Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Audition that Makes Actors Become Alcoholics

Date: Some day in October 2013
Time: 6:30am
Where: Heading towards Pasadena California from Mid Wilshire, Los Angeles
State of Sobriety: Not Drunk. No Caffeine

My husband is driving the car to work with me in it. I in turn plan, as I usually do, to take the car for an audition and later in the afternoon, pick him back up.

We have moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2009. It wasn't even for actor reasons. It was for Hans' very well-paying job. I stated my case for wishing to stay in the Bay Area: I love it here. The people, politics, theater...just everything. I'm running a festival and I have gotten to the point where I don't have to audition. I just get called up. Los Angeles is hot, and a coal town of actors. It's depressing as hell there and the theatre (no matter how wonderful it is) is never attended unless it at least has a C-Plus and up star attached to it.

Hans told me how much his job was paying him. I said without hesitation: I got friends in L.A. Please, let's not move to Pasadena though. I would kill myself if that occurred. Let's get some boxes and find a place to live. Oh...and bring me the head of Queen Latifah*

Time: 6:40am
Where: Heading towards Pasadena California from Mid Wilshire, Los Angeles
State of Sobriety: Not Drunk. No Caffeine

Our Ford Focus (which we have lovingly named Opus II from the last owner, who headed off to NY to his dream job) looks like a technology space pod: I have my iPod Touch 5th Generation Bluetoothed into the new car stereo, streaming my music while my personal internet hotspot has me looking at my emails.

Today I have an audition for a "National Magazine" looking for African-American Female Models sized 14-16 and between the ages of 40-50 at noon. There is not much make believe in this description whatsoever, outside of one simple word: MODEL.

I'm a comedic actor. I spent days before this audition practicing placing my face in normal mode to not parody the typical model "Duck Lips" or "I'm angry and constipated" looks, as a comedienne usually does.

I'm in the car perusing my emails and I see that one of the Casting Thingies has asked me to come in at two in the afternoon. When I submitted myself it said it was looking for women for a very specific parody. It said overweight women were welcome. Strong Improv Skills.

I'm still a big girl. I'm an improviser. It pays. Sounds good to me I thought, when I submitted.

I get the call to come in. The breakdown reads for this two in the afternoon audition:

Prepare to improv and cold read. Bring 16 bars of a song with sheet music and a monologue if possible.

About a million things are wrong with this at six in the morning. Here are three of the million:

1) Comedy Cold Readings suck hard. I can do it. But it sucks. You never know what sort of lame ass bullshit you are going to pick up and have to read at the last minute and try to make funny.

2) I'm very lucky I can improvise. Doubly lucky I'm old as hell and have been auditioning since I was sixteen to have at my disposal a monologue and 16 bars of music eight hours before an audition. If they don't know how to play the 16 I have? Well, they are asking for improv: Play me a basic blues riff in C. Sixteen bars. Now...give me something that pisses you off. There are your two birds down with one stone: Improv and Singing. Who sends out an email to have all this prepared the night before an audition? Amateur producers, that's who.

3) Who "Prepares Improv"? Who asks an improviser to "Prepare Improv"? Oh yeah. Amateur producers who don't really know what improv is and have mistaken it for stand up or sketch.