Odd Indy Feature

Okay, so I had this audition today at a house in Burbank.  I've done this before so I wasn't creeped out.  They seemed generally eager to pursuade us of its safety.  So I get there and there's a sign on the closed door saying "Auditions Today."  Nothing else.  So I ring the doorbell and no one answers.  A couple minutes pass.  I knock on the door and no one answers.  I walk around to the back of the house and there's nothing.  Back at the front door, I go to just walk in and it opens.  Apparently they were just ignoring me.  It turns out there's only one guy running the auditions and its being recorded right there in the front room.  Ooops.  Sucks for the girl before me. 

Anywho...so I get the script.  Three FULL pages of diaglogue and a guy staring at me waiting for me to begin.  On top of that another girl comes to the door and gets a script.  Okay, so I take my time (about 3 reads through the script and answer some quick questions in my head (thank you Amy)).  We do the read and he has me do one section over with an adjustments.  I fudged the lines a bit, but the emotions were there.  I think he liked me, but he might have just been asking my availability for kicks.  Who knows...

Oh, so the best part is the script.  Its like "Paranormal Activity" meets "House Bunny."  Sexy scary stupid horror.  I think it might actually be kinda funny!

Restaurant Audition

So I'm pretty much really very poor.  Really?  An actress living in LA has money issues?  I know, but sometimes you gotta be the oddball in city of pefectly coiffed barbie dolls.  Anywho...

There was an open call for the best job in LA for actors...Micelli's restuarant.  It seriously PERFECT!  Once you get hired, you're hired for life!  You could leave to go on tour with a production or to shoot a movie and come back and still work.  You got an audition?  Just call and cancel your shift.  BUT its one of the hardest places to get a job because of this.  No one quits...ever.  There are so many people there that they only hold auditions a few times a year.  One of them being today.

Auditions? To work at at restaurant?  But why, you ask?  Because the servers' side work is singing.  Yep!  Broadway, Pop, Classical.  Its AWESOME.  You get a mic, a pianist, a drummer, and a room full of people waiting to tip you.  : )  Heaven on earth.

So I get there a few minutes early and they've already started and there are a good 10 people ahead of me.  They don't want a work resume, no.  They want your headshot and acting resume.  Awesome again.  So I'm waiting, listening to every one else go.  And thank God!  Its been so long since I've had a musical audition with a pianist that I have this ginormous 2" notebook with over 100 songs that is 1/2 way organized.  There were so many options and I couldn't decide.  Then the pesonnel manager comes out and tells us to not sing as the character but sing as ourselves.  We don't have to do 2 contrasting pieces but we can.  I love this place.  So one girl already sang my first option for an up tempo so I go to my second choice which turns out to be an even better choice!

They call my name and I'm in the hole.  The guy before me...eh, he's okay.  Better for me dude.  Its my turn.  I give the pianist my music, and remember why I don't usually use this particular piece for auditions.  It the PERFECT song for my voice, but its kinda hard for the pianist if they don't know.  The time signature jumps from 6/8 to 3/4 and there are 5 flats.  Dum dum dum.  But I've been listening to the guy play and I think he can handle it.  Damn...he doesn't know it.  Too late now.  He plays the first couple of bars for me and says he's got it.  I correct him on the tempo - he was going sooooo slow!  But when we start, he's still slow.  So I figure its my audition, he's gotta follow me, not the other way around.  So I start with him and then slowly speed up.  I think that mighta thrown him off cause he starts to keep up and then the rhythm was all off and I just started to ignore him.  Pretty sure I pissed him off, but I sounded great!  Alright, one down, one to go.  This one he knows - "The Music and the Mirror."  Perfect!  He's happy, I'm happy.  The world is a great place!  I freaking rocked it!  On both songs all I did was show my personality and belted like no other.  Its the best feeling to finish notes and phrases and even an entire piece in perfect unison with the piano and drummer.  All three of us had tons of energy and were just...awesome.  There just isn't any other way to describe it.  It was the most fun I've had at an audition in a long time.  Singining with live musicians just gives me such a thrill!

In Class Student Audition

Okay, so today I had an audition for a student in which I was supposed to portray an 18 year old runaway in an abandonded hotel.  I show up and realize that I'm not a runaway, I'm just a kid hiding out after school at this place with her best friend.  So I redo my look so I don't look quite so haggard and start going over sides.  Yes, of course, sides weren't available until I got there.  There's like 3 pages of dialogue and I mostly got it down in the 10 minutes I had thanks to my awesome coach, Amy Lyndon.  So I walk in and what do you know...there's a classroom full of 20 students and their teacher staring at me...huh.  Well, whatever.  So I meet the director and just block everybody except her and the reader out.  We start out with this reaction sequence of watching somebody die.  Pretty good!  Then we move to the two scenes and they switch to the role I wasn't prepared for.  Fan-freaking-tastic, right?  But I made them let me take my time and what do you know; I held the emotion and screwed the exact wording and did it.  Awesome.

I got a callback.  : )