When I was in first grade, I had my first role in a school play.  Actually, it was a summer camp play.  I played the old wise man in the story.  Since I didn’t exactly have facial hair in first grade, I wore a piece of paper cut into the shape of a beard, and we glued cotton balls on top to give it a white beard appearance.  There was string going into the sides that looped around my head to keep it on. Halfway through the performance, the string started slipping, my face was sweating and the paper ripped.

I had to hold my beard up for the remainder of the skit.  I was mortified.  I was absolutely positive that all six hundred people watching were laughing at me, and that I had completely destroyed any credibility I had as a person.

For the next twelve years, I refused to stand up in front of a group of people unless I was forced to.  In school, I would refuse to give a Current Event report.  I’d turn in my written draft, but I refused to present it to the class.  I didn’t do book reports, presentations, class skits, or school plays.  I took zeroes rather than present them to the class.

My junior year of high school, I was forced to present a scene to my English class.  A scene from “The Crucible.”  I played one of the adult men whose wife had been taken away for stoning, and my partner played the priest.  Honestly, he did a terrible job.  Very monotone and boring, while I was passionate and angry.  I felt pretty good about it, actually.  I decided in my moment of bravado to jump off the stage rather than walk around to the steps.  When I landed, I twisted my ankle and slammed my head against the front row of seats.  I was fine, but my ego was bruised once again.  Again, I refused to participate in any sort of public speech for years.

At the end of my freshman year of college, I was required by my school to take “Oral Communications” or speech class.  I opted to take it during a summer term, so as to minimize the time spent in that class.   Get it over with as quickly as possible.

Our first assignment was to read an excerpt from anything we wanted to the class.  I procrastinated and grabbed “The Hobbit” off my bookshelf on the way out of my dorm room.  I got to class early, perused the first couple of pages til I found a page that I felt would be entertaining.  “Hobbits are creatures…”  I’m a fast reader, so I was able to read a whole sentence at once and look up while I said it.

The grades came down and I got an A.  “You must have practiced.  Great eye contact!”

The second assignment was to give a 2 minute speech about a quality about ourselves.  Guess what I chose!  You’re right:  stagefright.  I was so scared.

I got up at the podium and began to speak.  My legs were shaking, my palms were sweating, I gripped the podium.  I shifted from foot to foot, I stuttered.  I said “uhh..”

“My uh.. quality is that I’m uh.. scared of uh.. getting up in front of people.  I, um, get really nervous, and I uh.. stutter and say Uh… uh… and I sweat and um.. shake.  And I feel like I’m about to, uh.. to pee in my pants.. It’s like, uh.. like you’re staring at me like.. that… and it makes me, uh.. nervous.”

This went on for the requisite two minutes.  I literally described everything I felt at that moment.  I was literally about to shit myself.  Finally, the whole ordeal was over and I sat down.  I shook for the rest of the class period, I was so nervous.

Grades came back.  I got another A.  “Great acting!” she wrote.

What?

What acting?

I was seriously nervous!

At that moment, I had an epiphany.  I realized that she honestly thought I had been acting.  She WANTED me to do a good job, and so she projected that desire onto my performance.  She would rather assume that I had acted than believe that I had done so poorly.  The rest of the class had convinced themselves of that, too.

Armed with this knowledge, I gathered up the courage to audition for the next Shakespeare production.  I had developed an obsession with Shakespeare following our 10th and 12th grade studies of “Julius Caesar” and “Macbeth”, as well as watching the film “Shakespeare in Love.”  If you haven’t seen it, stop reading this, go rent it and watch it.  Dude, seriously.

At any rate, the play I auditioned for was the Scottish Play, and I actually got cast and had lines!  By the time opening night came around, I wasn’t very nervous.  I had performed my bit in front of the cast dozens of times, and when the audience was actually out there, I didn’t even notice.

