Another day, another audition.

Today I went to an EPA (required equity principle audition open call) for a big named theater in town. Due to my EMC status, I was able to wait for an appointment as long as no equity people were being seen, and I got to go ahead of any non-equity actors. (If you are non-equity, you can only be seen if there are no equity or emc people waiting ahead of you, if there is time, and if the auditioner wants to see non-eqs. There was a group of non-eqs that had been waiting since 9:15am! I felt bad going ahead of them, but hey, I guess those are the rules.)

Got in a 12:40pm or so, didn't make it into the audition room before the 1:30pm lunch break. Fortunately I had missed the morning rush; the monitor told me 70 equity members had been through! EMC list was short, and the weather was crummy outside, so I decided to wait inside and read my book through the lunch break. 

Tip: Always make friends with the monitor! They work so hard to organize and get things together, and sometimes they will do you little favors. Today the monitor was a student applying for an internship with the theater, and this was her first time monitoring! Imagine hustling 150 pushy actors in and out of an audition room all day, every 2 minutes. Yeesh. She did a great job, and she let me bug her about where I was on the audition list, which is always appreciated. 

The outside door buzzer was broken or something, so come 2:30pm, I was the only auditioner waiting and - voila! - in I went. Otherwise I may have had to wait an extra hour if I had left and come back. I got to have some substantial time to just chat & establish some rapport with the Casting Director because there was no one else waiting. Always good to get extra face time in, get to know the directors a bit. I asked him questions about the casting process, how he got into this career field...all very compelling answers and information, especially from an actor's perspective. 

So here is an example of when it is good not to be super-early to an audition! DC & NYC are so different in their auditions...NYC I'd have to get there at 8 am to sign up on the Non-eq list, at DC they are so chill, you come right before lunch, you are seen right after lunch.