20 Years On - Part 2

Oh god, she's looking back again

I’ll preface this with the fact that I intended to spend much more time on this, but this week I’ve found out that my very crucial day job that has allowed me to keep paying bills for the last 10 years is very rapidly being inhaled by AI and is therefore unlikely to exist in any substantially supportive way within the next six weeks. Cue much panic about money and paying rent and all the other fun stuff.

Anyway.

20 years ago. It’s wild to think what AI has done, not just sweeping up day jobs but is also coming for voice overs, corporate work, adverts, all the acting work that we thought we just going to be taken by younger, more attractive actors, not robots. When I graduated, back when you still had to use an A to Z to find where your audition was and you found out who was casting what via PCR in the post on its red paper so you couldn’t photocopy it, the biggest upset was The Bill being cancelled. Going through drama school, we were all excruciatingly confident that we’d all get a part fairly soon after graduating, but just a few years later, it was gone. Coupled with the 2008 financial crisis, it was, quite honestly, a disappointing time to step out as a fresh-faced actor desperate for work.

I’m working out how to reflect on this in a bit more detail without it just becoming a huge whinge about finances and all ‘Things ain’t wot they use’to be.’

So, instead of worrying about bills being paid, here’s a little reminisce about the time I was most desperate to get an audition.

It’s 2006. The year I graduated from drama school and I saw that a theatre company I grew up watching was casting for a show that I was perfect for. I don’t remember the ins and outs of contacting them because this was two decades ago, but somehow I got an audition with them. This was huge. This theatre company was partly responsible for me wanting to become an actor and now I was actually going to audition for them. I was fresh out of drama school, I had a host of monologues ready, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, the director asked if, along with a prepared story, I could belly dance.

What?

I checked the casting call again and oh god. I had missed the part where the part required the actor to be proficient at belly dancing.

Shit.

The audition was in a week and I had nothing. I could’ve just been honest with the director and actually I should have just been honest with the director, but I was young, desperate and also slightly convinced by the fact that I could probably teach myself in 7 days.

The problem is that, despite my absolutely naivety, this wasn’t my first rodeo. I had already been caught out in drama school by saying I could play the flute. Technically, I can play the flute. I mean, technically, anyone can play the flute. What I hadn’t realised behind the scenes was that my casting in my final year film centred around the fact that I had said at some point that I was a skilled flute player. Cue me having to be dubbed by another actor in my year and learning a very important lesson in not being wildly generous with the truth on my CV. I still got my boobs out for the film though, but that’s another tale.

I wish I could remember the logic that went through my brain that really thought I could achieve this, I guess I was just a young, determined fool who just hadn’t faced enough rejection yet. I first tried some moves in the mirror to see if I naturally had the skills.

Reader, I did not.

If this was today, I could have watched zillions of YouTube and TikTok videos on how to master a couple of moves, maybe read a few Reddit pieces on how to do the basics, but this was 2006 and so all I had was a grainy DVD that I picked up in HMV. I watched the DVD to see if I could learn a few tricks.

Reader, I could not.

It’s now the day of the audition and I had achieved nothing other than an inner cocktail of dread, panic and sheer disbelief that I was actually going to try and wing this. I went along completely resigned to the fact that I was going to have to somehow fudge a belly dance in front of real people to try and land my dream job. I turned up like Robert Durst in that final interview and was ready to seal my fate. I honestly don’t remember much about the audition any more, which may be due to the the passage of time or the fact that I was so sick with nerves about the fact that I was about to perform some seriously amateur abdominal gyration in front of a group of strangers, but I did my storytelling piece no problem.

And then, a stroke of luck that I absolutely did not deserve. They told me that due to the auditions overrunning, they were sorry but they wouldn’t have time to watch my prepared dance.

I never heard from them again and I’ve never been so grateful.

I never did learn to belly dance, actually I don’t think I’ve ever learnt an additional skill for my CV since I graduated, and I’m not sure I’ve fully learnt to not generally rely on winging in, but I did learn to always read the casting call in full. AI can try to replicate actors’ voices, moves and facial expressions, but it can never match human folly and a young actor’s sheer belief that she can do anything.