The Director Sector

“You know,” David says. “At the school where I used to work, auditioning for performers and working in the shop for techs were mandatory.” I look at him and sit down on the sawhorse in the scene shop. All around us are the technicians working on the set for the next mainstage show. All three of them. The work-study students never show up, and the students taking the shop classes don’t show up either. Needless to say, David’s not a happy camper.

“Really?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at me with a sideways glance. He scratches his balls. He does that a lot. “Of course, the program there’s a lot bigger. The students there actually have to apply to get into the program, and if you don’t participate, you’re out.”

“That’d be so nice,” I say. “It’d be great to have an actual choice when casting.” This is true. Whenever we hold auditions for a play with, say, twelve roles, only about fifteen people will show up. Often, the director is forced to cast everybody who showed up. Having mandatory auditions would allow the director to actually have a choice in who is cast.

“You could sign a waiver that said you weren’t interested in a part,” David continues. “But you still had to audition.” Of course. Auditioning should be mandatory. It’s a process that you have to do if you want to be successful in the theatre world. It’s a crappy system, but nobody has managed to come up with a better one.

I nod as David keeps talking. My mind drifts off a little, as I think about the ramifications of this type of system.

In the department in which I have worked for several years, there are about fifty theatre majors. Roughly fifteen of them are techs, the rest are performance majors. That is, they’re actors. The sad thing is that only about fifteen or twenty of them are active in any capacity. The other fifteen or twenty rarely show up for strike, much less for auditions.

I mention the idea of mandatory auditions to someone I know who is a major but has never participated. She grows indignant, as if to say, “What? Me? Audition? Never!” In fact, I have yet to see her audition for anything. It blows my mind. Why major in a field in which you don’t intend to participate? Why take classes in a field that you don’t intend to pursue? Why waste your own potential and someone else’s time and money?

Here I am, a graduate stuck in this shit-hole town, struggling to stay active in the local theatre, but keeps getting pushed aside by the faculty because I’m no longer a student. Here I am, trying to further my career, and I’m getting pushed aside for people who don’t show up for auditions, don’t show up for work-study, don’t show up for set strikes. Here I am, a thespian, being denied my calling for the sake of people who would rather use their creative energy to think of new places to sing karaoke and get wasted.

“I think it’s a good idea,” I say to David. He looks back at me and scratches his balls again.

“It is a good idea,” he replies. “Too bad it’ll never happen.”

Too bad.