Anxiety

I hate waiting so much. One of the worst things about auditioning is hanging out in the netherworld after having done an audition, but before hearing anything back. Sometimes its pretty immediate, and as terrifying as it is to not be called back in front of everyone else at the audition, at least you know that you're done. Sometimes you will get a wonderful personalized email, thanking you, maybe even mentioning the possibility of future work. I recently received one of these, and as much of a bitch as it was not to get the part, I am trying to take it as a victory that they remembered me positively. Sometimes you will get a mass email saying 'thanks, but no thanks'. And then, far more often than the other possibilities, you will be informed that you were not cast when you see said show, or at least advertisements for said show, and realize that you were not in it.

It's so shitty to just be left hanging. As much as I try to leave the audition when I'm finished, I never do. I think back over it again and again. I replay it, and various permutations of it ad nauseum. When its gone badly, I often relive it with an added scene in which I vomit profusely all over my shoes, or recast all the auditioners as boys I had crushes on in high school but didn't know I existed. Sometimes I turn it into a monster movie, in which my hideous performance somehow transforms me into Godzilla, and I end the audition storming out, twenty feet tall screaming, 'Jessica SMASH! Supporting roles BAD!'

And when it goes well, I add lots of dialogue to increase watchability and add dramatic potential. Maybe the auditioner tells me, not only will I play every part in this play, but in every play he directs from henceforth. Often in these dreams, I transform into some kind of modern day Dorothy Parker, spilling forth witticisms as easily as gin flows from a bottle.

Neither of these, of course, really has any reflection on a) whether I get the part, or b) whether I hear from the company again. A great audition can lead nowhere except into fabulous Nora Ephron-type fantasies, and an audition involving expletives and an undone fly can sometimes get me a part. And you never know how you're going to find out the result.

It fucking sucks.