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9:40 am - Mon 2/18/02 I'm starting to gravitate towards doing "Diaryland" this way, for some reason (Previously, I'd been resistant to working offline. Perhaps my "less industrious" side was resistant to all that laborious "cutting and pasting"). There are plusses to working this way--less online distraction, less chance of accidently deleting my work (I've done that more than once while working online, though it's been awhile), and more time without the phone line being tied up (Not that the phone ringing off the hook has been a big "issue" or anything, but still, it seems prudent to start preparing now for the eventuality of being in MAJOR demand)--while there really aren't any plusses to working online (Unless you count that my word processing program is doing that thing again where, if you make a mistake in a line and go back to correct it, you end up deleting everything you wrote after you made the mistake). For a time, I had some sort of idea I was less "alone" when I was online--I felt like I was actually sort of "talking" to people, a feeling I didn't have offline--but obviously, that's sort of STUPID; Writing is writing, online or off. But anyway... My audition is tomorrow morning. Here, in it's entirety, is the monologue I'll be doing: Panties. See, when I was single and seeing a lot of different women, I got a real charge thinking about, wondering what kind of panties the woman would be wearing, and what she'd look like in them. Will they be hot little black ones, or innocent cotton white ones, or old ones she's had since high school, where the elastics shot and she doesn't really care if you rip them right off . Will they ride up in the rear, or do that little droop, or serve more like a band-aid, or what?...So there I was, exchanging rings and I-do's, and I catch the lineup or bridesmaids, and it occurs to me that, Hey, I'm also vowing that for the rest of my life, till death do me part, I'm going to be intimate with just one woman's arsenal of underwear...and I've already lived with her for a year-and-a-half, and I know them all by heart anyway. I told Jane about that monologue. I don't think she liked it. I like it, though; I think it's funny that this guy is so shallow he's obsessing over underwear. Here's the other monologue I've got, if for some reason they want another one: It's quite all right, you're not disturbing me. I would much rather talk than work. Yet here I am, day after day, haunted by one thought--I must write, I must write, I must WRITE...This is my study, the room in which I write my stories. I built it myself actually; Cut the timber, fitted the logs...made an awful mess of it...I do my writing here at the side of the room, because the roof leaks directly over my desk. I'd move the desk, but it covers a hole I left in the floor. And the floor was built on the side of a hill, so in heavy rains, the room tends to slide downhill. Many's the day I've stood in this cabin and passed my neighbors standing in the road. Still...I'm happy here. Although I don't get enough visitors to suit me. People tend to shy away from writers. They assume we must always be busy thinking...not true. Why, even my own dear mother doesn't like to disturb me, so she always tiptoes up and leaves my food outside the door. I haven't had a hot meal in years. Sun 2/17/02 12:04 pm (Offline) Well, when I woke up this morning to the sound of rainfall, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry (This audition makes, I think, the FIFTH I've had in LA, which is also about how many times it's rained since I've been out here, so what were the odds? But anyway...). I had some "concerns" connected to this unwelcome precipitation--I didn't want to go in looking like a drowned rat, and I don't know how "water-resistant" my backpack is--but it didn't end up being any big deal; I held off long enough for the rain to subside--I got lightly sprinkled on, but that was about it--and got to the theater looking no more disheveled than usual (And my backpack resisted enough water so that my headshots were fine). When I got to the theater, a few minutes after 9:00. I was asked to sign in--It was a "first-come, first-served" deal--then waited along with a few other actors till I was called in to do my thing. As I went into the theater, I saw it was really SMALL--it coudn't have had more than a hundred seats, probably less than that--with a stage that wasn't as big as the main room of my apartment. Upstage was the exterior of a small yellow house, with the downstage serving as a front yard, surrounded by a crude wooden gate. There were three African-American gentlemen in the audience--I presumed the producer and the two directors--and after setting my stuff down and asking if they just wanted me to launch into my monologue (They were looking at my resume, so I thought they might have wanted to talk to me first), I took a moment, then went into the "panties" monologue. It went even better than I'd hoped. I like the monologue--or else I wasn't have CHOSEN it--but I