Actor: A Novel in Three Parts

The audition space Daryn directed me into wasn't so much a warm-up room as a glorified coat check. Three walls—left, center, right with the door behind me—painted a bright, paper white. Blinding. I remember holding up my hand when I first entered in an attempt to block its violent glare. No windows, a lunchbox-sized air conditioner jutting from the ceiling, all while stirring the smell of dried lint, feet, and a desperation to be discovered.

Then came the sounds. Those dreadful but familiar sounds of actors going through their...vocal warm-ups.

From every pocket of this cramped combine, wild, manic bursts of laughter and shrieks in scale were being born. Some were bubbly, others were shaking baritones and mouth-bubbling their lips. They threw their bodies and limbs around as if tossed from the top of a building in varied syncopation...something I had seen, observed, and participated in over the years at the conservatory in an attempt to break the physical shackles of society's restrictions. Professors and teachers of this method believed this would set them free on stage. In many cases, they were right. But still, the lack of shame and embarrassment always made it unbearable.

Despite making us look and sound like electroshock patients, these trials were designed to loosen up the body to "free the natural voice" before performance. Professors and vocal coaches from all over the world, in every weird corner of some far off theatre conservatory or scammy training ground, put us in the throes of "vibration and resonance" — something they loved to preach. "Fall in love and become re-acquainted with your breath," they told us. Most of the time, they'd be staring blankly at me, deep, dead-eyed, and vacant, immediately triggered the moment I resisted them...frustrated I wouldn't drink the Kool-Aid they had conjured up in the 60's and 70's high on acid, British voice pedagogy, and mid‑20th‑century acting and movement practices.

Standing there, literally pressed up against the door of the audition room, I recalled the clunky, awkward, and violent "waking up" of my dead lips and tight tongue. I suddenly had flashbacks of the first time I sucked in my diaphragm so tight I thought I was going to pass out and die. I remembered once being surrounded by a gang of groaning and moaning actors while on my back, rolling around like a baby as if they were trying to summon some ancient pagan God. I reminisced about the eventual unification that—through every humiliating vocal exercise—did in fact bring me closer to myself and to acting. I'm not denying that it didn't work. It did. I admit it. One day, after many torturous weeks, months, years...my body finally broke down and reconfigured into a more open, willing, and vulnerable expressive tool, reconnected with my breath, my body, my voice, only to become the vessel and receiver of my character.

That was the price I had to pay—we all had to pay—to dabble in the ways of God and Mother Nature.

I found myself a section halfway into the room, about a foot from the right wall. I'd never been in a drunk tank, but friends who had described the setup instantly reminded me of it: 30 or so chairs organized like a dot puzzle, each actor stranded in their own little plot of space. For a theatre like Steppenwolf, I expected more. This was where Gary Sinise, Joan Allen, and Tracy Letts worked. John Malkovich. The greats of the great. Maybe they were making a point...eliminating what I thought I knew about them from what was real. They were already playing games with me.

Max capacity should have been ten, maybe fifteen. There were at least thirty or forty of us crammed in there. Upon entering, every eye had darted toward me...but after starting my routine, shaking my arms and legs out, rolling up and down my spine a few times, self-massaging my jaw, and pounding away at my chest (partly hoping it would trigger a heart attack), every actor eventually looked away. Smart not to waste energy on wondering who I was, what I could or could not do based on my looks.

None of that really mattered in the end, but when actors were in that environment, when everyone in that room wanted what the other one wanted, one's mind could stir up anything to sabotage or motivate them. Everyone in that room, in their tiny square of shitty, stained carpet, believed their dream, after that day, would come true. Everyone else's? Failed. Didn't matter.

Oh, I didn't see you there that day, they would tell you if you ever crossed paths again. If they even remembered you. Yeah, that sure was a lucky break for me. What are you working? Oh, that's too bad. Better luck next time...to never see them again.

Everyone believed this was their time for Dionysus and the players of Parnassus to smile down upon them—not the other guy. Every newcomer or veteran, no matter how much small talk or pleasantries they shared, was a competitor. Modern art and its many avenues has always been a game of winners and losers, with the myriad of gatekeepers deciding who gets to say what, how they get to say it, for whom and when.

Up and down, down and up I went all while paying mind to my body fueling my breath and my breath supporting my body. With both legs kicked out wide to the left and right, I got myself into a lazy warrior's pose and held it for thirty seconds, then let my head fall forward so it hung between my legs. From that vantage point, I noticed hordes of half-empty plastic water bottles lined along the walls. A hundred of them, maybe. No names scribbled in Sharpie on the plastic...all mostly without caps, sipped once and tossed away for a fresh one.

