Auditions

At some point, the director invariably asks, "Where did you find that piece?  It's quite extraordinary and such a perfect audition piece for this play."

The Right Answer: "After I read your play I thought about it for a long time and I couldn't quite come up with an audition piece that spoke to me, but then this monologue was in one of the plays I was reading just for fun a month or so ago and it just popped out at me and spoke to me and I knew that it was just what I needed."

The Wrong Answer: "Oh, I don't even know what play it's in.  It was in a book called Monologues for Actresses with Dialects or Funny Monologues for Character Actresses or The Ten Best Female Monologues of 1999 or Monologues to Do If You Want to Impress a Director Who's Directing a Play About White-Trash Characters.  One of those.   I looked through all of those, but I can't remember which one had this piece in it."

We saw some really good auditions and some fairly boring ones as well.  Actually, most of them were good.  A lot of people did Alan Ayckbourn.  There was some fun white-trash stuff.  Someone did William Congreve's The Way of the World (but points docked from her: she had no idea what play it was from or who'd written it, and she couldn't have played Lady Wishfort for another 20 years at least.)  And Jensen Kong did fucking Gaev from The Cherry Orchard!!!  And it was funny.  That was without doubt the best audition we saw. 

I feel pretty confident that I'll have enough people to do my show.  Everything is going to be okay.