After a piss-poor audition for this semester's theater productions, I was quite surprised to hear I got a call back. I had really thrown out the idea of me in a play at New Mexico State University. Who respects someone for walking out of an audition? Well, I found out there are second chances in life and to make anything of them you need to come back strong.
"Pterodactyls', huh?" I said to my friend after he told me I made callbacks. He happened to have the play and said I should read through it before the 3:30 call back that Jan. 13 afternoon. I did and right away I could tell what part they wanted me to read.
Todd, a 23-year-old son was coming home from some time away. He had been out living life on the edge. Well, it appeared to me that he fell off the edge. He came home and broke the news to his parents that he had AIDS, yet had no symptoms.
The play starts out with him giving a report on dinosaurs, a monologue.
"I'm not going to get cast," I thought. "I couldn't even get through two paragraphs of my tryout monologue." I'd choke and didn't think Director Tom Smith would take a chance.
Oh well, I'd give it a shot. I'd go to the read through and do my best to portray this boy, who turned out to be the most normal one in the play.
Sure enough, Smith put me in as Todd. I read about four scenes as Todd and did a good job, I thought.
"Hmmm, maybe I will get cast," I told my theater buddies. They said that would be really awesome, but I could tell from the way they said it, that it just doesn't happen that way. A non-theater major getting a lead? No. I'm not ready for that, or, was I?
I had done plays in the past. I had a good reading. I realized the seriousness of the role. The powerful scenes that I would be faced to do in front of my peers. I knew the challenge and was ready for it.
"The cast list will be up tomorrow around noon," Smith said to the group I was reading with as we did our last scene. "Oh, and Carson, could I see you for a second?"
"Sure," I said, thinking he was on to my little story and was going to question my intent.
"I noticed the conflicts you wrote down on your audition sheet. Are there ways you could get out of those meetings during tech week?" he asked.
"Oh," I answered, a little taken back. "Yeah, oh yeah, I'd do that."
OK. Great. He got me. Yeah. He got me right where he wanted this journalist, in fear. I was nervous before I stepped on stage, but now I was nervous about what I would do if I got the role. I actually thought I could get it. How would my friends react to me in this role? Would I be laughed at, or called homo? Could I actually go through with this?
Yeah. I could. I would. It would be a challenge, but I could do it.
I won't. I woke up a few times the night before the cast list was posted. I thought about it too much.
My story came out the next day about the audition. I wrote the truth about what happened. I went to school, grabbed the paper, and came home without checking the list. Ken, a neighbor of mine, who had tried out for the same role and was also certain he'd get it, stopped by my house. He told me the news. Neither of us made it. I was nothing, he was cast in Antigone.
I knew. I wasn't happy or sad or relieved or let down. I was everything. All my emotions came off the stage. I guess it might have been because I'm not a theater major or maybe it was because I was writing a story. No, it was probably because I'm not an actor.
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