I realized that they paid money to see a GOOD performance.  They don’t want me to screw up.  They don’t want me to forget my lines.  So long as I didn’t go “OMG, WTF HAX!” I’d be okay.  So long as I didn’t admit that I messed up, they’d believe that I meant to do whatever it was that I did.  If I missed a line and Glenn covered it for me, they’d assume that was supposed to happen.  If I forgot my hat and had to walk back onstage to get it, they’d assume that was supposed to happen.

People will assume the best of you most of the time, and they will project that view onto whatever you do.

Ever since that moment, I’ve performed in dozens of shows on stage, I’ve taught for two years in public high schools, and worked in three drama camps teaching kids how to act and other aspects of theatre.  I think we can safely assume that I’m over that insecurity.

It’s not entirely gone.  There are moments when I get really nervous when I’m about to speak, or times when I really don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of people.  But by and large, I’m comfortable speaking.

As an actor (or really, this applies to anyone), self-confidence will help you with everything.  It will help you land jobs, make friends, make contacts.  Insecurity will diminish your options in those areas.  People don’t want to work with someone who’s constantly afraid of losing their job or afraid of hurting someone’s feelings or whatever.  They don’t want to hang around someone who’s needy and desperate.  People want friends who act sure of themselves, who act confident in their own abilities.

Self-confident people aren’t people without insecurities.  They’re people who have worked through their insecurities and are able to function in spite of them.  It’s okay to be insecure!  It’s okay to be afraid.  It’s not okay to let them take over your life.  Insecurity is like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you’re afraid of losing your job so badly that you act like you’re afraid of losing your job… you’re probably going to lose your job.  If you act like you know exactly what you’re doing, if you act like you’re going to be just fine, they’re much more likely to believe that you can recover from your mistakes and let you keep your job.

For the first 18 years of my life, I let my insecurity and fear get in my way.  I let it hurt my GPA in high school.  I let it keep me from making friends.  I let it keep me from meeting new people, from developing the social skills I needed so that I wouldn’t have to learn them later.

Now, I take my insecurities and push them aside.  I know that I can succeed, and I can’t let a tiny thing like fear get in the way.

This is different from false confidence.  Being self-confident means that you have to actually convince yourself that you can succeed, despite that fear that holds you back.  False confidence will get you nowhere.  False confidence is getting up there to speak, and then shitting in your pants anyway.

If you’re insecure about something — moving to a new place, speaking in front of people, auditioning for this show, applying to that school — just remember that people will think the best of you in the worst situations.  Use that to your advantage and don’t give in to fear and uncertainty.  Reach for that goal, and you’ll find you can make it.

Be self-confident.

One of the biggest problems that I face in my local theatre is a large sense of apathy. Most of the people here bitch and moan about how they didn’t get cast in this, they didn’t get cast in that, the theatre’s screwing them out of this, screwing them out of that. They complain and complain, and the department looks the other way. Why? Because they won’t help themselves.

The solution, obviously, is to produce their own shows — do what Scott Walters’ suggests, and work together and do small scenes together, monologues, 10 minute plays. The solution is to do their own work. The theatre doesn’t owe them anything. The theatre will, however, help those who help themselves.

A good example is a few years ago, one of the seniors embarked upon her senior project. She proposed a drama camp during the summer for kids. The rest of the department loved the idea, and so it happened. She ran it almost entirely by students, with only one faculty member assisting in scene painting. By the end of a week, the kids had performed a show for their parents. It was a huge success, raising the student drama society about $3000. Naturally, the department picked this up, and now it’s a departmental, annual thing run fully by the theatre (with assistance from students).

So, clearly, the theatre itself will assist a project, and maybe even take it on permanently, if the students, actors, and crew will start it and it proves to be successful.

Unfortunately, nobody wants to get off their asses to do so. In the past two years, there have been a handful of attempts to encourage and provide acting opportunities, including: three student-directed plays (including two by me), an improv theatre troupe (failed), and a cabaret (failed). The latter two failed largely because of a lack of participation. Everyone (well, in general) would rather sit around and bitch to each other than get off their butts and participate.

Which brings me to my conclusion. I’m going to echo, once again, Scott Walters. He has a brilliant plan to inspire change in local-actor hiring practices, but he makes a point, too: people don’t want to put themselves at risk if they don’t have to.

