Actor: A Novel in Three Parts

"Hot out there?"

The equity monitor, who looked to be a freshman in college, asked me this.

"Indeed," I replied.

Heat emanated from my skin. My pits were soaked. I could feel the sweat pouring out of me from the weirdest, most random parts of my body. Still…I was trying my best to act cheery, presentable, and professional. As an actor, I never knew who I was talking to or who was listening. Who was watching. One negative reaction under the watchful eye of the theatre community, and the scene could potentially spread like wildfire, dooming me as an undesirable...difficult...cancelled.

As subtly as I could, I wiped my brow and smiled at them.

"Name?" they asked.

Her dirty blonde and brown hair—dyed heavily—hung over her thin shoulders in meandering waves and curls. Messy, short shag like she had just rolled out of the shower. At the same time, she very well could have been hastily walking down the streets of New York in the spring with an iced coffee to a modeling gig. The mid‑2010s “messy shag” or “model‑off‑duty” waves look. She seemed annoyed to be there, but it easily could have been something else. Maybe, I thought, she believed she deserved to be somewhere better.

"Ave," I smiled, meekly but assured that I was in fact me.

She looked down at her fresh new white iPad. I assumed there was some version of the call sheet in there. Her single pointer finger with a silver ring swiped up and down on the screen.

"Last name?"

I looked over my shoulder, then to my left and right. The line had split up into three separate ones. Through the sea of needy, wanting, yearning bodies, I spotted the one guy with the beer. He was now beer-less, but standing for some mysterious reason on one leg, a few back from his check-in table. Everyone else, to me at least, was unknown.

"Gardener."

"Ave Gardener," she repeated.

"Yes," she said. "I see you here." She playfully pointed to my line. "That name sounds familiar—have you auditioned here before?"

"Here?"

"Yes."

"...yes," I lied. "A few times, yes, sure, of course...many times."

She looked me up and down, squinting. I sensed she was affronted by my sweat-drenched wardrobe, the cheap short-sleeved collared shirt, and too-tight slacks that made me look more like a door-to-door missionary than Lee. Was she waiting for me to turn around so she could text the casting director? Something like: the one who looks like he got hit with a water balloon and is on his way to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Or: Did Edie Gardener's kid ever get burned in a fire? Or maybe she recognized Edie’s name.

"I'm doomed," I muttered. “Shame and confusion…all is on the rout.”

"What was that?"

"There are a lot of people about. I’m glad I made it.”

"I'm glad too," she said, coyly smiling.

What was that? Had I read her all wrong? Was she into me?

My vision finally cleared so I was able to read her name tag—Daryn Summer. ASSISTANT'S ASSISTANT was printed in bold beneath it. What did that mean? Her title put me on a weird edge. Who was this person? What power did she have? Would this interaction be remembered and passed on…was I worrying about nothing? These questions spun within me like a bad tequila shot while all I wanted—all I needed—was to focus on the audition at hand.

"Sorry you had to wait out in the heat." Her eyes were locked on me. "It's just when you let one person in, everyone wants to come in, and everyone seems to think if they're first that means they're gonna get the part and..."

"That just isn't the way it works!" I blurted, trying to be funny.

"Exactly!" Daryn laughed, matching my performed enthusiasm. She stared even more deeply into my eyes as if this simple match of thinking meant something more. "Exactly..."

I could use this to my advantage, I thought. Everyone loves the idea of love...even if it's fake. You’ve broken a few hearts before. What’s a few more?

"That's a great shirt," I tried.

"Oh," she laughed. "Pikachu? Yeah, I love him."

"I remember loving my Pocket Pikachu when I was a kid."

"Your what?" she asked.

"It was like a Tamagotchi but for kids who loved Pikachu and you ran around to keep it fed and happy or whatever."

Her face cobbled into a betrayed portrait of disgust.

“Maybe before your time.”

"Sure!" Daryn exclaimed. "Are you from California? Sorry to be nosy but you have an accent."

“Lee is from LA,” I mentioned. “Well the desert out of LA, but same same.”

That didn’t seem to register. 

"San Francisco."

"Surfer cool stoner vibe." Daryn mimed smoking a fake joint and then put her hands out miming balancing on a surf board.

The scheme of trying to woo this girl was rapidly becoming a bad idea.

"We're not all like that," I stressed. "I don't even..."

"Jesus!" she shout-laughed forcing the Pikachu on her shirt to laugh with her. "Why'd you come here? It’s freezing all the time. Not right now, but you get it.”

I didn't have a good answer—not for her at least. I stayed quiet and still. Almost like one would if they were spotted by a Tyrannosaurus rex or a Leopard Frog.

