The Worst Part of College Auditions & A Really Strange Play

If you don’t know, I am a theater kid. Huge shocker, who could have guessed. Now I know most people that act in high school (either as a part of one play or like… thirty) usually don’t do it in college. Or for a career.

You wanna know why?

Because being an actor is hard. Really, really hard.

Acting is fun and I think it should be fun. But the moment it turns professional, it gets so unbelievably overwhelming. For starters, college!

I cannot express in enough words how much college auditions make me want to rip my hair out and scream. It is awful.

I want you to imagine a project for English. Oh, let’s say, the poetry assignment. Or something. Now imagine doing that exact assignment for every single class but slightly differently AND you have to film them slightly professionally AND every class needs a different point of view that you’re filming at AND you have to have every single one memorized.

That is basically college auditions in a nutshell.

Here’s some background so you don’t need to look it up yourself — when auditioning for any type of show, or really just in general, there are four different kinds of ‘texts’ or monologues you can have: classical or contemporary, and comedy or drama. 

There are classical pieces, and those are more like Shakespearean text. Very ‘thou must art bless’d lo whilst” et cetera et cetera. These pieces, in my opinion, suck. They’re hard to memorize, and they are oftentimes tough to actually understand the real meaning of them. Take this sentence from the classical dramatic monologue I’m auditioning with, the Joan of Arc monologue from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part I:

“Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleased

To shine on my contemptible estate:

Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs,

And to sun’s parching heat display’d my cheeks,

God’s mother deigned to appear to me

And in a vision full of majesty

Will’d me to leave my base vocation

And free my country from calamity:

Her aid she promised and assured success:

In complete glory she reveal’d herself;

And, whereas I was black and swart before,

With those clear rays which she infused on me

That beauty am I bless’d with which you see.”

That? Is ONE SENTENCE. 

ONE.

Let me sum up what it says in the simplest terms I can so you don’t actually need to comprehend it. Joan is telling this guy (Dauphin, he’s mentioned in the single line before this long one) that God (“Heaven and our Lady”) has sent her to aid in the war efforts and ‘free her country from calamity’, with heavenly aid promised to keep her safe. And then… something something something… “whereas I was black and swart before”? I actually still have no idea what that means so if you have any ideas I’d love to hear them. Basically, the monologue ends with Joan challenging Dauphin that she’s just as good as any man at fighting, even as a woman, and she would be more merciful on him than any “warlike mate”.

You got all that? Cuz I might. Possibly. I don’t like memorizing Shakespeare.

The other monologue I’m using is the Dancer monologue from a play called Thirst, written by Eugene O’Neil in 1914. Old, old show. Now the monologue is good, and I know that. But what I am SO WEIRDED OUT BY is the plot.

This is the plot, extremely summarized, of Thirst by Eugene O’Neil.

Let me take you away: there are three people (a dancer, a ‘gentleman’?, and a sailor) and they are all adrift on this life raft. They;re in the tropic waters of god knows where and there are sharks surrounding them. Very dire situation. And, as it would happen to be, they are slowly all dying of (get this!!!!) thirst. Each character is slowly dehydrating to death and in turn, hallucinating and losing their minds. The dancer and the gentleman begin chatting with each other, and they start to believe that the sailor is hiding water from them because he seems to be doing better than the other two. The dancer offers up her $5,000 diamond necklace for just a sip of water, and when the sailor refuses, the dancer basically offers up her BODY, the last thing she has, and the sailor still refuses that he has any water in the first place. 

Dark stuff, for real for real.

Anyways they continue to dehydrate until the dancer actually begins to lose it. She like… Ok so the summary says she just… like… rips her clothes off? I think she feels too hot or something and she’s just losing it. Anyways. The dancer gets up and begins to dance until she falls down. DEAD. She DIES. So the sailor is like “oh well I guess we’re gonna eat her” and pulls out this knife BUT the gentleman is like “OH I DON’T THINK SO” and throws the dancer’s dead body into the water. So they can’t cannibalize her. And the sailor is so upset that he STABS the gentleman and tries to throw him in the water, but the gentleman drags him into the water with him.

The play ends with the life raft floating silently in the water, with the dancer’s diamond necklace sitting alone on the raft.

 

And now I’ve hit the word count. See you next week!

 

(P. S. – there are no photos this week so you understand how unbelievably bored and annoyed I am with these stupid monologues.)