So, obviously, the trick is to provide them with an appropriate desire-to-laziness ratio. That is, the desire to participate must overcome their laziness. This worked in the two shows that I directed, because the students involved were sufficiently motivated to perform on stage — they were small shows and almost everyone had what could be termed a “lead role”, which motivated them to perform. Unfortunately, those kinds of shows aren’t the kinds of things that can be easily repeated. They would need to be something that worked so well that the theatre could pick it up, but similar enough that you don’t need to do an entirely new creative process every time (like, say, the drama camp). In addition, you need to have one person who is willing to do the vast majority of the work and is able to delegate the small tasks to their friends who are helping.

To summarize:

1) People are lazy
2) We need projects to do
3) The projects need to be low-risk, short in time-span, yet still produce results
4) They need to be easy to participate in
5) They need to be repeatable with minimal supervision

So what kinds of things can we do? Hmm.

I’ll get back to you on that.

(I’m breaking my posting schedule with this, but I’d like to get this out today.)

This is my last show in my current location.  Once this show is over, I’m moving away, either home or to wherever I’m going to grad school.  There is a lot I’m going to miss about this place, but honestly, it’s just time for me to move on.  However, I intend to go out with a bang.

I have an idea, and I’m hoping some of my friends will be willing to participate. The whole idea of this exercise is to improve ourselves as actors by getting criticism, suggestions and feedback from our peers, our faculty, and from random people who show up to the performance. In addition, this project will be huge brownie points in the eyes of the faculty, for anyone who participates.

I have a book of a collection of 10 minute plays. I’ve been reading through it, and I’ve found several plays that would be fairly easy to do, yet fun as well.  The question is:  will they be interested as well?  Here’s my proposal.

Mission Statement: We intend to produce multiple 10-minute plays for free to anyone who wishes to attend, for the intents of A) having fun, B) becoming better actors and C) helping generate interest in the theatre.

The Plan:

1) Get three or four people together (actually, the more the merrier)
2) Assign parts
3) Either take turns directing or I’ll direct all the plays
4) Spend 2-3 weeks practicing (they’re 10 minute plays, so not a lot of practice required)
5) Perform them (for free) one afternoon in the black box studio
6) Ask the audience for their criticisms (either written or verbal). To increase participation of this aspect, anyone who participates gets a coke and cookie or something.
7) Have a Post-Mortem meeting with everyone involved, go over the criticisms and suggestions. Become better actors

The key here is to offer them for free (to encourage attendance and participation), and to GAIN MEANINGFUL FEEDBACK from others. One of the problems that I see in the department is a lack of feedback from our instructors. Very rarely are we told what could be done better (especially after a play is over with). Every other industry out there does something similar, and it helps them avoid making the same mistakes over and over. Since our instructors won’t give us feedback on their own, let’s do our own project and generate our own feedback.
Hopefully, I’ll get enough participants (only need three!) to get this off the ground and running.  And hopefully, this will be such a success that it happens every semester, even after I’m gone.   Perhaps, in the future, it will become a 10-minute play festival or something.

What do you think?  Do you have better ideas, or perhaps some suggestions to improve this?  I’d love to read your comments!

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Adam strolls onstage, dressed as an Irish priest. He has a cigarette hanging from his lips, his hands clasped together into something that looks sorta-kinda holy. The audience laughs hysterically at his entrance. Up until this point, he had been dressed as a school teacher who did drugs and talked about fucking his students, and now, a priest? Hilarious!

“Oh Adam,” Carver says. “I’m glad you’re here, too. I need your help.”

“We all need each other, my friend,” Adam replies, dressed as an Irish priest.

“I was looking through the storage closet, and–”

“Why?!?!” Adam jumps up, frantic. Carver looks back at him, slightly confused.

Silence.

