(no subject)

I'll give the full report later. But right now, I need a hundred beers.

I need a hundred beers. Exactly. Exactly a hundred.

so, that grad school thing...

Ok, now that I've sobered up, I'll recount what happened at my "callback" of sorts at Catholic U.

From our initial conversation, I inferred from Gary that they'd pretty much already made up their minds to just go with the seven students they already had, since classes had already started. However, he said he remembered that if someone dropped out, he'd call me. That still blows my mind; it's not like I'd know if someone dropped out and he didn't call me. Hell, I was already fully resigned to the idea that I was too young and inexperienced to get in even under the best of circumstances. And yet he *still* called me back for another audition when someone dropped out. I'm still amazed, to say the least.

Last time I auditioned for Gary, it was a remarkable experience. He was so friendly, so disarming, that I felt totally at ease and ended up delivering two excellent auditions. Unfortunately, those two monologues were not age appropriate (Halder from GOOD, and Lear from KING LEAR), so Gary urged me to choose more age appropriate audition pieces. So when he contacted me five days ago, I scrambled to memorize and practice a piece from Sedaris' SANTALAND DIARIES and "Too, Too Solid Flesh" from HAMLET. Some of you are already itching at hearing that last one, and may have been since I announced my intention to audition with it. Hold your horses, I'll get to it soon enough.

The difference with today's audition was that Gary wasn't alone. Now there was another professor, a woman who looked *just* like thirdbase that is was downright distracting. This woman was really smart and nice, but had much more of an actual "professorial" presence, rather than Gary's super-easy-going relaxed and understanding manner.

I was soon flushed, overheating like an engine, and nervous as FUCK. Wayyy more than the first time.

The Sedaris one went off better than I thought it would. I was honestly afraid that I'd overact the hell out of it, ham it up or something. I gave it my own brand of neurotic energy, which I imagine is very different from David Sedaris' neuroses. He's got that dry gay neurotic wit, whereas I'm a bit more "Woody Allen by way of Denis Leary and Christopher Titus." Gary liked it a lot.

Then came HAMLET. And here's the thing that fucking kills me about what happened there. I know HAMLET is the audition to choice to avoid like crazy, but I chose it because it was the only age-appropriate dramatic Shakespeare piece that I could think of that really appealed to me. I may not have gone through what Hammy has, but more and more over the years, I really feel like I get what he's feeling. I can't put into words, which became a huge problem when not-thirdbase asked me to do just that... I fucking HATE those questions!

But this weekend, I wrote to Gary and asked him if he thinks I shouldn't do the Hamlet speech for all the reasons everyone knows. He said, "Go for it, go ahead, don't worry about it." And I wouldn't have even have done it then if I wasn't sure that I could pull it off. Monday night, when I was running through both the Sedaris and the Hamlet, I was feeling wayyyyy more confident in the latter. I had it. It was good. Good, at least, for someone who's not going to have a chance to workshop it beforehand. I would be going out there to audition with two pieces for which I've had virtually no preparation. God, I was so bloody nervous.

When I did the Hamlet, they wanted me sitting down as I started it, which TOTALLY threw me off beforehand. And then, for the first time ever, I totally lost my place. Holy fuck, I *never* forget that line, it's one of my favorites! And then, all my nervousness of the new professor judging me, of me scrambling to find the line or ANY line, the realization that, holy shit, I'm doing fucking HAMLET here, oh god, it all went THHHHPPPBBPBPBPBBB! outta my brain. I found a line and pressed forward, but it all sounded lame and amateur coming out of my mouth at that point.

That's what kills me most of all. The fact that I wouldn't have done something that rash and ballsy if I didn't *know* I could pull it off, and then totally being undone by my own stress and coming off sounding like a textbook case of why someone shouldn't do HAMLET. If it was just Gary, if it was just him, I could have. But with someone else there, the seed of "you shouldn't do Hamlet!" that was planted last week just... well, not to mix metaphors, but it exploded.

And then, Bizarro thirdbase wanted me to pretend I'm Hamlet and that in this other chair is my best friend, so I was to describe what he's saying in that speech in my own words. No acting, just do it. GOD, can I add how much I HATE those exercises too? I never do well with them. It's like trying to work two totally different parts of my brain. The more I think my attempt, the more I wanna bash my head into a wall.

She and Gary said they would talk and let me know. Gary was as supportive as ever, telling me how brave I was for going out on a limb like that. He seemed genuinely surprised that I had taken his advice to heart, not only doing the Sedaris monologue at his suggestion, but also when I told him that I was actually gonna go out there and perform THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES. He urged me to keep at it.

This guy is one of the most awesome people I've ever met in the drama world. Hopefully he'll tell the other professor how much better I was when I was auditioning with pieces I was actually prepared to do; even if they were totally wrong for my age, that audition might have been my best performance in a long while. It's roles like Halder in GOOD which remind me why I actually go through all this crap, through all the stumbles and stress and frustration. It's those roles, the ones that don't come along nearly often enough.

So it wasn't a brilliant day yesterday. Wasn't a total failure either, make no mistake. You all know me well enough to know that I beat myself up over my mistakes way more than I should. Gary'll probably let me know today or tomorrow, I expect. It's ok, I already have my life coming together in many ways. I just hate auditions so damn much. And one day, god, I hope to actually play Hamlet to prove to everyone and to myself that I could do it, without having to try to explain it in anyone else's words than Shakespeare's.

And no, I didn't really have a hundred beers. Just a whiskey sour and a Stella Artois was enough to put this lush down for the night.