The other side of the table

It's a difficult thing to audition for a play. It's an even more difficult thing, sometimes, to not audition.

The other night, I helped Scott, my favorite director, audition actors for Red Ink's new play, Margaret Edson's Wit. It was an impressive showing for us, with almost double the number of actors showing up to audition than there were parts. We saw some good auditions, and it was a lot of fun to see people take a great script and make it come alive.

It is an interesting thing to be an actor sitting on the other side of the table as a casting assistant. It is heady in its power (or at least it would be if I had any actual pull. I had only opinions, Scott rightly made the casting decisions), but it is frustrating in its lack of creativity. To see other people being creative SHOULD be inspiring for me. Instead, it was depressing.

I could not do the play this year, and it caused me emotional and physical pain to admit to myself that I could not possibly fit acting in this production into my very crammed schedule. (My creative abilities are rusting as we speak, by May, I am unsure if I will have any talent left.) I wanted desperately to be a part of this play. I have been a part of two plays, and they were fine, but this, THIS is a piece of fine literature, of challenge, heartache, witty banter and depth. It is written by a woman, and it features a majority of female parts! This is a victory for those of us on Red Ink who have spent hours in Red Ink meetings, and more hours in the stacks at the Harold Washington library trying to find plays written by and for women, fighting for our chance to have a good role, to have a role that meant something, not just as a supporting character there for laughs. There were two of us that fought literally to tears for it, and we ended up defeated when other plays were chosen for production, ones by and for men. There were two of us who fought for the chance to be in a play with strong women characters...and neither of us can be in this production due to life events that stand in the way. I cannot convey to you using mere words the depth of hurt that comes with that statement, honestly. And that feels so ridiculous. It is just a play. It won't matter in 5 months that I wasn't in it. But today, knowing that I won't be in it and that for the next 5 months I will be dating the man that lives and breathes it, it seems heartbreaking. It was my battle, OUR battle, and we don't get to be in it? And I have to be confronted with that every day? It seems like a cruel joke.

There is no guarantee that I would've been cast in this show, there were better actors than I that did not get parts this time around, and the actors that were cast are fantastic actors. But to know that I didn't get to go toe to toe with them and see if I had it in me, that's rough.

I started this blog back in 2006 with the residual creative anger that I had left over from not being cast in the Red Ink play that year (see blog from April 20 of that year...and Zach, I will kick your butt if you try to make me learn how to link!). It is perhaps the most appropriate forum, then, to share my mixed feelings in 2008.

It will be a great show that I'm sure I'll rave about in 5 months. But for right now, I am sad to be on the outside looking in. There is nothing like being in a play cast. It's a clique, it's exclusive, and this year, I am not invited. The one year when being a woman is being celebrated on stage by Red Ink. And it sucks.