Breakin' a Leg ... A blog-within-a-blog ...

August 24, 2009 … Artist Date

I was about six weeks into a creativity workshop based on Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and I was considering and rejecting off-the-wall activities to do for my “artist date.” (An artist date is one component of the concerted efforts to work through creative blocks or to rekindle inventiveness and spontaneity in a life. )

For previous artist dates, I had chosen to do some odd things, i.e., I attended a fly tying workshop. Well, I don’t even fish! I must admit that even though I don’t fish, I found it fascinating to learn how much of tying flies is based on entomology and observing which stage of development of which insects fish are biting, whether the bug needs to float on the water or sink or wiggle or whatever, and which feathers or materials or metallic threads or beads are used to replicate the appropriate insect. I came away from that artist date with a healthy respect for fly tying artisans and fly fishing.

When I read in the Bellingham Herald about an open audition for a play to be performed in Lynden, I was confident there was no way I would ever be assigned a part, so on a lark, I made the audition my artist date. The last time I had stood on a stage or been in a play was in the 3rd or 4th grade at Yoyogi Elementary School in Tokyo, Japan when my dad was stationed at Tachikawa Air Force Base.

Over 50 years later, here I was in Lynden, a little excited because I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t know anyone else there at the audition. None of us had seen the script beforehand, which I learned was termed a “cold read.”

I wasn’t nervous or apprehensive because I knew this 2-hour interval was all there was to be. I wasn’t there to audition for an actual part, I was just playing around, so I just sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed observing the others auditioning, and got up every so often when the director called my name to read some line or another.

“Faith County” takes place in the South, so the director, Stephanie Maksin, asked if we could affect a Southern drawl when we read our lines. It was hilarious! I was impressed with how quickly many of the people there really auditioning dropped right into character and how convincing they were in the lines they were directed to read.

The director had us all read a variety of lines for different characters. Some people were not only reading their lines but were also walking around on the stage, interacting with the other characters they were dialoging with at that point in the script. Walking, reading, AND talking in a Southern drawl simultaneously. It was all I could do to keep my finger on the place in the script I was assigned to read and then read it when appropriate. Sometimes I wasn’t very adept even at that. Sometimes I read with a quasi-Southern drawl and other times it was some undecipherable gobble-de-gook.

My date with myself had been a successfully enjoyable caper and I was pleased that I had shown up.

Let me explain, I have difficulty remembering the names of my children, much less memorize lines to be performed in a play, and so I was pleased that I was done with the exercise, and could get back to my usual life routine. I was even okay with having made a fool of myself stumbling haltingly through the reading or missing cues, because in the overall scheme of things it didn’t matter.

I knew the director would choose the right people for her cast from those who were legitimately auditioning, and come the following morning, it would be nothing but a pleasant memory.

I enjoyed myself immensely and thanked the director for the experience and told her I would certainly be sitting in the audience watching the play when it was finally performed. Then I merrily made my way home.

Little did I realize then what was to happen next ...