“A Strange Turn of Events.” Part 4
My Adventures and Brief Brush with Fame in Community Theater continued…
I audition for a Community Theatre Company in Santa Rosa, California and manage to not embarrass myself too badly.
I often wonder how different my life would have turned out if I had not taken that drive that Fall evening? What if I had just said, “Thank you very much but I have left acting as part of my past and have moved on.” That being said enjoyed another early Fall night snug in our apartment in Novato.
It was a dark early evening as I drove up for the first time into Sonoma County. Some of the names of the towns struck me as kind of humorous. Rohnert Park sounded like Rodent Park.
Cotati tickled me the most. I had a friend who once had a woman lover from India and much to his embarrassment would cry out during sex “Go, Daddy! Go! Go! Go!” So, of course, I saw the name Cotati and in a mock Indian voice “Coh Daddy! Coh! Coh! COH!! I laughed uproariously! Well, it relieved tension…
The audition was held at the Luther Burbank Center of the Arts in Santa Rosa which was an impressive Art Center that still hosts some Concerts of various performers. I recently saw a great Brian Wilson Concert there – as he performed Beach Boy songs and his Christmas Album in its entirety. Great stuff albeit it looked like Brian was quite out of it. A friend later told he was probably on a lot of meds. And he’s is in his late seventies so hats off to the Old Boy for still plugging away.
Anyway, L’Actor’s Theatre was housed there at that time. So I was duly impressed. Not like the crappy hole in the wall types of the off Broadway theatres I was used to back in NYC.
I went inside the building and after negotiating a few turns found the theatre and met my coworker who was going to hear my piece. I’ll say I did an adequate rendition of the Glenn Gary Glenn Ross monologue but I couldn’t get that damn Alec Baldwin voice out of my head!
This is why hate picking a scene or monologue I have seen before it just colors my performance, overshadows it, makes it seem lacking or at least a knock off, a pale imitation.
Thankfully I didn’t embarrass myself by blanking on my lines – you know going blank – it’s when you gaze in absolute terror as the lines suddenly disappear from your head and you stand there a sweating frightened mess, praying you could just die or disappear or dig your way out of sight through the stage flooring.
So, being done. I was then invited to meet some other “Actors” and read a few scenes from Moliere’s Tartuffe. Oh God, how I managed to get through that?! The fellow thespians all seemed either Ancient or young College kids who bellowed their lines with great unauthentic intensity. Everybody seemed to be flapping their jaws at somebody just not their fellow actors on stage. Sandy Meisner would have made hash out of all us that night.
Thankfully the process was over, and after shaking hands and making agreeable noises. I got back in my crappy Mazda and drove like a bat out of hell back to Marin.
“Well, I didn’t do too bad and THANK GOD THAT’S OVER WITH!” I thought. Now I could get back to my comfortable middle-aged boring life and resume an uneventful existence without the theatrical drama or thespian anxieties and folderol.
God must have laughed.
End of Part 4
To be continued…
