Tales From The Audition Room

It's been an exciting 24-hours at our home.  Zach had the biggest audition of his young career for a feature film.  The details fall under the "I don't want to say too much and jinx it" category.  I can say that I had more fun watching the behavior of the other folks in the waiting room of the casting office.

The casting office was located on Wilshire Blvd.  It was the perfect part of Wilshire with no great shortcut possibilities.  There seemed to be no difference between going:

*The 101 to Highland to Wilshire 

Or

*Ventura to Laurel Canyon to Crescent Heights to Wilshire

Or

*Ventura to Highland to Wilshire

We arrived at the audition and found three kids and two parents waiting in the room. That's when the fun began for me.

We found the check-in sheet and were instantly confused.  There were two separate sheets with actors signing in for the same character on both sheets.  We located the sheet with the actual name of the project and signed Zach in so he could wait his turn.  

A rather pissy casting assistant emerged a few minutes later and called Zach into the room.  One of the stage moms instantly accused us of cutting in line.  The casting assistant said Zach's name was next on the list.  When she ordered him to look at the other list, the casting assistant said "you mean the list for a project that isn't even being cast today???"  We told the guy not to worry about it and to let the others audition before us.

The kid without a parent went in for his audition which left the two moms and their kids in the room with us.  One mom whipped out her phone to play a game that involved rather loud beeps, boops and clanging noises.  She would look at the screen and then look at everyone in the room to see if the noises were annoying us.  Everyone ignored her which caused her to try and make more noise with the phone.  She finally stopped playing when her kid looked at her and asked her to please stop making so much noise so he could focus on his script.

The other mom waited about a minute and then took out her phone to make an urgent call.  The "urgent call" went to "the agent" of her kid.  She let the fake agent know her kid was well prepared and going to nail the audition.  Her face turned pale as she started giving one word answers to the other person on the line.  She ended the conversation with "Mommy will be home soon honey with dinner".  She was either talking to her kid or has a really odd relationship with the fake agent.

Zach finally got his chance to enter the room.  I was alone for about a minute when another set of kids entered the room.  One kid started spinning in circles as a way to warm up and get his energy flowing.  The other kid felt the need to sing show tunes as a way of finding the character.  As the script has nothing to do with singing, show tunes or musical moments, I'm afraid he might be way off in his character prep.

The spinning in circles kid entered the room after Zach's audition.  The show tunes kid was supposed to go next but he decided to take a bathroom break even though he was next on the list.  The pissy casting assistant also declared to all of us that the kid 'WOULD NOT GET ANOTHER CHANCE TO AUDITION!!!!!'.  I don't think any of us were worried one way or another but he felt the need to share that info.

Zach and I left the office and walked to the elevator.  A guy with headshots and headphones got on the elevator after us in the lobby.  His audition outfit consisted of a hedgehog t-shirt, purple shorts and mismatched shoes.

Good luck with that first impression.

This Guy Is Waiting To Hear If He Gets A Callback