Audition Kisses
Three Plays by Chekov were announced on the giant sign board leaning against the post office. It was early September, and I didn’t know that I could expect dozens more such advertisements throughout the year. The carefully painted message read “AUDITIONS: September 14th, 15th,” red letters dancing against purple, and I had to assume that these auditions were everything, that my about-to-bud career as an acting star hinged upon them. At the top, the name of the Yale Dramat confirmed my suspicion that this was, indeed, the big time.
Drama provided only the most defined of my auditions. I strove to impress the whole world in classes, parties, meetings with new acquaintances and even conversation with good friends. Everything was an audition in which I strove to showcase my talent, hide my nerves and land myself in a larger act. Recalling my first audition at Yale is like throwing a spotlight on that old addition to human praise.
I strove to impress the whole world in classes, parties…. Everything was an audition in which I strove to showcase my talent.
I hunted in the savage jungle of Yale Station, and found posters bearing more detailed information: “sign-ups” were in the “green room.” I knew many rooms at Yale by then, but none were green. I walked by the Yale Repertory on Chapel Street, glancing in awe at vast poster photos of James Earl Jones in the midst of passionate monologue. No, I didn’t think that was it.
Eventually, I found the right building, on York Street, but the front doors of the theater were locked. I scurried around the side an found a promising entrance. It too was locked, but through the window I could see a room: disorganized, inhabited, and faintly green.
I had to knock twice before someone arose from the sofa where she had been lying and opened the door. She looked down at me (there were steps) and appeared either disappointed or sleepy: her face drooped.
“I’m looking for the sign-ups,” I said. She sighed heavily. I looked on with trepidation: drastic make-up, dark hair and satiny clothing with leopard trim. She pointed and I tip-toed in. At first, I could see only clutter: trench coats, hand bags, feathered hats, Viking helmets, spears, umbrellas and posters. The posters were everywhere, on the ceiling as well as every wall. Some were arresting in black, white and red; some were garish, some were golden, some were groovy. All had the same theme: an exciting production by the Yale Dramat. I spotted a few from the sixties and many from the seventies. There were also photos, but smaller, and none recognizable to me. Amidst the clutter, two comrades of the woman who had opened the doors became distinguishable. They also wore black. The man wore an earring. The woman’s hair was short and sharp. I found the sign-up sheet, and in my nervousness, failed to read all the pertinent information. I scribbled my name beside a suggested time slot and, feeling that I was a foolish, unwelcome intruder, I escaped.
I returned, as I had promised, on Saturday morning at 10:00. This time, the door of the green room was propped open, and I felt almost cheerful as I passed through its mysteries into a long passage and found myself approaching the stage.
A few undergraduates were completing their audition. They looked confident and happy. Watching them from the front row seats were half a dozen other figures, grave and stiff. A young woman was ahead of me in the aisle, clutching something slim and blue. Suddenly the prospective actors were ushered away, and as they gathered up their light coats and received curt thanks from the directors, I stepped forward. So did the young woman in front of me.
“Paul Till and Stephanie—ah—how do you pronounce it?” called out a large-boned man. She coolly returned a Polish surname.
“O.K., we’ll see what you’ve prepared and then we’ll get the two of you together,” stated a matter-of-fact woman who rose and gestured for us to take the stage. “Who’s first?” Stephanie looked back at me. Her large eyes were not exactly afraid, but mournful and patient. I chokingly volunteered.
I was standing on a barren stage, looking down at Stephanie, the dormant lighting equipment still being dismantled from the last production, the rows of empty seats and the handful of big, bored producers and directors. They folded their arms. It was a resonant moment, one which a hundred other experiences have mirrored: that pathetic stand before a world that was, in a small part, occupied by critics devoid of compassion, and in the larger part, empty. It was a moment of loneliness and abandonment repeated through life; I didn’t need to impale myself in an audition to discover it.
My mouth was experiencing a catastrophic forfeiture of humidity.
“What I have, er, prepared?” I echoed weakly.
“Your monologue,” prompted the woman impatiently.
“Oh.” It was clearly stated on the sign-up sheet: candidates should arrive at the audition with a prepared dramatic text.
“You didn’t prepare anything?” She was running a hand through her thicket of curly, black hair: she looked exasperated. Her lanky male colleague appeared more forgiving.