Carver continues, the scene rolls on, and I sit back in my seat, a bit miffed. That is easily my favorite line in the show, and nobody else thought it was funny. Adam’s ongoing difficulty during this particular production is his speed. He rushes through each and every line. At every rehearsal, I would say “Slow down!” over and over. He slowed down enough that we could understand his lines, but we lose the inflection that comes with slower, more enunciating speech. As this was my favorite line, I worked especially hard on this section to make sure it went over well. Obviously, it didn’t.

I mull over the scene again and again in my mind, keeping a facet of my attention on the performance. By the time the scene ended, I figured there was nothing I could do at this point to improve the audience reception.

The lights come back up. The show continues.

Oh well. Win some, lose some.

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“How is it that I am a good actor? What I do is I.. pretend to be the person I’m portraying.

You’re confused.

Case in point: in Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson comes to me and says ‘I would like you to be Gandalf the Wizard,’ and I said ‘You are aware that I am not really a wizard?’ and Peter Jackson said ‘I would like you to use your acting skills to portray a wizard for the duration of the show.’

So i said ‘Okay’ and then I said to myself ‘Mmm.. How do I do that?’ And this is what I did: I imagined that I was a wizard, and then I pretended, and acted, in that way on the stage.

How did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me where to stand.

If you were to graph my acting, it would look something like this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action — wizard! “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” Cut! — Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian…”

–Clip from the excellent BBC/HBO series Extras (Youtube).

As stupid as this scene is, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant, because it’s true.

Acting is really simple. You pretend. That’s it.

There is a catch. It, too, is simple: there’s no science to acting; it is an art.

Granted, you can teach one how to use the tools that are available to you, but without the instinct there is no art. There’s a reason why the School of Theatre is a part of the College of Arts.

You can give me the absolute best box of crayons and the highest quality paper, and I still can’t draw worth a shit. You can give me oil and canvas, marble and chisel, or piano and music, and I still can’t paint, sculpt, or sing. Like the previously mentioned subjects, acting is an art — you can’t teach it, per se. You can teach the methods, but you can’t teach the instinct.

I’m not a huge fan of method acting. Yes, I use aspects of Stanislavsky’s method in my own acting, but my own acting is much like Sir Ian McKellen’s: me, me, me, me, action! (say lines) cut!, me, me, me, me.

One of my instructors keeps trying to cram into our heads that actors should “really do what you’re doing.” This is wrong. Absolutely wrong. The minute you start to really do what you’re doing, you’re no longer acting — you’re no longer pretending — you’re just YOU on stage dressed up like someone else.

In the end, however, I don’t particularly care how YOU act, so long as you act well. I have friends who can’t act worth a shit, and I’ll never cast them unless their actual, real personality fits with the character. I’ve had friends that I could’ve sworn the author was thinking of when he wrote that play — they’re that much alike.

But when I hold auditions, I look for good actors. Actors who do different things, who behave differently than they do in “real life”, who can show me a range of behavior. After all, the best characters in a play change over the course of the play: they grow. If an actress can’t act, if she can only portray herself, then how can she grow on stage?

The simple answer: she can’t.

As stupid as Sir Ian’s explanation is, it is brilliant. It’s true.

Acting is pretending.
Stumble It!

I often get into discussions (I guess you could call them arguments) about the best actors and whether so-and-so is a good actor or not. Usually, my definition of a good actor isn’t the same as the other person’s. In fact, I would go so far as to say that my definition is not the normal definition of a good actor.

I consider a good actor to be one that can change personalities, change physical behavior, and change their reactions to fit the part of each character. In other words, a good actor is someone who, when you see them in two different roles, you don’t recognize them.

There are plenty of good actors out there — unfortunately, most of them are not in movies or on TV. In fact, I’m going to go out on another limb and say that most movie actors aren’t good actors. Popular favorites like Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, and Denzel Washington aren’t good actors. Before you jump up in horror at my blasphemy, take a minute and see my reasoning here.

Let’s take Julia Roberts as an example. There is no doubt in my mind (or anybody’s mind) that Julia Roberts is a movie star. She’s a very bankable actress. Actually, she’s one of the most bankable actresses out there, making something like $25 million per film (Julia Roberts’ Salary). This is not an opinion, this is fact. Julia Roberts is a movie star.

