I'm at Central. My audition is at 11:30, the current time is 11:05. Excellent. Time to grab a quick coffee and drink it on the way as I mentally calm myself. I enter a 7/11 shop for a ridiculously cheap albeit average coffee (I don't really care what it tastes like when it is $1 and a caffeine hit) and the coffee machine has an 'out of order' sign strung across it. Fine. No coffee. The walk to Sydney Theatre School from Central is about 5 minutes (although, admittedly, I do walk quickly), and I confidently stride off...in the wrong direction entirely. Now you have to understand that I am never late to an audition. Ever. I'm the 'arrive an hour early if need be' type person. I figured a 5 minute walk from Central, leaving me around 20 minutes to make sure I was at the right place, sit and breathe and go over my monologue in my mind, would be plenty. And so it would be, if I realised I was going in the wrong direction after 5 minutes instead of 15. As angry with myself as I could be (or so I thought) I pick up the pace (at my walking speed now, most people would be half jogging) and pray continuously that I arrive on time.
The strap on my bag breaks. In the mindset I am in I almost throw the bag across the street and keep going, rid of the burden, but I hoist it up under my arm and keep striding on. I arrive at 11:35. I'm late and I hate myself for it. I'm never late to an audition, let alone one that could determine what I spend next year doing. The image I had conjured up of me walking into the audition room, oozing calm confidence, ready to blow the panel away with my talent was smashed. Instead, I apologised profusely, out of breath, hair a sweaty mess, feeling and looking like a 15 yr old hoping to get a role in a school play. A part of me dies.
"I hope you didn't have any trouble finding us" sounded like a mean jibe in my current state, but I put on my smile, desperately trying to get myself together. I tell them I will be performing the Serpent Monologue from George Bernard Shaw's Back To Methuselah. They offer me a drink and time to collect myself. In between trying to catch my breath and drink at the same time, I manage to inhale some water, sending me into a spluttering coughing attack. I finally manage to pull myself together and perform my monologue.
It was every type of fail.
One of the men on the panel, a director, gives me some direction on how to perform it again. I clearly didn't get his drift because he stops me about three lines in and gets me to do something else. This time he seems pleased. My utter disgust at how poorly I had performed turns into a determination to show this man that I can do whatever he wants me to. He gives me another way of performing it and I perform the hell out of it. This one is good, I can feel it. The man likes it. He's finally found a reason to not give me up as a lost cause. I still feel sick with embarrassment and disappointment and can barely look the two men on the panel for the interview. That's where my real acting skills come into play - smiling and talking to these people who have every reason in the world to think that I have no business trying to get into an acting school. We talk about my past experience - my only saving grace, being that the list is rather extensive with community theatre and school and other acting courses I have done. They ask me if I want to pursue acting as my career. This is the worst. I tell them that the only thing I have ever wanted to be is an actor. It sounds sickeningly weak following the disastrous display of ineptitude these two men had just witnessed. They said "That's really great", but I wouldn't have blamed them if they had laughed instead.
"You take direction really well, we're really impressed with that" is the only reason I still feel like I may be accepted. It's great that I take direction really well, I have always been able to do that fantastically - every director I have ever had has made that comment - but I can't help but think, wouldn't it be nice if just once, just once, I could be amazing and blow people away BEFORE they have to give me any direction?
Now I can't shake the feeling that I have no place auditioning for NIDA or WAAPA. My worst fear is people thinking that I think I'm good when I'm not. I can recognise when I was atrocious, but I just hope they knew I knew it was terrible. Ah well, I have a week before my NIDA audition to fully focus on being brilliant again. I can do this, today was just a really bad day. Really bad.
