May 2004 Archives

… and hard work

Audition: Cold reading sides from Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine, and cold reading a monologue from Neil Simon’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Lost In Yonkers.
Director: Ron Parrella/Tim Lewis.
Location: Impact Theatre, Booklyn, near Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park.

It was more like a callback than a first audition, i.e., all the actors where in the theatre, watching others work, waiting for their turn. Beyond that, I don’t remember much of the audition except it was the longest to date: a lot of reading with different actors all reading different parts. Acting is nothing if not stamina.

I seemed to do best with the character Shrdlu. All the hard work, notes, practice seemed to pay off, but it was Lost in Yonkers . . .

I’ve never read the play. Tim handed me a monologue of where the boys’ father confronts his mother, and he left me alone with it for about 10 minutes. I can’t remember a monologues that’s so immediately hit me so hard. I knew exactly what this man was struggling with . . . to stand up, to be strong. Somehow, I just knew what to do.

Tim came back, and asked me if I was ready. I was. I walked to stage, up the stairs, and turned around. The ‘audience’ grew quiet, and I started. About half way through, this character was so vulnerable, honest, deeply hurt but determined NOT to show tears in front of this woman, his mother, who ridiculed and brutalized him all his life. And I wouldn’t cry either. I wanted to -- at points I had to fight for control -- but I didn’t want to cry in front of her either, as if I was with this man and we were fighting her together, standing up to her together, and I wanted to give him my strength to say what he needed to say.

I’ve read a lot of acting books – none have ever talked about this type of experience. Many/most seems like so much BS – trying, in an ad hoc fashion, to reverse engineer a black box, i.e., the actor in performance. It really seems to come down to empathy. I, thank god, have never really had an important adult figure in my life like this man’s mother, but I could sense how hard it was to make a stand – not lash out – but to make a stand, when one has been is so hurt for so long. I just understood how this must be.

Emotional memory and personal history be damned – its empathy and imagination . . . and courage, that’s what an actor needs. This is my prayer, ultimately, when I pick up text and get to my feet.