Is she a good actress though? I sincerely doubt it. You can find a sampling of reviews at Defamer.com. As you can see, they’re pretty negative. She was boring and intimidating, she couldn’t maintain her Southern accent, she was awkward and tense, and she was unsatisfying and ultimately ruined the play.

You see, the difference lies in the method through which the audience sees the performance. Julia Roberts has been in several blockbuster movies, including Erin Brockavich and Runaway Bride. She did a pretty good job in those. However, for any given shot, she had to maintain character for as long as that shot lasted. Should she make a mistake, no problem! Just reshoot the scene.

On Broadway, or any live theatre for that matter, you only get one shot. You have the whole rehearsal process to screw up, but come opening night, you better have it down. And it’s not just for a few minutes either. You have to hold that character in your mind for hours. It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be.

There are plenty of actors out there who have made it a point to be different, to be able to carry a variety of roles. Some of my favorites include Leonardo DiCaprio (salary), Kevin Spacey ($4.5 mil for The Negotiator), and Michael Caine (no salary listed).  These guys are definitely paid what they deserve, if not too little.  There are plenty of others, sure. Johnny Depp ($20 mil for Pirates 3) is amazing, but he has what I call “Tom Cruise Syndrome.” TCS is when I can’t stop thinking of the character as the actor.

When I see a Depp movie, I always think of him as Depp, not Willy Wonka or Sweeney Todd or Inspector Whatever-his-name was. When I see Mission Impossible, I don’t think Ethan — I think Tom Cruise. Kate Winslet has TCS (for me, anyway), as well as numerous other actors. Morgan Freeman, Adam Sandler, etc. I will admit that each of these actors I’ve mentioned has had performances that completely blew me away (Adam Sandler in Spanglish, Tom Cruise in Collateral, Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean, etc). But by and large, I attribute those changes to directors, not to the actors. I could be way off on that, though.

A friend of mine has this terrible habit of rocking on his heels when he gets nervous. Every single time he’s on stage, he’ll rock on his heels at some point. He also has some other mannerisms that repeatedly show up in his performances. Often, I’ll point those out to him, and he works hard to reign those nervous behaviors in. When he manages to reign them in, he is a phenomenal actor. It’s distracting, though, to see six performances in six different shows, and he has the same physical mannerisms in each one, when the characters are completely different characters. Sometimes the rocking on heels works — like Nicky in On the Verge, but sometimes it doesn’t, like when he played General Whats-his-name in Arms and the Man.

Of course, my definition is slanted towards stage acting, but theoretically, it should be able to carry both ways. After all, many actors have transitioned from film to stage and back again with no trouble at all. The trouble truly lies with the producers and with the fact that some actors are hired because of their performances in other movies. I’m sure Tom Cruise could be a phenomenal actor if he chose — but people don’t want him to play Collateral roles. They want to see Cruise in roles similar to Minority Report and Mission Impossible. They want Maverick back. And until he pushes himself to become a better, more diverse actor, that’s what they’ll get.

This why I love Hank Azaria:

“Wow. What do you enjoy most about stage acting?
It’s my favorite thing to do, on many levels. First of all, it’s an actors’ medium. In film, it’s the director and the editor who make their final cut, and pretty much the same in television. Onstage, it rests in your hands. You’re driving. Each actor entering the play is a living, breathing character; every single one has a different personality. Especially in a play like this, it’s a phenomenal experience to share that with 1,000 people every night. (Broadway.com)

That’s exactly why I love theatre. Thank you, Mr. Azaria, for articulating my thoughts as well!

The best part about theatre is that you have the potential to have a different dynamic each night. The script doesn’t change, the lines don’t change, the lights don’t change, the set doesn’t change, the people don’t change… the audience changes, the energy the actors feed from changes, and the whole experience changes. It’s like magic.

Go see a great show like, say, RENT or Jersey Boys. Then go back a week later and see it again, and it’ll blow you away just the way it did before. Nothing’s changed but the audience dynamic — the way the audience and actors interact — and it’s an entirely new experience. It’s like magic.

