Saturday, May 14, 2011

How Things Change

I feel like my life is some Felicity-style college sitcom, or dramedy would probably be more accurate.

The universe just chucked a big ol' handful of cayenne into my life, so I'm trying to work out the kinks as I type. Internship just got all effed up, and now I'm working overtime to try and figure out what to do and fix things.

I had an audition today, for a play in Brooklyn called Turtleback High (I'm pretty sure I mentioned this yesterday, but with all the cayenne up my nose, who knows what's even going on anymore), and I wanted to just update on the audition experience.

The auditions were at some studios up on 39th street, and when I got there it was chock full of small children at dance class or something. I've never seen so many stage moms in one place before, and it was a little scary. I found the studio being used, and sat on a bench outside of it to go over my sides and get grounded. (All of my acting training was being put to good use - I did a bunch of chakra work before I left and kept all of them activated for the characters, but more on that in a minute) A girl named Lauren was sitting next to me, and we started chatting about auditions and living in the city. Long story short, it turns out she was at KCACTF at the same time I was in 2010 (see my previous post "Durham, One Week."), because she went to New Paltz, and we were reminiscing about good and bad shows. Small world, man.

Another girl who was there was talking to us, and we were sharing where we were each from. As soon as I said I went to NYU this girl put up a wall and kind of tuned out to me. The condescension was tangible. My first run in with a real NYU stereotype. I'm a rich suburban white girl from CT whose daddy was paying for her to go to a big acting school in the big city. I was surprised and kind of offended by her sudden attitude, but I ignored it and just kept talking to Lauren. Hooray stereotypes. She doesn't know me. She has no idea I'm none of those things.

The audition itself was in a teeny weeny room, in folding chairs, with name tags we propped up on the floor in front of us. There were 5 girls and 2 guys in our reading, plus the writer and director. Since there are only 3 girl roles, we all rotated between reading girl parts and guy parts. A little awkward and ungainly, but it was quite fun nonetheless. Less pressure without memorization, and swapping roles gave me a chance to stretch and show my versatility with character choices. I gave each character a chakra center, just to kind of give each one a base so they would all be different. I think I read well, and I'll hopefully hear from these guys within the next few days, so crossing my fingers on that one.

I'm playing dice with Fate right now, and I totally don't know the rules. :P

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