"Mysterious," Daryn murmured more to herself than to me. "I've never been, but I've always wanted to go to LA."

I told her that was where I studied.

Daryn looked to fall in some kind of trance. Her Apple Pen was held even with her face while, for some reason, she clicked the butt of it once, then twice, then a third time. Was this a good thing for me? A bad thing? Was she casting a spell? It looked like she was telepathically sending an image of my soul to some greater force. If it was the casting director and the director, that was fine.

Edie always told me to let what was to be alone as long as it wasn't taking away my rights or killing me.

Daryn's eyes drifted back to what I assumed was her checklist of duties, subtly shaken out of whatever bout of hypnotism I had maybe put her in. After a few seconds of scrolling, a forlorn look of sadness rolled over her face, as if she thought she would be sitting there forever instead of one day doing what I was doing…however hopeless that seemed. I had seen that look before because I had felt the same thing many times. I asked her if she was an actress.

"DePaul," she said. "I'm a freshman at the conservatory there."

"I hear that's a good school. Congratulations."

Quickly, she ignored my praise and then admitted she had gotten into DePaul and the equity role at Steppenwolf assisting in auditions because of her father, one of the core admins at the theatre.

"Impressive," I said.

"Not really."

I asked why.

"I just don't want to start my career with a bunch of handouts," she admitted.

"I can relate," I vented. 

Idiot, I thought. Needy, desperate, lonesome fool.

"And why is that?"

"I meant more along the lines I can sympathize," I said, locking eyes with her again to see if my charm and good looks could trigger some—maybe lust?—again. By the morose look on her face it did not. "Who is your dad?"

"PJ Purpose," she replied. "Director of Casting and Artistic Operations." She sighed. "I just feel like I'm starting with a copper spoon in my mouth and it's like...stunting me or something."

"Silver..." I started, but instead plead I totally agreed with her as I told her my name again, then again, and I was there for Lee for the Sam Shepard play.

"Ave Garderner," I repeated.

She told me she had heard me the first time.

"I've only ever lived in Illinois," she explained. "My dad said it would be good for me to get ahead if I started out, well, ahead. But it feels wrong."

What a horrible place to start, I thought. But shit…I’m doing the same thing.

I wanted to tell her she didn't have to prove anything to anyone other than herself. If the art was true—if it reminded one person what it was to be human—no leg-up could take that away. She just had to keep going.

"Your dad sounds like a wonderful man," I said. “What’s his favorite color? Does he like brunettes? Californians?”

Daryn didn’t respond. Instead, she was staring at her reflection in the glass of the iPad. Someone behind me muttered, hurry the fuck up.

What if Daryn was one of those actors? I mused. I had met many like her in San Francisco and at CalArts: performers who didn't want to say anything with their characters or their stories because they really didn't have anything to say. They only said what would get the crowd's attention, then were given the comforting social blanket of temporary acceptance. Maybe that’s why she was so sad: she didn’t want to do this at all. There was a word for it that one of my professors loved to throw around, borrowed from Stanislavski...exhibitionism. Actors in love with themselves who show not images or creations but themselves...their beauty, their voice, their charm, their suffering...all of it "in general," none of it specific, none of it true. The bane of the theatre. Art does not tolerate "in general" they often said. Art does not tolerate "approximately," which, ironically, those in it for themselves so often exhibit. And yet approximately was what filled most of the seats and most of the stages because the audiences themselves were growing more general from the hegemonic un-diversified slop available.

I didn't know for sure whether Daryn was coming from that place or not. But what I did know is that if she could confide in me, connecting with…I could use it. People who perform for approval are easy to steer. You just become the audience they need.

Daryn violently fluttered her eyes for a few seconds as if expelling this moment of vulnerability like an exorcist would a demon. She looked me up and down, then at the clipboard.

"Ave, Ave, Ave..."

Perfect.

“Ave, Ave, Ave from San Francisco, California here for Lee.”

Double perfect.

"Yes," I replied. "That's me."

"As you can see we're a bit late, but you're close," she informed me, shedding any informalities we had once had. "Headshot?"

My stomach clenched. I turned my head away, fearing I might throw up in her face. A few actors behind gave me a worried look. Outside in the heat, I failed to notice that every single one of them had a headshot. Tim promised he was going to send my information along. I hadn't been able to get any headshots or résumés printed before moving. I got you, I got you, Tim promised. I know the best guy who will handle it, Tim said. We'll have them mailed to the theatre and you wont' have to worry about a thing.

Out of the tops of my eyes, I could see Daryn looking over my shoulder at everyone behind me: actors with headshots, professional actors...actors with futures.

