Well, this audition went less good than the other one. It’s a play about politics: (a) it seems to feature a guy who is a nerdy nebbish sort who by surprise becomes the governor, but (b) really seems to be about a terrible but super cheerful temp named Louise who ends up running for lieutenant governor. I went on the second night of auditions and the directors were all, “Everyone wants to read for Louise, even the men.” There were fourteen in this one, eight of them women. They asked what parts I was interested in and I said Louise, but I’m flexible.

They had the ladies read in pairs and the other girl with me was clearly one of the good ones. She immediately did Louise in a Southern accent, which I approved of. By comparison to her I was rather pale, oh well. Then they asked her to do it again without the accent and asked me to do it in a lower register. Huh. They would sometimes coach people but after the fact, like “everyone, Louise does not care about making mistakes” and “Paige, you’re training the puppy, you’re not mad at him.”

In the end, everyone read for Louise but then they were pickier about the other female parts and I was never asked to read for anything again (even though at one point the guy director was flipping through papers while muttering, “Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer,” which creeped me out but literally nothing came of it). I was the only one who never read more than once, which ain’t a good sign. On the one hand, the other parts were a female pollster and a TV reporter and god knows I wouldn’t cast me as either, but I wouldn’t have minded trying to read for ‘em, at least. Or at least it would have been something to do (per Laure, I was getting bored when they did the guy-only scenes, and also, clearly most of the guy roles other than Dave the chief of staff were...dull: the nebbish politician, the political pollster guy and the silent cameraman who gets one monologue about being a working man), but after awhile I broke out a book and vaguely wished I’d bothered to eat dinner before leaving.

It occurred to me tonight that I have a dumb thing I do in auditions, i.e. “Who’s The Cutest Guy In The Room?” This is an extremely anemic and dumb thing for me to do when I literally have more unicorn and blue moon sightings than I do guys I would actually care about and be interested in, and we shall not be discussing any previous versions of this game that have gone on in this year and how well that has not gone. But anyway, last night’s was the guy who mostly played Jack, who was at least fun and could do a Cockney accent and I hope he gets cast. Tonight’s was the guy they told, “I’m afraid there will be no cross dressing in this,” (guy throws down his paper and stomps out) “and no cheesy British accent either!” He at least looked cute from the side. Disturbingly, the other younger guy in the room looked like a younger, less cute, divier-dressing version of my ex that took up acting, and that was giving me the wiggins a bit.

After awhile you could tell that they were biased towards a few folks for the reporter and/or the pollster because they wouldn’t let certain folks read for the opposite part. When they asked if anyone wanted to read something they hadn’t gotten to, I was thinking “why bother.” So anyway, not getting in this show, but that is fine!

When it comes to movies, I have three categories: (a) ones I actually want to see and will take action to see, (b) ones I don’t care about one way or the other but will see if someone else wants to and I may be pleasantly surprised, and (c) serial killer creepy awful shit I won’t watch. Basically, these two plays were in category b: sounded mildly amusing enough, but there’s no parts in them suited for me and with a small cast, they’re gonna be picky. Right now my eggs are in audition #3 later this week and we’ll see how that goes, but at least “hippie” fits me. On a related note, Mom reports that she dragged Roger to see “Wicked,” which his son didn’t like and told him he wouldn’t like, but he ended up liking it. Category (b) for Roger! Good for him!

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