When I still lived in Northern California, fresh out of college and settling into life before my planned foray into a life in theatre, I took a vacation trip to Ahsland Oregon to attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for a week. Once there for few days, I decided I wanted to be part of something like that, contacted the administrative office and scheduled an audition. I’ve always been a bit ballsy about such things. I knew that several people who had acted there had gone on to have fairly respectable careers in both New York and Los Angeles. My audition was in front of Jerry Turner, the long time artistic director of the festival, who has since passed away.
I went to the local library to look up some scripts and worked up a couple of monologues, the requisite comedic piece, a cut and pasted monologue from Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood, “Mr. and Mrs. Pew are silent over cold grey cottage pie,” and a dramatic piece from Hamlet, “Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would thaw, melt or resolve itself into a dew.” I did, I think, fairly well. Because I had already planned on moving to Los Angeles, I gave them the family homestead address in Spokane to make sure any mail would eventually get to me, then told my family to look out for anything from them. I went back to my job in Northern California, then moved to Los Angeles in another ballsy move that deserves it’s own essay.
Two years later I was happily ensconced in my Los Angeles dream, working at a tacky answering service, living in a room in a fourplex in Hollywood, sharing the kitchen and bathroom with the crack heads and hustlers in the other rooms. I was having a phone conversation (on the payphone out front) with one of my siblings when they announced, “Oh, I never told you. A year or so ago you got something from Ashland in the mail.” Now, I could have done any number of things at that point. I could have said, “Well, find the damn thing and send it to me.” I could have called the festival administrative office and explained the situation, asking if I had actually gotten in and if I could do it that next summer instead. I could have sent them my new address in LA as soon as I had one. Instead, I said, “Oh” and left it at that.
Several years later (and several years ago), I quit acting, figuring that the Universe was against me. (I didn’t yet get that I had more than a little to do with the whole not getting an acting career going thing.) Three months after I quit, I got my first professional acting job. File under “Irony”. I was called by the Los Angeles Theater Center. They had my picture on file and could I come in for an audition. I’d thought it odd because I hadn’t remembered ever sending my picture to them, but when I quit acting I said that I would no longer pursue acting, but if it pursued me, I wouldn’t say no, so I went.
The play was to be a new translation of Henrik Ibsen’s tragic piece about selfish fathers called The Wild Duck. I went to their huge wonderful theatre building in downtown LA and was ushered upstairs to a large rehearsal room. The producer and casting director of the show introduced themselves to me and said that the director was still in Norway, but they were casting the smaller roles. I did the monologue from Hamlet. “Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would thaw, melt or resolve itself into a dew.” It felt okay, I knew I had done the speech better. In any case, I didn’t really give a damn one way or the other at that point. I’d quit acting, remember?
We talked for a moment or two and then they asked me to leave the room for a moment. Something felt strangely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. You know the feeling. Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters playing with his mashed potatoes. There I was in the hallway of the upper recesses of the Los Angeles Theater Center wishing I had a plate of mashed potatoes to form into some recognizable shape.
Then it hit me, and I knew why it had felt so familiar. Several years before that, (I know, I’m jumping around a lot. Stick with me,) when still that diligent but naive young actor doing everything I had heard was necessary to do to get a job, before I had spent ten years being unemployed, I had heard through the grapevine that the Los Angeles Actor’s Theater was having open auditions for their new company to be housed in a theatre somewhere downtown. I called and scheduled myself for an audition.
I was told to go to the Variety Arts Center, that venerable, stately old building. The audition was in a medium sized rehearsal room upstairs. I brought in the requisite comedic and dramatic pieces, the same two I’d used in Ashland. I walked into the room and was introduced to Bill Bushnell, the artistic director of the theatre, and his assistant. I did the Thomas piece. It felt good. It felt wonderful. I peeked over at the two sitting behind the long folding table and they had smiles on their faces. I did the Shakespeare. I was dead on. I had never done it better. It rang with emotion, with betrayal. “Oh God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seems to me all the uses of the world that it should come to this… But two months dead. Nay, not so much, not two.” I felt it in my bones. I was Hamlet. Albeit an overweight one with dark curly hair, but I was Hamlet.
When I was done, Mr. Bushnell looked at me, smiled and said “That’s it.” I said “That’s it?” He said “That’s it.” I was a little surprised, but I knew that to make a graceful exit was almost as important as the entrance and the actual audition. I had been to all the seminars. I knew how to behave. As I gathered up my coat, Mr. Bushnell started asking me where I was from. I answered casually as I gathered up my appointment calendar and papers. He asked me about my training as I backed out of the room. I answered and closed the door behind me. I hadn’t lingered past the welcome point. I had done well.
As I walked down the hallway, I had a very strange sensation; I knew that I had done well. I thought that they had liked me, but the whole end part seemed very odd. I could still hear him say “That’s it.” “That’s it.” But why was he making casual conversation as I was leaving? As I went down the elevator, the odd sensation became a rumbling in the pit of my stomach. “That’s it.” It didn’t fit. Something was off.
As I got into my car, it dawned on me. He had said “Have a seat.” I pictured my bizarre exit from their point of view: a talented young actor had given a very creditable audition and then had slunked out of the room during the interview. How very odd. Is slunked a word? Well, even if it isn’t, I’m sure I had slunked. I put my head down on the steering wheel. That image, the image of me leaving in mid word has haunted often since then, as have the things I could have done to have repaired the damage and become a member of what became a very respected acting company. A company which, once established, was called Los Angeles Theater Center, headed by Bill Bushnell.
During my second audition for LATC, that one for Wild Duck, I was called back into the room and told I had the job. I started to laugh. They asked what was funny and I told them I had quit acting about three months earlier. They also found that funny, and said that that was probably why I had gotten the job. I didn’t tell them I had missed out on the opportunity to be part of their company all those years ago. You see, Wild Duck was part of their final season.
We are told that we are often our own worst enemies. In a nod to Oliver Perry, Pogo Possum once famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I write, now. But if acting ever pursues me, I still won’t say no.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
“You are now officially an old lady,” he said to me when he saw the pothos cuttings in a vase on my kitchen windowsill. That was five or six years ago. I told him the pothos needed trimming and it was a waste to just throw the cuttings out. He shook his head sadly. They are still there. Pothos like to grow long tendrils and look sickly odd if you don’t trim them back. If you do trim them back, the plants can become full, lush and bountiful. I liked my plants lush, so I trimmed the pothos and put the cuttings in water to root. Sometimes I then replant them. It doesn’t make me an old lady.
