I guess it could be argued that love has no relationship to auditioning. Or that it’s impossible for ambition to be removed from the equation. Or that love and ambition are mutually exclusive. It could also be argued that dreams and goals are fussy cousins who avoid each other at the family reunion. Or that dreams are Unicorns and goals are Quarter Horses. I think these arguments are made by exhausted adults who, in their need to be protected from the pain of rejection, have distanced themselves from the childlike purity of an open and objective encounter with the unknown. How do we then describe a thing created to involve us when we’ve detached ourselves from it in order to survive it?

So, it’s simple; When discussing the audition, setting aside all the variables that might reduce it to commonness - and there are as many we are in control of as those we are powerless over - we are it. In that context, the actors in our story have been called upon to be receptive, as they are in an audition, to being examined, naked, under a microscope of varying powers and clarity of perception. Almost without exception, all the actors we’ve talked to have been enthusiastic about being examined that closely. They love the job they do and have been enlightening and candid about their relationship with the many facets of the work that allows them the opportunity to do it.

How an audition is done is not what Showing Up is about. Revealing the humanness of who does it and what it does to them - and reveals of them - is our goal. Our casting directors, Jim Carnahan and Kate Boka, understand the heart of our story completely and have sent us some truly wonderful and honest souls as collaborators. In this context, “What, not how” has never had a clearer application.

Of course we know what the commonly applied definition of an audition is: a type of job interview. But when we’re faced with actually living, even being, the thing we’re trying to define - when we feel that what we are being, and what we may accomplish by being it, defines us - there is nothing common about it.

There are several ways we can approach exploring what an audition is and it all depends on context. As you can read in all the books ever written about it, the audition can be a test, a gamble, a technical skill, an opportunity, a problem, a game, a pain in the butt, a strategy, a solution, a challenge, a trial, a war, a Love-fest, a necessary evil, a taste of what’s to come, the end game - or all these things at once. In order for it to be considered successful, however, the only thing it can’t be - again, like truest love - is taken for granted.

To be continued…

First it was going to be a book, each actor writing their own piece, but we’re performers, not writers, and we need an audience or what we do doesn’t exist. We need to tell the story. So now it’s a film.

Thankfully, as it’s developed, it’s become something more than a collection of audition stories. Those we’ve asked to be involved have inspired us to go beyond the obvious, as we hope to do in all our endeavors.

We’ve tried to avoid any kind of toxicity - except perhaps in marveling at how we’re able to survive it intact and ready to face it again, like St. George if he were forced to confront and slay the dragon for a living instead of just that once.

It’s a strange thing, the audition, and everyone processes, and is possessed by it, differently. Trying to define it and presenting it in this light we hope to cross the line that divides performers from other professions, both in and out of show business.

The process of going after what we want is the antagonist, and we are the protagonists. We are the journey and our objective is as clear or convoluted as we make it. And whether we attain it or not depends upon how we observe the seeking.