THE 2012 AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION OF ANNIE

Yesterday I did an audition with Penny Cook.

Don’t pretend you don’t know her.

Even if you’re not Australian and have never heard of A Country Practice, the show she starred in for my entire childhood and the only tv show my brothers and I were allowed to watch growing up.

It was on twice a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we were only allowed to watch one night. Which meant you either knew what was going on but not how it ended, or how it ended but not what was going on in the first place.

It was very frustrating.

But such were our parents’ rules and I intend to inflict similar annoyances on Miss Q.

But I digress.

I was telling you about auditioning with Penny Cook.

By with I really mean she must have been friends with someone on the panel and had a boring day lined up, so agreed to abandon her plans and come along and be the reader at the auditions for the upcoming Australian Production of Annie.

I thought our scene went really well. 

I played one character while Penny read the other 6. 

But when you’ve been the vet in A Country Practice you can do anything.

It’s funny, I used to audition in NYC and it really was life imitating art.

I was just like those people in A Chorus Line singing ‘I hope I get it.’

Who am I anyway?

Am I my resume?

That is a picture of a person I don't know.

What does he want from me?

What should I try to be?

So many faces all around, and here we go.

I need this job, oh God, I need this show.

But here I was in downtown Sydney and my sentiments couldn’t have been more different.

Now these people behind the long, imposing desk couldn’t have been less intimidating.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still got so nervous my usual tic appeared (an erratic shake to my left leg that can’t be disguised as keeping in time with the music) but this time I knew exactly who I was and who I was trying to be.

The stench of desperation had been washed from my body.

We’d already sung for them once the day before, this was the dance call. So we danced, then a few of us were asked to dance some more and this mama in her leotard and tights was one of those four. 

The choreographer set us a bit of a leggy number and then kindly asked us to stop kicking our face and keep our kicks to knee height instead.

She had already commented that she’d forgotten to bring her glasses, and I suspect this must have been where the confusion lay.

My leg was nowhere near my face.

Mama is way too old for that.

The show doesn’t go up until early 2012, by which time Miss Q will be over a year old and may have fired me as her primary source of food.

Call time for shows is an hour before curtain, which means I wouldn’t have to be there until 7pm each night. Which (now that Miss Q has gotten the hang of this sleeping gig) means she wouldn’t even know I was gone.

It’s the perfect gig.

I may not need this show (not like I needed it when I lived in NYC – to meet the dual purpose of refilling my bank account and my self-esteem) but I’d like it.

Oh boy would I like it.