I Am a Professional Actór! 🤣

Because I'm an idiot, I did end up trying out for another community theater play with Maggie. Somehow, probably because Maggie was cast as the lead and because not enough people auditioned, I actually got a small part!!!

It was directed by the same man who directed August: Osage County a couple of months ago, for which Maggie and I tried out, and in which she was cast until it turned out her conflicts for rehearsal were exactly opposite that of her scene partner. 

Unlike the three previous plays for which I auditioned, I had not read the script beforehand because it is still a work-in-progress originally written by the director's son when he was in college twenty years ago. I may not have auditioned if I had read it. The play is...something. The playwright took Charlotte's Web and presented it as a sort of psychotic fever dream of a woman on trial for murdering her infant. It is clever. Possibly too clever by half. It needed a couple of trigger warnings: dead babies and child sexual abuse. The ending just does not make sense given the content of the play. It's three hours long. And nearly all of the actors double as farm animals. Without any change to costuming. Like I said, it's...something.

But the experience was well worth it. I got to do a show with Maggie before she goes off to college. I got to do a show at all! And if and when I find something else for which to audition, I have a credit and I know some people in the local theater scene! 

I went into the show (foolishly) confident that I could "act." It turns out I did not know what acting entails. I can memorize lines. I can pretend a wide range of emotions. But other aspects surprised me. I didn't think about what it means to be physically on stage with a bunch of other people. Blocking was new. Figuring out what to do with myself when I am not the one speaking was unexpected. I found it challenging to ignore the distraction of people, especially the director, talking while we were supposed to continue rehearsing. I had not fully considered that when you do scenes over and over again, you need to act like you don't know what other people's lines are about to be! Or worse, that you may need to figure out what to do when THEY don't know their lines. 

I have a lot to learn. 

But I got paid a (tiny) stipend—seriously, toddlers in Thailand make more per hour. 

So by the most literal definition, I am a professional actor. LOLZ.