Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Next!
Last night I had to help conduct auditions for a show that's going to have some of my sketches in it. Since the last time I evaluated auditions was when I directed the German Club production of "Die Sieben Geisslein" in Seventh Grade (it had a set made out of refrigerator boxes and a Korean foreign exchange student who couldn't pronounce the "v" sound as a lead), I thought this might be a fun thing. I imagined myself barking out orders and cruelly forcing people to relive the traumas of their childhoods A Chorus Line style. I saw myself drunk with power, and perhaps a few gin and tonics, deriding the fools who couldn't bring out the brilliant wit of my skits about standing in line at the grocery store. This was, to say the least, not how things unfolded.
It turns out that auditioning people is totally hard and not so fun! For one thing, it forces you to deal with the sad reality that a lot of really cute people are not that great at acting, and that no matter how much you might want to sleep with them, you can't let them near your prose. Then, you have to listen to the same material being read repeatedly until any humor you might once have found in it is a more distant memory than that episode of Punky Brewster where her friend got stuck in an old refrigerator and we all learned an important lesson about safety. Plus, you really can't be rude to people while they're in the room, so no matter how much you might want to laugh (even if it's just because your friend just drew an amusing caricature of Scarlett Johannsen on your notepad and not because the auditionee has given Tom Cruise what appears to be a Jamaican accent) you can't do it. Being professional is incredibly important, even if you do have Cheetoh crumbs down the front of your shirt for the first hour of the evening.
Anyway, the cast is chosen. Maybe I'll make up for my auditioning fun deficit by forcing them to run laps or something. Because life should be just like high school basketball practice.
Last night I had to help conduct auditions for a show that's going to have some of my sketches in it. Since the last time I evaluated auditions was when I directed the German Club production of "Die Sieben Geisslein" in Seventh Grade (it had a set made out of refrigerator boxes and a Korean foreign exchange student who couldn't pronounce the "v" sound as a lead), I thought this might be a fun thing. I imagined myself barking out orders and cruelly forcing people to relive the traumas of their childhoods A Chorus Line style. I saw myself drunk with power, and perhaps a few gin and tonics, deriding the fools who couldn't bring out the brilliant wit of my skits about standing in line at the grocery store. This was, to say the least, not how things unfolded.
It turns out that auditioning people is totally hard and not so fun! For one thing, it forces you to deal with the sad reality that a lot of really cute people are not that great at acting, and that no matter how much you might want to sleep with them, you can't let them near your prose. Then, you have to listen to the same material being read repeatedly until any humor you might once have found in it is a more distant memory than that episode of Punky Brewster where her friend got stuck in an old refrigerator and we all learned an important lesson about safety. Plus, you really can't be rude to people while they're in the room, so no matter how much you might want to laugh (even if it's just because your friend just drew an amusing caricature of Scarlett Johannsen on your notepad and not because the auditionee has given Tom Cruise what appears to be a Jamaican accent) you can't do it. Being professional is incredibly important, even if you do have Cheetoh crumbs down the front of your shirt for the first hour of the evening.
Anyway, the cast is chosen. Maybe I'll make up for my auditioning fun deficit by forcing them to run laps or something. Because life should be just like high school basketball practice.