All that waste, I thought, for a chance to be seen...

Near my clearing, was ratty a pair of abandoned light blue Sperry's. Someone had etched "ACTOR" on the side with I assumed to be a knife. Intimidating, even worrying, but also insufferable. I lightly kicked them away to avoid tripping on them or rolling my ankle.

A few bodies ahead of me, one actor had slicked-back black hair, every follicle shiny and greasy.

"That's a choice," I whispered, followed by a few deep, full open sighs: HUUUUH...then quick but not rushed breathy beats: HUH HUH...HUH HUH...HUH HUUUH, messing around with my pitch as I went.

When he turned to get a real look at me, I noticed his nipples were hard from the cold, sticking out, prominent and oddly authoritative. I felt jealous and emasculated. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lightly reddened lips. American Spirit, I assumed. Or maybe Parliaments.

He was definitely auditioning for Lee.

"Those weren't yours, right?" I asked, pointing to the Sperry's.

"I don't own a boat," he said, then turned around.

Next to Fonzi without a boat was another guy in a too-tight-fitting business suit with a red tie. He he was staring directly up at the ceiling, murmuring—I assumed—his lines. I could, ever so slightly, see the muscles of his jaw moving. No side, no notes, no extra headshots in his hands or on the floor beside him. Nothing but himself. Maybe he had a water, but I couldn't be sure. He never appeared to blink. He never looked away from wherever his gaze was fixed on the ceiling. His attention was pure.

I stood up on my tiptoes, reaching, reaching, reaching for the ceiling, then fell back onto my heels, giving my spine a solid jolt. An old trick from one of my first professors. Acting is the expression of human love, they told me. Preparation is pain. Ten times I did this: inhaling as I went up, exhaling as I dropped down with a solid thud. I shook both arms out, breathing deeply from my diaphragm, everyone around me doing the same...each actor a kind of decentralized troupe. Opening and closing my mouth as far as it would go, stretching the skin like a brand-new rubber band, I fluttered my lips for two minutes straight until they started to go numb. HuhHuh, I sighed, the vibration traveling throughout my entire body. HuhHuh.

I rolled my neck from one side to the other, feeling my taut muscles stretch as the heavy, leaden weight of my head—bone, brain, and blood—fell. When I got to where I was looking at the floor, part of me almost wanted to fall forward and through it. There was such anticipation in waiting to go on that sometimes I wanted to escape.

Escape to where? Nowhere. And do what? No clue.

My head fell back, up and over my spine, and hung there atop it. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Inhale. I brought my head forward and pressed my palms against either side of my face, massaging downward toward my chin, starting just beneath my eyes, around the bags. Breathing through my nose, I murmured my lines, envisioned the stage, the lights, the director, and casting. All of them stared at me in wonder and wanting. Choice is talent, Edie's voice whispered. Talent is choice.

I chose Chicago. I chose to leave. I chose to work the side all night and sleep on the floor. I chose this. I am here. I am here. I am here and I deserve to be here.

Going through the last of my exercises, throwing in a little Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, I then found myself fully observing the room...the real theatre...the one the audience never saw.

We all looked insane, crammed inside that coatroom with the heat outside trying to huff and puff us out. We were running gibberish exercises to better our speech to read imaginary lines in an imaginary world to better become people that didn't exist written by someone we would never meet. All of us were sweating profusely, giant drops flowing down our flushed faces fearful if we wiped it away, we would appear weak. Some were doing yoga. Warrior Twos, headstands, tree poses...their whole bodies quivering as they repeated words to themselves that may have been not even from the play. One guy looked like he was slow kung-fu-fighting an invisible enemy as he did tai chi with his shirt off. Others openly wailed as they went up and down in their registers, eyes bulged, lips punching spittle into the air—all possessed and appearing to damn some god that simply wasn't listening. Others were pounding away at their chests and waving their arms around like human windmills. Was this insanity the path to art? To good acting? To a true performance? Maybe.

This was theatre...some actors so deep in scene or monologue they were literally weeping, tears flowing down their moisturized faces, barking or begging or belittling their scene partner which was really just a crack in the wall, a light fixture, a fire extinguisher, a coat hanging from a hook.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

"What the fuck?" I hissed, trying not to disturb the guy pummeling his abdomen and moaning a deep, meditative growl beside me.

I looked quickly at the screen. It was Edie.

I hesitated. With her on edge like she had been since I left, maybe it was an emergency. But with her everything was always an emergency.

I swiped to answer, muffling my voice by cupping my hand around the receiver.

"Ave, my son, are you there?"

"Jesus, yes, this is my phone. Are you okay?"

"That's a weighted question."

