Monday, March 29, 2010

NAUSEA TURNS TO NERVES

I had an audition tonight and it’s been a fair while since I’ve been to one, so I was disproportionately nervous.  I had replaced my nausea with nerves.  Excellent.
And so because I was nervous, I did exactly what I told you I wasn’t going to do…I ran.  I had to.  It was the only thing that could help me.  Up and down the stairs I trod imagining the perfect audition.  I would stride in, cool, calm and collected, greet the panel members without doing that weird awkward semi-acknowledgement thing where you always end up giving more weight to one person than the others, take my music over the accompanist without tripping over nothing, be sure to give the correct tempo so he doesn’t play it like a chipmunk recording, return to the centre of the room and stand exactly where the panel wants me to so I don’t have to do that even more awkward shuffle while they adjust you like you’re facing a firing squad and then sing…like a dream.
The problem with Australian auditions is that they are so few and far between that you’ve often got up to two whole weeks to stress about them.  In New York, you could do four - even six in one day, not to mention afternoon callbacks, and the only thing you’re stressed about is whether you’ll get out of the dance audition in time to get to your waitressing gig.  Over there it’s a well-oiled employment/rejection machine.  Over here, it is an agonising, drawn out, torturous affair that results in exactly the same outcome of either employment or rejection.  So I did what I could to help myself and imagined winning the role.  Any decent sports psychologist will tell you that envisioning success is key to actually achieving it.  I’ll let you know if it works… 

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