I cleared my throat and pulled myself up from the top of my head like I'd been trained in vocal class. My eyes had grown wet from this quick sting of embarrassment. Behind me, the ruffle of audition sides and freshly pressed clothes sounded.

"My agent should have sent them over from his office."

She frowned and nodded, weakly. I felt like an idiot, like I had never been to an audition before. This wasn't who I was. This wasn't who I had trained all those years to be. The thin, stale-looking carpet beneath my feet...the type that feigns sophistication but is really just cheap synthetic trash—hardened underneath me. Then, it felt like it started to burn. What kind of actor didn't have their own headshot? A shit one, I thought. One who didn't really want it."

"Maybe he did and I'm just missing it," Daryn suggested, trying to help. "No way a big LA actor doesn't have a headshot."

Get yourself together, Edie echoed. Stop crying and figure it out. Act. Move. Create.

"He's a little quirky," I offered. "I can give him a call."

"No need," she said flatly.

A hopeless disquiet started to build around her eyes as she flick-scrolled up and down, then down and up, on her iPad. I watched in horror as any chance I had dwindled away as her shoulders began to curl inward and her chin descended into her chest, her fingers growing stiffer and more claw-like by the second. Exhausted and defeated from her Excel sheets, emails, and likely all seeing eye of her father, she then went to the stack of physical headshots beside her, searching for someone who was not there. A sense of violence and upheaval was starting to brew among the other actors around me. They were just as sweaty, broken, yet hopeful as I was, and just as soon would have tossed me overboard and into the streets if it meant their turn in line was next.

That's how it was. That's how it always was. The machine of entertainment and muses only needs to so many.

So many young actors—myself included, though I wouldn't have admitted it at the time—had been coddled throughout undergrad by professors and colleagues who believed we were all going to make it. This was a lie. This was a marketing trick. This was a way to keep us enrolled while weeding out those who really wanted it from those who merely wanted the applause. Over four years, we were showered with amenities and guaranteed casting in plays, clueless that in the real world, nobody cared.

The longer those who "stuck with it" held on, the more resentful and ruthless they became...eager to slip a knife into the back of the other for a chance to get back to that place again. Story and expression, forgotten. Those early days out of the fantasy were about survival...and facing the truth that maybe, after the high inspired days of youth, some of us weren't as talented or unique or gifted as our professors insisted. Maybe that was a lie told for motives unseen, softly spoken behind doors we never knew existed. Maybe the industry didn't have the money or the flexibility to try something new for art's sake. Maybe the walls and their gates had already been built, and all those long nights rehearsing to change the world...the world had already decided some of us were never going to amount to anything.

Yet there I was, still standing, still alive, no side or headshot in hand but memorized; ready to perform, ready to try, because there was nothing outside of that life that would get me where I needed to go.

"Is...this you?"

Daryn picked a headshot out, held it up to my face, fanned her lips in frustration when she saw it wasn't me, and slipped it back into the pile, defeated. I bet she hadn't been given a chance to pee all day and was running on nothing but processed sugar from doughnuts and coffee. If someone above her—her boss or a senior intern—came over, I knew she would muster every particle of positivity flickering inside her to crack a joke or at least a grin of back-office solidarity.

I offered to email my headshots later to whatever address they needed, but she didn't hear me. She'd gone deaf in this mini-crisis. Daryn kept searching even after I advised giving up on me. My eyes wandered beneath the table. I hadn't noticed one of her black flats was missing.

Daryn fiddled with an iPad and sighed, appearing relieved. I didn't know if it was because she had found it and I could go on my way, or because she hadn't and could now tell me to fuck off.

"I moved you to the 4PM group," Daryn said, suddenly starry-eyed, grinning ear to ear. 

She clicked off her iPad and placed it on the table, making sure it was perfectly aligned with the other headshots and résumés she'd reorganized. 

"Tim sent a note to the director but he didn't actually attach your headshot."

"Right."

"It's ok," she said. "I'll make sure they get it. Thank you for talking with me. Most don't."

My God, I thought. It worked.

“Thank you.”

“You remember my name?”

I reached out my hand like a proper Victorian gentleman and said,”Daryn Summer.”

She smiled approvingly, then pointed to a single door at the end of the auditorium. A simple piece of 8×10 paper hung in its center. GREEN ROOM FOR TRUE WEST was written in the middle. Next to the door, through the large double doors, was a sign directing to the stage. I imagined the space—saw the curtains, tried to feel the warmth of the lights to prepare for them. I tasted the dust on my tongue and imagined the crinkling of snacks the director, producers, whoever was there, would make, demanding I not get distracted by it. I saw the darkness and then saw myself, in the middle of it all, alone. Strangely, I suddenly felt at home.

"You can warm up there if you need to. Good luck.”