somehow, that's kinda cool.
Tonight is my first meeting/training with the
Portland Baseball Umpire's Association.
Sweet.
