It's a tale as old as time. I didn't get the part. 

I watched the premier of Smash last night and thought, "It's going to be cool to be an actor pretty soon". But the rub is that as a dramatic climax, rejection works very well, but in real life, when you open your email during a work day and see that snippet in the inbox that contains the word 'unfortunately', it just doesn't strike the same cord. It tugs the heart in a less savory way. It makes you want to cry in public. 

It doesn't start off this way. 

When you first get the call to audition you read the spec. "Eh, ok...the play is, well, I'd do it." Then you read the sides, you make some decisions, you get attached. Attached to the character, the play, and perhaps your interpretation of it. 

You go to the audition. You see so many great people there, some whom you haven't seen in a long time, most that you are excited to see and that you'd love to work with. You read for the director and perhaps get to have a little dialogue, if you're lucky you get adjustments on your read (basically corrections or alternate interpretations) and you can start to see what take the director has on the play. It's interesting (usually). Now you think as you leave, "Man, I'd like to do this play. And I think I did a pretty great job."

You get a call back! Hurray! Typically you receive extra sides or sometimes, sides for a different character. But you've been invited to the party and your bringing your all-star potluck dish. You're going all out. What you could take or leave before, you now have to have. As a matter of fact, it is yours, because you are a positive thinker, a positive person!

You go to the call back, dressed in the same outfit exactly. There are fewer people here and you speak in more hushed tones. You're not just reading, you're acting. This time you get to act with another actor and it's great. Give and take, you create a relationship in a matter of minutes, a history and a present day. More adjustments from the director. You leave with positive feedback, (here in Seattle, there is never negative feedback and never, God forbid, no feedback), and as you take the elevator down you think, "I fucking got it. Turn around ladies and save yourself the pain of the parking ticket because you see this bag? That part is in it!"

You check your email, well, every time you're not doing anything else. Sometimes you do it when you are doing something else. For days. And Days. The part that started out 'Eh...ok' has become an imperative. A given, in-fact because you've been thinking positively. 

And then you don't get it. 

I used to be crushed for weeks when that email landed, a seagull shit in your hair. One time I got in the car and told Justin with a sob, "I've failed at everything I've ever tried to dooooooo!" Oh God, it's just ugly and awful.

But the really painful thing, that seems to be the enduringly painful thing for me, is that I didn't really care to begin with. You have to build up that little wall and say, "No big deal" and through the course of auditioning you harvest a really long stick from the tree of hope and you pole-vault that bitch. 

It's like Toon Town over there! Plants are dancing, cars are singing. Glory shines where the sun used to be. It feels good over there, you get a tan. Your acne clears up. Elton John writes a song for you. 

Because the truth is, you can't approach artistic endeavors saying, "Eh...ok." I certainly try to, but it doesn't stick. I start out passionless and detached and within a day...full blown art romance. It's MRSA in the locker room of my heart. An eternal bloom.

So, I didn't get the part. I'm looking for a singing car to drive me to the other side of the wall and I'm watching Smash thinking, "It's going to be cool to be an actor pretty soon". 

My first theatrical journey ended like an abusive relationship. I was simultaneously in a euphoric state of relief and a desperate state of fear and loss, screaming at the cops, "Don't take him, I love him!". When I made the decision to walk away without a timeline for re-entry, I had suffered a number of significant rejections on the heels of a period in my career that I had been assuming was "my big break". How ridiculous.

You see, I am a thoroughbred capitalist, bent on the idea of hard work and accomplishment as rungs on a ladder.
This
leads to
this
leads to
this
and at the top, an apex. A terrific and light-headed glory. I suppose it all began to crumble when I became completely convinced that I would reach the top of the ladder and realize how uninteresting the climb had been and that it would probably result in the same feeling that had come after every project I'd completed which was, "I really botched that one and to boot, I made an ass of myself and no one likes me."

Friends, that's about as healthy as a December Diet.

So after a particularly painful rejection email arrived in my inbox, I decided, "Fuck those guys. I'm going back to school."
And I was not spending another penny on schooling for theater. I was going to find a career where I could climb the rungs of the ladder and reach, by gosh and by golly, a bluff with a sweeping vista. I would look out into that fertile valley of experience and be able to say, "I've made it. And now I'll build my house here." And the career I chose to catapult me atop this dream-bluff: esthetics.


Most people said, "Cool, so you're going to put people under--" and I'd have to interrupt and explain that an esthetician is a skin care professional and I would now be in the business of beauty. Other people's. Different, I know.

So I worked extremely hard in school, graduated at the top of my class, and got a job directly after my program. In the meantime I also moved, got married, and went on Safari for my honeymoon. It was a big year and I didn't have a lot of time for wallowing. Throughout this I worked hard to build a clientele in my business, to improve my skill and timing, to market myself and make sure I was always performing at top-level so every client left the spa with a good word about me. Basically, I was able to transfer my obsessive pursuit of success in theater with a similar pursuit in esthetics.

Except in esthetics no one ever said,
"You were so great, but I just couldn't see you as my esthetician." Gah.
Or,
"The Director said you were too gorgeous for the part". Please.
Or the best,
"You've got the part! Now, the pay is $50 for 8 weeks of work and people are going to write really nasty things about your labor of love in The Stranger for the enjoyment of the jaded masses because they're too afraid to be caught enjoying what others might not."
Fascinating.

Skin care, on the opposite end, was something I could do that would be lucrative, flexible and above all fulfilling. Sure there would be disappointments and setbacks but, let me tell you the glory of seeing a client leave with a spring in her step because you shaped her eyebrow. Friends, it is a bluff and sweeping vista all it's own.

So now, after 18 months of focusing on the skin and body hair of other people, I have decided to make an earnest second journey into theater. This time, I hope to approach it is an enrichment to my life rather than both the path and the destination. I hope to reach sparingly and with caution in order to find myself prepared to accept roles I really want. Most importantly, I hope to truly do it for the enjoyment of the thing. The day I called myself a professional actor was the day I shot myself in the artistic anus. I am putting myself on a metaphorical EHarmony, to find a lover with a slow hand and an easy touch. So look for me in the spa, waxing bush and brow or, on stage, waxing minds.