On Auditioning for Rent | Part 2
that's a REALLY big binder
This is Part Two of a multi-part series. Read Part One for some backstory if you’re curious.
Audition day.
I felt out of my body. I floated in the door. About ten people sat scattered around the perimeter of the room.
Somehow my feet knew they were supposed to walk up to a table.
Somehow my mouth knew my name was Kim, and that it was supposed to say it out loud.
Somehow my butt knew how to find a seat and sit in it.
Somehow my hand knew how to grasp my bag and place it on my lap.
Somehow my fingers knew how to pull out my three-ring binder with my sheet music for “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.”
Somehow my body knew how to sit there and seem like it knew what it was doing.
Like I knew what I was doing.
It was dead quiet. I waited. We waited.
Someone else walked in with a binder full of audition songs. This thing was a monster. It had tabs, and it was busting at the seams, some papers sticking out at funny angles. This person had easily gone on 75 auditions.
I gripped my brand new, 1/2-inch black binder, purchased at Staples 48 hours before. It had four sheets of paper in it, meticulously placed in sheet protectors.
Somehow my lungs knew how to breathe
I waited. We waited.
The first person was called in. We could hear nearly everything taking place in the theater.
“Well, at least you get to listen to your competition.” The person checking us in chuckled half to themselves and half to us as the first bars of “Take Me or Leave Me” blared into the room.
I closed my eyes. I gripped my binder. A few more names were called. Somehow my body knew how to stay seated and not run from the room screaming for my life.
My name was called. My feet did their thing again.
I remember walking in, up the stage, over to the accompanist, placing my music down. Saying what I needed to say.
The audition itself was a blur. I believe I blacked out. I know I did stuff, moved around, and sounds came out of my mouth.
I remember walking back after it was over and getting my flimsy binder from the keyboard. “That was fun,” the accompanist said as I picked it up. I think I managed a “thanks.”
As quickly as it began, it was over.
Back in the car, I cried. I don’t exactly know “why” I was crying but I think it was probably the release.
I was still thinking about that big, freaking binder.
I accepted I didn’t get it. It was something I got to experience, and that was that.
On the phone with my mom the next day, I absentmindedly checked my e-mail.
Callbacks, the subject line read.
[We are] happy to have you return on Monday March 25th to audition for the role of Maureen.
Please arrive at 6:45PM to dance with the ensemble, so we can see your dance skills as well. Click on the link for further information about the show and if any material is required for your character.
Please confirm with me that you will be attending.
I screamed. I had only auditioned for a part in the general ensemble, and now I was getting a callback for a lead?!
I immediately got to work on Maureen’s songs. The callback was just two days away.
While the audition story will pick up in Part Three, I want to, once again, connect this experience to the writing process.
Let’s chat about that person with the binder full of audition songs, shall we?
There’s a few things that hindsight reminded me:
That person has certainly walked a different path than I have
That person, once upon a time, sat where I sat with a few measly pieces of sheet music
That person likely has very different goals than I have
There are clear parallels to our writing process. While we don’t often have the experience of sitting next to our fellow writers in one room, we get something even better: the internet!
Here’s where we can scroll away for hours upon hours, reading (and sometimes) comparing.
Maybe, through the process, we head down one of the following rabbit holes.
The Different Path
You refer to the author who has been going at this thing for twenty years and think: they deserve it more because they have been working at it longer. Or, they must be better than me because they’ve had years of practice.
Well, maybe.
But, also, you can’t turn back the hands of time. Maybe writing wasn’t a priority for you back then. Maybe you couldn’t move past your inner critic, so the writer in you sat dormant for decades. Maybe you’ve just discovered you love to write, want to write, need to write.
So are you going to sit here wishing you’d done something twenty years ago or are you going to accept that you’re on a different path and get to writing, anyway? (Ooph. OK, “Mean Kim” is gone now. You can come back out.)
The “I have less experience”
The first thought I had when I saw the person walk in with the huge binder, packed with pages of sheet music was, well, I guess that’s over.
The second thought I had was to remind myself that their 200 pages of music once started out as four pages, just like me.
Likewise, the person with ten published novels once sat staring at a blank piece of paper or an ominous blinking cursor. We all start off with “less experience.”
That’s just how time works.
The “I’m not even TRYING to be like that”
The third thought I had after looking at that packed binder was… wait a second. I would never have a binder like that. I’m not out here to audition for musical after musical after musical. I thought about getting on a stage again, Rent is a musical I know backwards and forwards and have loved since I was sixteen. I’m here for Rent. And then I’ll probably go back to “real life.”
The challenge with us humans is that we sometimes compare ourselves to others who are not only running a different race, but are on a completely different course.
This is why (I feel) it’s critical for us all—writers or not—to get clear on what “success” looks like for us in whatever context we’re in. Our definition can change and evolve, but it should be something we consistently check in on and get clear about within ourselves.
If “success” for me was showing up to the audition and giving it a try, I’ve succeeded. Full stop. Failure is not contingent on the outcome.
If “success” for you was showing up consistently to your writer’s group, then why have you failed because you haven’t written a book?
If “success” for you was writing a book that impacted someone else’s life, then why have you failed because it didn’t sell 1,000 copies?
If “success” for you was leveraging your memoir to get more speaking gigs, then why have you failed because you’re not on a Bestseller list?
If “success” for you was posting on social media more consistently, then why have you failed because you don’t have 10,000 followers?
If you’re looking for your measure of success, I invite you to take a pause, look inside, and tap into what you hear.
I promise, it’s there.
You just need to quiet the rest of the noise long enough to hear it.
In the meantime, eyes on your own darn binder!
Part Three coming soon…