To audition, or not to…make a complete tit of myself

One of my favorite memories of being with my mum was taking her to the Piccadilly Theatre in London in the 90s to see a matinee production of Noises Off. I wasn’t able to afford the best seats so we were up in the balcony but we had a decent view and both loved the first act. During the first interval, we went downstairs for a loo visit and to purchase the obligatory vanilla ice cream in the little pot with the wooden paddle that thinks it’s a spoon. A couple approached us and said they had to leave but would we like their tickets which were in the stalls? Hell yes, of course we took them up on the offer and had a wonderful view for Acts II & III. During that last Act I’ve never seen my mum laugh so much, to the point of tears streaming (and a subsequent coughing fit). It was brilliant, a masterclass in comedic timing and pratfalls and misunderstandings coming to beautiful and ridiculous fruition. I will always always hold onto that memory and that feeling of being connected to my mum through comedy. It’s odd, she’s been much on my mind recently, little fragments of memories and songs coming to me throughout the day.

Yesterday, I was at an independent living community to give a program on Dance Crazes of the 20s and 30s. One of the video clips I showed was a British Pathe news piece on the new dances of 1938 – the Palais Glide and the Lambeth Walk (from ‘Me and My Girl’). The Lambeth Walk is an exaggerated Cockney strut (named after a street in London) and it’s a great singalong song if you should ever find yourself crowded around a piano in an East London pub in the 1940s.

Although I don’t recall hearing it sung or played in the house when we were growing up, it was very popular during mum’s time at the Hillbeck Memory Care home. The wonderful activity director Bryan would lead impromptu singalongs at all times of the day and Lambeth Walk guaranteed maximum participation. Mum particularly enjoyed shouty-singing the lines:
Do as you darn well please-y
Why don’t you make your way there,
Go there, stay there’
She would yell that last line, and often direct it at whichever resident qualified as ‘that dreadful woman’ on that particular day.

I was thinking about mum this afternoon while pottering around on Facebook and saw an open audition notice for one of our local pro theatres for their upcoming production of Noises Off. An open call for ‘talented actors’ for my favorite farce? My initial impulse was to immediately email them for an audition slot but then I remembered that taking a Beginners Stage Acting class with Babs George at the State Theater back in 2002 doesn’t really qualify me even as a half-trained actor let alone a talented one. And yes I’ve performed many solo shows on stage, but I do those so I don’t have to deal with the crippling fear of being in an ensemble and screwing things up for the rest of the cast. I suspect that I may have peaked as a cast member at age 10 playing La Grand Mere in the Lenham Primary school 1975 production of La Petit Chaperon Rouge. The question is, is it okay to go back that far in an acting resume?

I texted the audition info to Erik and also mentioned it to a close friend who suggested that I had nothing to lose by auditioning. Really? But what about pride, and dignity and a few pounds of sweat and diarrhea? And what about my headshot?

The one on the left is my very first headshot, probably taken in 2001 or 2002. I think I was mostly going for the ‘ranchhand-who-also-occasionally-reads-the-serious news’ look – it’s a niche category, but one I would totally own.

The second and third shots were from a year or so later when I abandoned the ranch-y look and wanted to show my full acting range. So here I am smiling. And here I am not smiling. It might have worked well if I was auditioning to be in a flipbook – here she is Smiling/Not Smiling/Smiling/Not Smiling – though I suspect the novelty would quickly pass. I should also have known that halter tops don’t work if you’ve got sloping shoulders. My deltoids were about as weak as my eyebrows.

Twenty-five years ago I read ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’ by Susan Jeffers, and her advice was similar to my friend’s -what’s the worst thing that could happen from following your impulses? Turns out that it’s leaving your fiancé at midnight on New Year’s Eve, so you see it’s not with0ut consequence, Susan. But truthfully I think it all comes back around to my mum whose failure to send me to Mallory Towers Boarding School for Girls, or to the Italia Conti Stage School when I was 11 stifled my early potential as an actor, and my chances of being a normal person able to navigate social situations without creating awkwardness and embarrassment. I wanted to read books about girls having jolly japes on the hockey field, or learning about how fame costs and where you need to start paying. Instead I got ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’, a book about a young girl having to flee Nazi Germany, and one which left me scarred and unable to form a bond with most of my soft toys.

Still, the auditions are this Thursday, and the deadline to request a slot to audition is Monday. As mum would always say, “we’ll see, Margaret”. And also “use a handkerchief dear if you’re going to keep sniffing”.