Mr. Azaria, my hat is off to you. Break a leg in The Farnsworth Invention.

“Hang on!” I called out. I stepped down from the risers and approached the woman playing the character of Zoe. The other two characters were Adam and Carver. We were only a few days into rehearsal, but the five or six times we’d run this particular scene, Zoe had delivered a line in a way that left me cringing inside. It wasn’t necessarily the wrong read on the line, it was more like she was missing something. Hopefully, I could clarify.

“Hang on a sec, Zoe,” I repeated. “Let me ask you a question. How do you feel about eating junk food all the time, watching movies where everything explodes, and listening to music that cracks your skull open?” She looked at me for a second.

“What?” she asked, a little confused. The character of Zoe is an interesting one. She’s sleeping with one of her students, Raphael. Adam, who is deeply and madly in love with Zoe, isn’t too happy about this. Carver is appalled.

“How do you feel about doing that stuff?” She rolled her eyes at me.

“Are you some kind of shrink?”

I continued. “Who are you doing these activities with?”

“Raphael,” she answered, with a “duhh” look on her face. I raised my eyebrows. She stared back. Her face changed in the space of a heartbeat. “Ohhhhhhhh,” she said. “I see.”

“Good. Let’s try that again.”

She delivered the line perfectly. Adam followed up with another line. The scene continued, and I relaxed. I settled back into my nice, comfy director’s chair and watched the scene unfold. So far, so good.

A minute later, I jumped up again.

“Hold it!” I cried. “I know I have you blocked over here, Adam, but it’s not working. Something isn’t working. How about instead of just holding her hand, you stand up and… ah, shit, that’s not going to work either.”

“I think he should scoot the chair around and put an arm around me,” Zoe blurted out. I looked at her for a second. I nodded.

“Good idea, Zoe.”

I have to be careful sometimes. Like all theatre people, I have a big ego. It is precisely that ego that makes us good — it makes us want to be in the spotlight, the center of attention, the grand fromage. But it’s not always a good thing. Sometimes professionalism comes into play.

The woman playing Zoe is an excellent actress. She wants to be a director, too. I get the feeling sometimes she thinks she knows better ways to do things, but then, I always thought that when I was being directed by someone else. In that light, I try to always stay open to suggestions, but in the end, I’m the director and she’s not.

For the sake of the show, I have to put my ego aside and think of what the best action is in any given situation. Sometimes I agree with people’s suggestions, sometimes I don’t. I will gladly say that she does a very good job of accepting and following direction, even if it isn’t the way she would have done it. Zoe is a true professional.

In fact, Adam and Carver are true professionals as well. The three of them have worked their asses off every day trying to memorize 98 pages of lines in a little less than four weeks. So far, so good.

Once again, I backed up the scene a little bit and said, “Go.” The scene unfolded again. Many times this night I stopped them and gave direction and ran the scenes again.

Towards the end of this rehearsal, I let my mind drift back to my earlier thoughts regarding Zoe. Professionalism is one of the qualities I most highly prize in actors and directors. Or anyone I work with, for that matter. The ability to contain one’s ego for the sake of the greater good, to accept criticism for what it’s worth, to follow instructions without undue argument is highly desirable and even necessary for actors, directors, and technicians if the show is to succeed.

I thought to myself as the scene wound down: So far, so good.

“Hey, Mr. Director!”

“Hey, Mike,” I reply. It is Mike, a kid I know from the school where I taught last year. He’s a freshman at the college. We are both at auditions for the first upcoming play, And Then There Were None (or Ten Little Indians) by Agatha Christie.

Someone snickers. Actually, a few someones snicker. They’re laughing because Mike calls me Mr. Director, instead of my first name, like my friends do. I understand. It’s a hard habit to break, especially when you start seeing a figure of authority hanging out like one of your friends. It’s even weirder when that figure of authority actually becomes your friend.

Since he really doesn’t know anyone at auditions, he sits with me. I decide to help him out.

