“Hi, I’m here for the Next Step Auditions,” I tell the
spiky-haired man with the clipboard ushering a hallway of college students into
a line. “Anna Rose from B Street Theatre,” I say offering my hand. “Oh!” His
face snaps from jaded to surprise. “I thought you were a student,” he says,
shaking my hand. “Right this way.”
The spiky-haired man opens a metal door, and I walk into a
black box filled with a piano and eight tables lined with casting representatives.
I slip into an empty chair. An assistant hands me a stack of headshots and
resumes. Another assistant hands me a master audition list and the day’s
schedule. Five minutes later, the first group walks in. Nerves fill the room.
It’s February 20, 2013, and I’m auditioning candidates at KCACTF’s Region 7 Next Step Auditions for
the 2013-2014 B Street Theatre Professional Acting Internship. We are accepting six acting interns, and we still have another
conference to attend. A year ago, I was on that stage, another college senior
with a theatre degree desperate for employment, only my stage was at SETC,
Southeastern Theatre Conference. I am four months into my directing internship
with B Street Theatre, and I am on the other side of the table. My only thought
is, “Am I qualified for this?”
The first actor walks to the center of the room, slates, and
begins her monologue. I pick up my pen, begin jotting notes on her resume, and…
I’m fine. I know this— this watching and analyzing actors. It’s what I do. It’s
what I’ve done for the past decade. All I have to do is answer the question: Can this person act
on a professional level? My insecurities take the day off.
The actors are college students, mostly undergraduate with the
occasional M.F.A. candidate. They are auditioning for summer and/or year-long
employment. Some are finishing an associate’s degree and looking to transfer to
a four-year program.
One by one actors take the stage. Hopeful. Buzzed. Ambitious.
From 9am to 6pm I watch actors enter, talk, and leave. Enter, talk, and leave.
Enter, talk, and leave. Some seem to have no training. Many have potential. A
few should be being paid. Mostly, they are college students with big dreams and
little experience. The disparity between my piles of “call back” and “recycle”
grows.
Throughout the day, I add to the call-back list posted on
the bulletin board outside the audition room. To reach the list, I have to
shimmy through a permanent mass of eyes searching the wall for their names. “Excuse
me. Pardon me,” I repeat, taking down the yellow paper and returning a few
minutes later, the list a little longer. I repin it, and moving away, the crowd
rushes forward, fingers scanning fresh ink.
When I see actors I called back, I introduce myself and
shake their hand, telling them I enjoyed their audition and am calling them
back for B Street Theatre’s Professional Acting Internship call back. I say I
hope to see them there.
Not a single actor approaches me, introduces him/herself, asks
me a question. I wonder if they want a job. I decide they have never been
taught that theatres hire people, not auditions or headshots or resumes, and to
get hired, they either need connections or they need to make themselves into a
person amid the piles of faces and paper.
After 9 hours of auditions, I call back 36 actors. 25 show
up. I had posted the call backs for 7:00pm-10:00pm, expecting the actors to trickle
in throughout the three-hours. When I walk into the room at 6:45pm, they’re all
there.
“Hi,” I say, walking to the center of the room, 50 eyeballs
following me, “thank you for coming.” Taking advantage of the large audience, I
outline B Street Theatre and its Professional Internship Program before beginning
individual call backs. I don’t seduce them into the program. I dissuade
them. Because the B Street Theatre Internship is hard. It’s 80-90 hours a week, working
12-16 hour days, 6 days a week for 8 months, no vacations. Acting interns spend
15-60 hours per week in their concentration and the other 65-30 hours per week
making the theatre go—cleaning, running errands, loading the set, building the
set, changing-over the set, striking the set, working bar, leaf blowing the
parking lot, washing costumes, and whatever else anyone at B Street asks them
to do, because everyone one, except another intern, is your boss. But at the
end of the (long) day, acting interns have performed 1-3 shows or spent 10
hours in rehearsal or taken a class or all three.
Telling the actors the program’s reality, I watch steel
enter their eyes. They lean closer, almost salivating, eyes glinting. I know
that look; it’s an alloy of passion and ambition burnished in desperation. It’s
a look that says, “Bring it on.” It’s the look I wore a year ago sitting across
from Buck Busfield, B Street Theatre’s Artistic Director, as he described the
internship. It’s the look I still wear when I’m presented with a chance to skid
broadside across concrete to do the work that makes sleep and food and showers
and anywhere else in the world unnecessary—like my current project directing
the intern showcase outside an 85-hour workweek.
The more I talk, the more they hear: “Work." The grit just adds romanticism.
I should have known. Theatre people love to work, and they love to work hard. They open a vein, drain it on stage, and get off on it. So telling a 20-something theatre crowd
that in this internship you work morning, day, and night, that it’s is
all-consuming, that it will take everything from you, that you will fiercely
love it and fiercely hate it and consider leaving theatre forever and,
ultimately, learn more about your craft than you ever have in your life…well, it’s
lighting a spark in a powder keg.
When I interviewed for this
internship, I told Buck the position sounded like touching fire—terrifying and
magnetic. Looking at their eyes, metallic ambition, they want to grab
that flame with both hands.
Good. We want people who are hungry.
-Anna Rose
