Day 2 - The Callback

There's a feeling you get - well, it's a feeling I get - when I have a callback. On some level this feeling goes to the core of every actor's need to be accepted. On the first audition I can walk out of the room and, no matter how prepared I am, no matter how good I feel and no matter how well I think I've done, there's still that feeling of, "I hope they like me. I hope I did the right thing. I hope I didn't screw up!" Beginning actors have it, mid-career actors like myself have it, international movie stars have it. Every actor has it, and if they tell you they don't, (because they're either too "cool" or too "good" or too "important") they're frickin' lying through their teeth. I guarantee it. Because every actor, on some level, wants to be accepted. It's why we do what we do. It's what keeps us doing it and striving to do it better every time. I just saw "Julie & Julia" and Meryl Streep (who I honestly can't stand because she is just so good) is ALWAYS striving to do better and be accepted - and she usually succeeds.

So the fact that I even have a callback means, on some small level, that I have been accepted. That I have been validated. That my work counts and matters and means something to someone. Having mentioned in an earlier blog that the casting of a show or a role can depend on criteria as varying as "your ability to cull the nuance of a character" to "the length of your eyebrow hairs", I know full well the absurdity of this "acceptance". I don't need it in order to succeed. I don't need it in order to be an actor. But I do need it to feel worthy. I do need it to know, in some weird way, that I matter. It's more of a "life" need than an "acting" need, I suppose, but it's a need all the same. Recognizing it does little to diminish it's power over me or any other actor. But the bottom line is, I've got the callback, and that's a great accomplishment. One that I'm certainly proud of, but nothing to rest my laurels on.

My preparation for the callback is basically the same as for my initial audition: familiarize myself as best I can with the material, listen to the song that "Bill" sings instead of "Sam" ("The Name Of The Game") and RELAX!

Now I'm prepped. Now I'm ready.

The callback itself runs pretty much the same course as the initial audition, only there's even less connection with the "team". By connection I mean less time spent in the actual audition room, fraternizing, as it were, with the auditioners. I realize it's not their job to be my "friend", it's their job to cast this show, so I have nothing but respect for what they're trying to accomplish. I wait in the hallway and run into my friend Christianne Tisdale who's also here for an audition. Years before, I was a "reader" (the person who reads the other roles when an actor comes in for an audition) for the Broadway production of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST when Christianne came in. She gave a terrific audition and got the role. Since then she's always credited me with being her good luck charm. I don't know if it's true, but it's very generous of her to say so. She's a good friend and a good person. While we were standing in the hall together making small talk, she introduces me to another friend of hers and one of the actors that I end up reading with named Graham Rowat. (As most actors do with modern technology, I Google Graham's name that night, only to realize that I should have been much more nervous than I was, considering the kind of credits he has to his name. No matter how much work I've done, I'm still always amazed and awed to be working with the incredibly high quality of people I find myself working with, even if it's only in the audition situation.)

Christianne and a few other women are called into the room, do their audition, then it's only myself and Graham standing in the hall. Wondering if perhaps we are waiting on a third actor to play the triumvirate scene, I'm surprised to hear Eric step out in the hall and ask us to come in.

"Gentleman, thank you so much for coming back. We really appreciate it. So, Graham, you'll be reading "Harry", Patrick, you'll read "Bill" and I'll read "Sam"."

We enter the room, again greeted warmly by the team with some small talk about our height (Graham, like myself, is tall, possibly 6'4""), and then we read through the scene. No singing this time, as the casting hinges (and I'm only guessing here) on which actors "fit" with other actors. Interestingly enough, that's the other thing about callbacks. When they bring you back, you've more than likely proven that you can already play the role. What they need to see is how each actor fits together to create the bigger picture. Which is the best way to "tell the story onstage". It is often a very ethereal and esoteric criteria, but it goes to the core of every show. It's also a skill that takes years to understand and comprehend as an actor, helping to quiet the "I just want to be accepted" voices, but never fully silencing them.


"Thanks, that's all we need for now."

And just like that, it's over. No hoopla. No "You were amazing!" No "You've got the job." ( That comes later.) Just a pleasant "Thanks" and you are on your way. Wondering, always wondering...