I don’t really expect to get a part. The first show of the season always has at least thirty people auditioning, and there are usually only ten to twelve parts. This audition is no exception. My true purpose tonight is to check out the new talent and refresh my memories on the old talent. After all, I am directing a play later in the semester. Best to start thinking ahead.

I’ve been in this department for a little over five years now. I know all of the veterans. The new people, not so great.

Doc calls the first group up. I give a running commentary to Mike throughout the auditions. I offer suggestions as to why this person is a better auditionee than that person.

“What do you think of him?” Mike whispers. I look at who he meant. The guy is tall, thin, dark-haired and well-dressed.

“He’s my competition,” I reply. I explain to Mike how — unfortunately — looks count a lot in any audition. Most directors have a preconceived notion as to how each character should look. In addition, you want different body types on stage so the audience can easily tell which character is which. If you have two characters who have extremely similar body types, they blur together and audiences have a hard time telling the difference. This particular man looks very similar to me, so I know he is one of my competitors. There’s another man at auditions with a similar build, too.

I point out the groups of people attending. “One of us is going to get cast,” I say, pointing at the two men who are similar to me in build. “Your competition are those two guys.”

Mike is short and scrawny. He has a messy mop of hair on his head, and he wears thick-rimmed black glasses. He always wears denim and he’s a nervous wreck sometimes. The other two guys were similar. One had crazy hair, the other wore glasses. Both were the same general build — short, thin, young. One of them was going to get the role of the Doctor, I thought. They had the mad scientist look going for them.

“Rob is going to get cast,” I say. There is no one else who fit his build, and Rob is a perfect character actor for one of the characters in the play. Then I point to two other girls, “Both of them will get cast. There are three female parts, and these two are different enough physically from the other girls that they’re definitely in. They’re solid actresses and Doc has seen them perform before. They’ll get cast.”

I look around at the other girls. I have no clue which is going to get cast in the third female role. Why am I so uncertain? It’s simple. They all look the same. They’re all about 5′6″, long blonde hair, thin, athletic bodies, and nice chests. They’re all beautiful. Doc was probably going to eeny-meeny-miney-mo to pick. In fact, he probably did.

“And those two guys are competitors,” I whisper to Mike while pointing at two black guys who showed up. “Alex will probably get the part, because Demetrius isn’t such a great actor. He’s not trying at all to break out of the ‘hood’ mentality.” Demetrius still walks and talks like your stereotypical black guy. Alex, on the other hand, had altered his behavior to fit the role.

There are a few other groups of people, and I point them out to Mike. This whole whispered conversation occurrs while the first group went up to audition.

As auditions progress, I point out other things I notice about the auditionees.

“See how he keeps shifting his weight? That’s annoying. See how that other guy keeps walking around? It’s unnecessary. Just plant your feet and don’t move unless you have a good reason to move.”

Mike nods. He understands. He makes some excuses about his own nervousness. That’s perfectly normal, I assure him. Part of learning to be an actor is to control those nervous behaviors. It’s normal to be nervous — it’s better to be nervous but not show it.

“See that girl?” I ask. “She’s too hyper. This character is supposed to be an old woman, and this girl is pretty much bouncing around like a bouncy-ball. She’d be a perfect Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Mike chuckles. I do, too.

In the end, I am spot on about who was going to get cast. The only category in which I am wrong is the one with all the blonde petite girls. I’m positive Doc flipped a coin on that one.

Mike is impressed. I shrug.

“Like I said, man,” I explain. “Looks matter in this business. Acting talent is what sets you apart from everyone else who looks just like you. Whenever those other guys who look like you go up there, watch what they do and do something different. Set yourself apart from them. You aren’t competing against me. You’re competing against them. Do something different from them.”

Mike nods again. We chat for a few more minutes and then I leave.

As I drive home, I ponder what I had told Mike. I don’t really think it’s fair that looks matter. After all, you can’t control some things about your looks. But I decide I was right. In theatre, the beauty myth is true, to an extent.

Looks matter — talent matters more.