I Can't Believe It's Not Shakespeare

Most people have seen A Chorus Line, but I experience it on a daily basis.  I often leave auditions thinking that I am the worst auditioner ever.  I am a good actress but I never get cast.  It can be an incredibly frustrating experience.  If you’re not an actor you know how it feels too.  Especially in this economic climate.  Jobs in general hard hard to come by, and watching other people climb the ladder right next to you can be demoralizing.  I meet tons of people every day and I know that I have just as much to offer if not more than they do, but for some reason I am not the one in the shows.  They are.

So what am I doing wrong?!!

Well, I don’t know. And maybe I’m not doing anything wrong.  When I look in the news and see the amount of unemployment in this country I don’t blame the people who have lost their jobs.  There are fewer shows being produced and so there is less work in general for all theatre practioners.  We must be prepared at all times and ready at a moments beacon to do anything that we are called upon to do.

We must read playbill.com, broadway.com, check the actor’s equity website and backstage.com daily.  We must watch films and read at least one play a week.  we have to go to the drama book shop and search through plays and listings of agents, managers and casting directors.  We should find ways to make as many contacts as possible through places such as The Network, Actor’s Connection, One on One, or just making new friends.  People who might not be able to help you out now may someday in the future.

In the mean time, I have to do my best when I am at an audition.  What I do know is that I am asked to prepare something, I do.  I try to bring my heart and soul to share with the people across the table.  I want to make people feel and think and experience theatre in a way that they haven’t done before.  But all I can do is keep auditioning and keep waiting and keep knowing that one day it will be different.  That one day I will look on Actors Equity and I will bereading my story about how I got my card.  I will look on playbill and see an ad and an article about a show that I am in and feel confident that I am adding something to the theatre community and the larger community of New York.

That’s what keeps me going.  That’s what keeps most actors going.  Of course, all this isn’t to say that I never work.  I constantly work on smaller projects and things I won’t get paid for but that I do for the love of the art.  That’s what keeps my acting muscles working.  I’m not waiting to be famous by any stretch of the imagination.  What I want, and what I think most actors want, is to find a way to make a living acting and making great art.  And who knows?  Theatre companies that I work with today, such as I Can’t Believe It’s Not Shakespeare could be the next Steppenwolf.  Who knows?

– Ronit Aranoff