A Stowaway’s Perspective on the General Auditions by / Guest Author

Just by chance, Robert Avila, theatre critic for the "San Francisco Bay Guardian," found himself at this year’s Theatre Bay Area’s General Auditions. This is his account of the “hermetic exercise in natural selection” which he witnessed on Saturday, February 4, 2012.

A Stowaway’s Perspective on the General Auditions

By Robert Avila

Last Saturday, just past noon as the sun shown, I had a vague idea of sauntering down to the farmers market, having daydreamed all morning about some superior dried pears I’d sampled a couple of weeks prior. Then Mary told me she was heading to Marines Memorial to complete a volunteer shift at Theatre Bay Area’s General Auditions.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered hearing about it. It’s one of those things, like a general assembly of Freemasons, which tend to rouse the curiosity of outsiders.

“Wow, what an interesting piece of meta-theatre that must be,” I considered, apparently out loud.

“Oh, you should come!” my friend enthused. “It’s wild. My girlfriend volunteered last year and loved it. We’re both doing it this year.”

I turned sheepish. I mumbled something about not really being free on account of a produce order that needed filling. “Besides,” I countered, “wouldn’t I need to be a director or something?”

“I guess,” she affirmed, “but just come anyway.” She was now more excited about the idea of my being there than I was. “Only, let me do the talking.”

I did. And before I knew it, I had a front row seat to a remarkable theatrical event—except that I actually sat in the back row, trying to look inconspicuous in an auditorium crawling with local theatre directors and producers. Feeling a little like the undertaker at a wedding, I settled into my seat in the dimly lit house, while scanning the room for anyone I might have recently offended in print.

In fact, while sometimes an object of passing bemusement, I was made to feel welcome—when anyone noticed me at all. Attention was naturally concentrated on the business at hand: Three days’ worth of auditions involving some 400 hundred local actors, or anyway actors with a ready local berth (several auditions began with assurances on this matter). Before these gutsy souls was a 600-seat house respectably populated with “auditors”—a formidable array of casting directors, artistic directors and just plain directors who would be offering a good chunk of the stage work in the coming season. I relaxed, realizing my own predicament was nothing compared to that of the solitary actor given his or her two minutes to shine before this influential and highly particular audience.

Timing was everything that day, onstage and off. The dozen or so volunteers were primed for the flow of events, most of them occupied with assembling and distributing the stacks of headshots and resumes corresponding to the actors appearing onstage. These actors were divided into groups of six or seven at a time. Ahead of each group, the volunteers who had collated the headshots fanned out across the house, awaiting a signal from Cassidy Brown, who served as a kind of MC, tasked with introducing each group and keeping things moving along (assisted by a volunteer with a stopwatch in the front row). It was a delicate job that Brown (a first-rate improv comic as well as actor) dispatched with finesse.

As for the auditions themselves, they ran the gamut, but were invariably intriguing. How can two minutes like these not be interesting? The look of the actor filing out onto the cavernous stage (bare but for a piano far right and a lonely chair up center), strutting and fretting with all the poise that can be mustered, then exiting again stage left, with another actor fast on his or her heels—it made you think Shakespeare and Beckett had the easy part.

The material an actor selected—usually two pieces, but sometimes only one—was also a point of interest, and not just an idle one. The auditors eyed each hopeful like a master chef at the fish market. But who could tell what they might be looking for, or what quality (natural or acquired) might appeal to each? Some actors were clearly playing to their strengths, which seemed wise. Others offered material or approaches that seemed arch, a little too calculated to please, while some delivered fresh surprises with well-suited material drawn from non-traditional sources. Some chose to sing for obvious reasons, others for reasons that, in the event, could only be called obscure or, more charitably, eccentric. But what might finally matter most to a particular director made the variables and the stakes confounding.

What I saw was only a slice of the proceedings—the afternoon session of the first day involving some 70 or so non-Equity actors—but it left a strong impression I wasn’t entirely prepared for. The cumulative effect is like one act in a very long solo play with a cast of 400. It has something of the rush and pathos of “A Chorus Line” without the backstories or chorus line (although, here and there, at least some of the songs). Frankly, there came a moment when I found the sweep of it all unexpectedly moving, this convergence of love, ambition, nerves and skill, all premised on a broadly shared tradition as well as a mutual, crazy affection. So much hung on two measly minutes, and not just for the actor or the auditor. Any stowaway fortunate enough to glimpse this hermetic exercise in natural selection might sense the fortitude and vulnerability of a highly social yet strangely solitary art.

During the break, I expressed my wonder to one of the auditors, a freelance director, who assured me a full appreciation required sitting through all three days’ worth of auditions. As she said this, her eyes took on a faraway aspect in the manner of a battle-hardened war correspondent or an ayahuasca shaman, so I took her at her word. But I was a tourist here, content to be getting my experiences on the run and on the cheap. I still felt the frisson I’d gotten was pretty legit. Anyway, it would have to be. The farmers market was open again tomorrow, and I had my own shopping to do.

The views represented in this Chatterbox Art & Opinion post are those of the individual author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Theatre Bay Area or its staff.