#4 – Sylvia, Tempe Little Theatre

Well – dare I say, that almost went…rather smoothly?

Sure, the stomach cramps appeared about 40 minutes before I had to leave, but Moo gave me three magic marbles for good luck, which she insisted I put in my pocket.  And I think those little good-luck marbles did the trick, because once I got in the car, I felt nervous, sure, but not where’s-the-barf-bag nervous.

Improvement!

I mean, yes, I think my hands were visibly shaking during the audition (which consisted of pairing up with fellow-auditionees to read scenes from the script), but I don’t think my acting was bad.  Maybe it wasn’t good, but I don’t think anyone was shaking their head at me pityingly.  I hope.

And after all that worry, no improv!  (Even though I studied doggy videos on YouTube all afternoon!)  Maybe the director is saving it for the callbacks.

I have no idea if I’ll get called back or not.  The director said she doesn’t usually call back more than three people per role, and even though there were only three other women auditioning for the “Sylvia” role, there will probably be many more at tonight’s auditions.  I prefer to go on the first night and just get it over with.

It was interesting to see the different approaches we auditionees took to interpreting Sylvia the dog.  One woman went full-dog, with her hair in poodly pigtails, even growling and whimpering.  Two others went, I’d say, about half-dog, and then I was probably about one-third dog.  What’s the director looking for?  Full-dog, half-dog, who knows?  What height, what color hair?  (We all wore our hair curly, of course – Sylvia is a poodle mix).  But it seemed clearer to me than ever before that at auditions, the director has something specific in mind – a look, a personality, a hairstyle – and I either fit what she’s looking for or I don’t.  Nuthin’ personal.

I felt so relatively normal afterwards that I didn’t even have to stop on the way home for a doughnut!

Although I kind of wish I had…