wouldn't say it's exactly HYSTERICAL (I think the line about "being intimate with one woman's arsenal of underwear" is good, and I think the line at the end is funny too). But the three guys started chuckling almost immediately, and when I finished, they were laughing, and I knew it had gone well. Even though it was just an "audience" of three, I felt like it was the first time I had really PERFORMED since "Oliver", back in Lansing. I don't know why I did it--I knew the monologue had gone well, and I had no cause to feel apologetic--but when I finished, I said, "I know that was pretty short, so I have something else, if you'd like to hear it". One of the guys said "Yes", so I took another moment, and went into "The Good Doctor" monologue. With both monologues, I did something I was very proud of, something I always felt put me a cut above your average community-theater actor back in Lansing--I "used the space". I did the first monologue as far downstage as I could get, as I leaned on the fence (And I addressed all three guys as if I was just talking to a group of my buddies, with a "YOU know what I'm talking about" air ), while with the "Good Doctor" monologue, I acted as if the downstage area was my "cabin", and when I got to my mother "leaving my food outside the door", I gestured to the door of the onstage house, as if I was "inside" and it was the "outside" door, if you follow me. Afterwards, they told me what their rehearsal schedule is--That seemed VERY positive. If they weren't interested, then why bother?--and I said that if they wanted me, I'd make it work out. Then they gave me a monologue to look at from one of the shows, and sent me back out to look at it, before coming back in and doing it for them. The monologue was a father telling off some people who had apparently been making fun of the kids at some "Special Olympics"-type race. It was written in dialect that sounded "black" to me, but might have just been intended to be "southern". I wasn't really sure, and found myself feeling awkward about asking. So anyway, I went in and did the monologue. I did it very angry, so they asked me to do it again, as if I was STILL very angry, but trying to keep myself under control. I thought it went pretty well--at the very least, I showed I could take direction--but I wasn't as stoked about it as I'd been about the two prepared things I'd done. But when all's said and done, I felt VERY positive about how I handled this audition. And while I'll be disappointed if nothing happens, I'm pleased as punch that I went in and showed them that I had the goods. Hooray for me! >(END) I checked my voicemail throughout the day while I was at work, but nothing from the theater yet. Even when I don't have a particular message I'm waiting for, I check my voicemail obsessively when I'm at work. You could argue that it makes SENSE for me to do that--I don't want to miss an important call about an audition or the like--but the IMPULSE doesn't really come from a "sensible place". I'm not just checking to see if anyone called me; I'm searching for "deliverance". When I check my voicemail, what I want on it is a call the somehow, some way, relieves me of something that's felt burdensome, be it my poverty, my boredom, my loneliness, or whatever. In a small way, the initial call from the theater, the call notifying me about the audition, was "deliverance" of a sort. It gave me a psychological boost--It's HARD to send things out all the time and get no response--along with something to look forward to, and something to productively occupy some of my time. But this isn't really the "deliverance" I'm talking about. What I'm talking about it more of a "Deus ex Machina", where in one fell swoop I get something I desperately want or need, without any stress or strain on my part. Like WHAT? 1. Jennifer calls, to tell me she hasn't been able to stop thinking about me since I left Lansing, and is ready to abandon everything to come out here and be with me. 2. A lawyer calls, to tell me that my mother has died and left me some large-ish sum of money that no one knew she had (This also works if you replace "my mother" with some other unknown relative/well-wisher). 3. One of my headshots has fallen into the right hands, and a casting director calls to basically GIVE me a continuing role on one of my favorite television shows (A major supporting role in a movie would ALSO work here). There are others, but they're basically "variations on a theme"--Somebody drops something I want, but have been having a hard time getting, right into my lap. Anyway... After my audition yesterday, I had the urge to take myself out to breakfast. I didn't do it--I amused myself by thinking, "If I get in the habit of taking myself out to eat EVERY time I do well at an audition, I'll go BROKE!"--but I'm still having the urge to go out for breakfast this morning, so I'm GOING. (That reminds me--I keep thinking about the idea of "impoverished thinking", something I want to write about in here. But next time...)
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