"No time to be coy. I'm at this audition at Steppenwolf. Your son, at an audition, at the big theatre in the Windy City!"

I needed to brag a little. I was excited. She had been vicious earlier.

"Who got you such a thing?"

"Tim!" I said, regretting outing him.

"Why didn't he tell me?"

There was a knock on the door.

"I'm about to go in," I stammered.

Peter Season, a former classmate from CalArts during my same year, walked in. I didn't know what to do, what to say, what to think. What the hell? I thought. What in the actual hell is he doing here? With an instinct to flee, I turned my back to him so he wouldn't see me, waited a beat, then stealthily looked over my shoulder. He found himself a free corner near someone doing tree pose and reciting their lines in what sounded like Spanish.

"Are you there?!" Edie screamed at me through the phone. "My dear son Ave are you there?!"

"What?" I asked. "Yes, of course I'm here. I'm not in San Francisco. I'm in Chicago but I'm here on this earth. Do you mean alive? Yes, yes I am."

I would have been lying if I said Peter didn't look good. Sharp olive tweed blazer, clean black jeans cuffed over pristine charcoal Red Wing Iron Rangers. Plain white t-shirt, the expensive kind. The Red Wings were the kind of shoes that made you look like you worked a lumber mill, drank whiskey, but could also recite any number of Shakespeare monologues on the spot. Vintage with a modern, working man touch. His dark chocolate hair was messy, full, but symmetrical and managed...as if he'd just rolled out of bed after having sex with someone like Jennifer Lawrence and it was the best she'd ever had. He was also thinner than I remembered, which made me self-conscious about my pooch. Being broke didn't mean I was skinny. I just ate more crap.

Edie continued rambling in my ear, but she was nothing but white noise once I realized he might be auditioning for Lee too.

Peter nodded to a few actors as he took his side from his coat pocket and looked the pages over. There wasn't a single bead of sweat on an inch of skin on him. Cool. Calm. Perfection.

"I wanted to remind you that you...you've made every choice a good actor makes and..."

Peter looked up from his side and scanned the room. My gaze was fixed on him, so naturally, we caught each other's eyes. Caught. The same look of shock and surprise appeared on his face, but his possessed welcome...something close to joy. Mine, if Peter had seen it, was terror, embarrassment, and worry.

He put up his hand in hello.

I reluctantly but as enthusiastically as I could muster put up mine and mouthed, Oh-my-God-what-are-you-doing-here? My eyebrows scrunched in feigned astonishment. I was a fraud just playing another part. Peter was about to mouth something back, but an actor jumped up and down next to him broke our line of sight. He maneuvered around the human pogo stick and started toward me.

"Edie," I said. "I've got to go."

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Listen! Yes, no. I didn't but I will. I'm getting called in now."

I was about to click her off but her one last desperate, "Ave!" stopped me.

Peter was standing in front of me now. I rolled my eyes and motioned at the phone, mouthing "my agent" to him. He reciprocated my mock annoyance with an industry thumbs up. I put up a finger to tell him one second and turned around so he couldn't hear me.

He must be auditioning for Austin then, I thought. He must be.

"I wanted to tell you that you've made a choice that every great actor makes. I know I've always said talent doesn't matter, but I've come to realize that I only said that because I was afraid I didn't have it. Without it, Ave, along with your grit, you never would have gotten through school, you never would have moved to Chicago, and you never would have had the guts to be standing where you are right now...to do what you are about to do."

I heard Edie's words and then I saw her, alone in that big, empty Victorian, her awards surrounding her, gathering dust. I saw the old issues of The New Yorker on her side table with gin-and-tonic rings stained on them, the only sound the creak of wood from a gust of wind from the beach north, a place where she herself said she never went. Too cold, she said. I saw those things and all the mayhem around me melted away, leaving me standing on that empty stage, Edie urging me to roar, to be or not to be, to jump.

"Mom," I said, hushed.

"I'm proud of you," she said, sounding disappointed in herself. "I feel like I don't tell you that enough." She let out two hard coughs away from the receiver, then the familiar sound of her flicking her lighter to light her cigarette. A deep inhaled followed. "I want you to know that because some days are starting to feel like someone else's."

"What do you mean?"

"Like they belong to someone else."

"They are still yours Edie," I said.

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"Huh?" I asked, turning and pressing the phone into my chest.

It was Peter.

"They're calling us," he said.

Like the cattle we were, the other actors attention shifted from themselves to the door we entered from.

"What?"

"You're at 4, right?"

I nodded. Daryn was back, waving us over.

"Let's go," Peter repeated.

"Mom," I said, bringing the phone back up, trying to repress what she'd said until the audition was over. "I've got to go."