Minotaur Column #2 Auditions

Minotaur’s Vice President talks shaky hands, crusty tongues, and licking shoes in this week’s column.

14 years ago

The Tab | Guides

I haven’t done a performance in a year. Not a proper one. I can’t act. I’m useless. I look like a wall and sound like a mouse. When directors see me act, they ask themselves: is this a mouse or a wall? And directors don’t like walls. Or mice.

If you’ve never auditioned for something, you won’t understand what I’m about to tell you. I can but liken the feeling you get before an audition to pre-interview nerves. You know the one – your body squirms and you’re overcome by a sweaty nervousness that makes you gulp and turns your tongue into dry sandpaper. How can you speak with a crusty tongue? You are supposed to make words fly from your mouth with fluidity and feeling, not scrape with friction.

And then there are the shaky hands and twitchy legs. Your limbs become other entities. You have a monologue in your head. You have an expression on your face. You are becoming the character, but you can’t pick up a prop without risking dropping it.

But an audition is different to an interview. The audition process is what I imagine to be an apocalyptic judgement day (the be all and end all for some). There is the director. The God. And they can say, “Act for me! Dance for me! Pick up that shoe and pretend it is your lover for me!” Then you, with all your free will, say, “Yeah, OK then!”

But when you’re half-way through licking the shoe, you think: what the hell am I doing here? Why did I get so nervous? I’m only auditioning for the role of “Bystander Number Two.”

Only, your voice cracks and you stand there, frozen. You resemble a mouse. Or a wall.

The moral of this story? Be a kangaroo, obv. Bounce back and remember there’ll be plenty more auditions and interviews. Besides you didn’t want to be “Bystander Number Two” anyway. Did you?

The Tab | Guides