Hope

Anything precious that can be dashed is a dangerous thing to hold, making hope one of the worst.

Hope is like a baby. You conceive it, birth it, look into its wide, bright eyes and see nothing but a future of beauty stretching ahead. And as you’re staring into those bright eyes, someone comes along, grabs the baby by the ankles, swings it over his head, and dashes its brains against a rock.

For that reason, I decided not to hope to be cast in Laramie Project. Also, because I am not happy with the memory of my callback audition.

A truly good audition is rare, but when it happens, it is undeniable. You focus your eyes, open your mouth, and like entering the eye of a hurricane, silence and stillness descends. The director forgets about the long line outside the door, about the months of stress ahead, about the pen in his hand and the chair under his seat. He forgets to assess, forgets that you are speaking words that are not your own. You feel all of this. And when you finish, inhale, and look back at the director, you share a moment of honest human communion like two souls standing alone in a room. And in this small moment, the hush and stillness softly vanishes, and you’re back in the world again, slightly wiser than you were before you walked through the door.

I felt none of that during my Laramie Project callback. “Nope. No hope for this one,” I told myself, shaking my head in disgust as I relived the callback in my head. An hour later I decided. “You will make the best of this. Whatever happens, you will make the best of this.”

And at 2:00pm this afternoon, I opened my email to read:

Hello,

So sorry for the lateness of this email, we've not had internet for the past night so contacting you has been a nightmare.

However, we're very pleased to say that your auditions really inspired us and we'd love to offer you a place in the Laramie Project Cast.

Congratulations once again, and we look forward to working with you!

Pat and Sarah.

I got in. I got in. Oh my God, I got in!

All the stress from the past week drained out of my body, leaving me like a limp noodle at the bottom of the colander, praying, “Thank you, God,” feeling a stability I had not felt since I landed.

P.S. I used the masculine pronoun for the director in this post, because for the past two and a half years, every show I have auditioned for has been directed by a male. No sexism here, guys and gals.