“Well—listen—have you been in any shows before?”
“In high school,” added the woman, hissing slightly.
“Sure,” I said eagerly. “Fiddler on the Roof.” Someone in the small group of authorities groaned, or possibly yawned. But as Tevye, the lead, I had received fair acclaim, and pressed on eagerly: “I can sing the rich man song!”
Several attempts to respond at once, but the young man in charge overruled them.
“Whatever, whatever,” he said.
I am not a bad a capella performer. But this audience was strangely dead. A few times during my operatic flourishes or imitations of chickens, I caught a sparkle in Stephanie’s eye, but the panel whom I intended to impress was as stone. Confused, I blurred the third verse into the second, finished in a new key and left the stage to the sickening roar of silence.
Stephanie now took her turn. First, she handed the woman the slim, blue volume she had been carrying. She elegantly took center stage, and proceeded to plead with us for three more days with which to scrape together enough to pay rent. I was ready to give this eloquent peasant woman a week, or a month, and if the directors weren’t prepared to shower kindnesses on her three starving children and drunken husband, they did appear more comfortable with this performance than with mine. I heard them grunt and sigh.
Then, I was ushered back on stage and hurriedly handed a Xerox. As I was struggling to decipher a slurred passage, the stern-voiced woman explained our next assignments. I was an old man; Stephanie was a beautiful maiden who had been resisting my advances for years. In this scene, I was to enter the room brashly, begin an argument and give expression at last to my affections. I studied the pages I was to enact. I frowned and stared more closely at the stage directions. I felt the prickle of panic in the soles of my feet. I looked up for help, glanced desperately at Stephanie who was contemplating her own copy, and returned to the fateful instructions. They were unmistakable and unavoidable. They said I had to kiss her.
“Excuse me,” I said, my voice becoming shrill. “Where it says ‘kiss,’ do you really want me to—um—”
Instead of looking at me, the directors stared solemnly at one another. Then the man, his voice artificially patient and precise, said:
“Do whatever you think is natural.”
I will not enumerate here the number of kisses I had perpetrated up to that point in my career, but I will say that they were not many, and none took place on a stage. Even my Tevye had been the self-controlled product of a suburban Catholic high school. At that moment, any kisses from which I derived pleasure were absent from my memory. I could only recall the very first, dispatched with urgency and fear as the credits rolled in an emptying cinema. I resolved to do what came naturally, I didn’t know what that was, but I hoped and prayed I would know when the time came.
We began.
Stephanie’s performance was elegant, clear, restrained and yet suggestive of a deep, inner fire. Mine was elephantine, clumsy, ridiculous and suggestive of a man with his fly undone. And then I found myself holding her in my arms. And then, she was letting me take her weight, pressing herself toward me. And then—I glanced back at the script, in one last hope that the dread command had vanished. And then I pecked the air behind her right ear, making a squelching, sucking noise that resounded in the tense auditorium.
The audition was over. I was not thanked. I fled through the green room, never to return, not even to check the list of which students had earned a call-back. I told my friends that I would never audition for a show again.
But I did. A little wiser for my next audition. I won a good part in a musical comedy, and I was involved in shows for years. But for months afterward, I longed to replay that awful scene, so that I could prove myself a real man and bestow on Stephanie a real kiss.
And yet, I look back now and feel as if I escaped. So many others around me—not just actors and actresses—fell into the trap of attempting passion or genius in order to impress others and advance themselves. The result was often a success on stage or in class but an emptiness, and meaninglessness inside.
I know that feeling of emptiness, and the dark idea of being a tragic hero on a bleak stage, or perhaps a lonely rider against the sunset. There’s a dramatic thrill to playing some roles, especially if you’re smooth enough to avoid looking foolish in front of your human critics. I was not, but I’m no longer worried about perfecting my act.
“For God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). What a relief to be free from the auditioner’s frenzy to impress! There is someone higher than the Yale Dramat, someone who completely fills the theater; someone who sees, knows, and loves me for myself, at a level deeper than my false sophistications. God knows and loves. Amazing truth: the shows of wit and worldliness do nothing to impress Him. He knows exactly how foolish and weak we are. But that doesn’t change His attitude. Jesus said: “Do not be afraid, little flock.” I am loved despite the fact that I am little and sheepish.
Paul Till