High and Lows.

For the last two weeks I've been neck deep in rehearsals and performances for RAGTIME at the White Plains Performing Arts Center ( www.wppac.com ). It was a frantic frustrating ultimately very rewarding experience. We "opened " on Friday with the authors in attendance and a very generous party for the cast and friends afterwards. The show only ran for the weekend as it was billed as a concert. We sold well, only losing audience Sunday night to the Super Bowl (don't talk to me about it). The theatre is charming. Just under 500 seats and located in a mall but somehow maintaining the feel of a live venue. We received very positive reviews and murmurs of moving us to a larger space followed. I was complimented on my work nicely. I played a racist of the extreme degree, a role I'd not normally be cast to play. It ended up being a very positive, empowering experience.
Monday I awoke, unemployed, and headed out to an open call for a show I'm very appropriate to perform (remember my ground rule about only attending auditions that are viable). 650 people signed up for the audition and probably 250 or more showed up. The theatre is most likely looking for no more than 20, probably less. The accompanist made too many mistakes in my audition and was almost impossible to follow. I won't get that job, although the people waiting in the hallway were complimentary about how I sounded.
High to low in less than 24 hours. Almost enough to make you wonder why we do it. All it takes is remembering how it felt to tell a story like RAGTIME. For now, at least, that's still more than enough.