Non-Bitchiness

The whole theater thing just keeps going. I ran into a friend from my last year of high school at an arts school who is working with a theater company here in Chicago. I guess our teachers were right in that the arts world is a small place and we should be nice to everyone just in case. I didn't realize it would take 12 years, but there you are. Angustias, as I will call her after one of the roles she played the year I knew her, also happens to have run into another guy I knew from that era, one of the teachers' fair-haired children. I confess that I expressed surprise to Angustias that he hadn't cirrhoded his liver by now, but that's another story. Interestingly enough, he admits now that he was an asshole at the time. Being the sucker I am for apologies, I want to meet him again. Angustias doesn't think he'll remember me since he barely femembered her, but I disagree. Everyone remembers the freak.

And that was what I was. My OCD wasn't really under control, my social skills were awful (not like they're great now, so you can imagine), and I seemed incapable of leaving anyone with anything but a sense of disappointment. It wasn't one of my shining moments except that no one got killed. In all honesty, I don't think that year was a shining moment for anyone in the theater department at the Academy, including the instructors, so I guess we all should just try to forgive each other for our sins and be done with it. So here's hoping the former asshole remembers me with tolerance, especially since I always thought he was kind of cute.

As far as Angustias is concerned, I'm hoping I can get Stockyards to use her in something. Anyone with her chops and personality should be working. Of course, I think she's used to being paid, so we'll see what happens.

Things are going well of both job fronts; Lisieux called me conscientious and I have less than three months left on my probation period. Life is looking up.

Not About the Library

I interrupt my usual line of bitchiness for a new one: remember theater? That thing I went to college to learn and to grad school to give myself a day job for? Nah, me niether.

Well, I went on my first audition in years tonight. I thought I did pretty well for not having done it in forever, but I probably won't get picked. I now remember why I got out of the whole acting thing, besides the psychic damage that I slapped a bandage on and refuse to look at again. The problem is simple: the audition process makes you crazy. And I don't need any help in that direction, thank you. You sit or stand there, wishing like hell you could read the director's/playwright's/whoever's mind so that you can give them what they want better than anyone else. And there's no immediate gratification, especially if they like you even a little bit. Given all this, you'd think they'd come up with a better system, but having been a director, let alone a being with a shred of empathy, I am sad to report that we haven't. It is babaric and unjust, but not much else works. At least, not in theater. Hollywood takes meetings and does lunches, but that is the movies and only for a very small fraction of a percentage of that. The rest just cast their friends because that's who they can afford. But I digress. I thought I was pretty good and I think I'd be perfect for at least one role. I find out Sunday, asssuming they have their shit together.