Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima maxima culpa.

My blogging has been substandard this past week and a half and I am so, sO SO SORRY! I’ll post a few pictures tomorrow to update you. Basically the days have been devoted to painting the officette, installing the cabinets in the officette (which proved more time consuming and prickly than expected) and polyurethaning the drawers I received in the mail.

The real issue was an audition that I had last Monday for a production of I Am My Own Wife at a small regional theatre. I went to the audition, was called back and was told, through channels, that I was well liked. But, alas, not selected. That sent me into a three-day tail-spin that wrapped the latter part of last week in the emotional equivalent of a wet blanket.

An actor must realize that so much of the casting process is completely beyond his or her control and as you get a little bruised, so you also grow the necessary calluses. But every once and a while you forget that part and just feel really damn sorry for yourself.

A successful audition for Utah Shakespeare Festival yesterday lifted my spirits. I’ve auditioned for them before but they have such specific openings to fill that you have to keep bugging them in the hopes that this year they will have lost the guy who did all the roles you would do to Hollywoood and it’s your turn!

The kicker was that mid-day today, convinced that my commercial agent would never call me up again, I decided to call her. I had convinced myself that some casting director had contacted my agent and outed me as the worst submission her office has ever seen. The phone rang and my agent answered (it’s not a very big office). Before I could get my question out (about the fact that I should have gotten paid for a little demo I did for BMW a couple of weeks ago) my agent said, “Oh, Dennis, hi. How old do you play?” “I guess mid forties?” was my off-guard response. “So, I’ve got a four-thirty for you today”. I grabbed my pen and began to write on a scrap of wood laying across the table saw. “It’s for Comcast. No Dialogue. They’re going to strap a target on your chest and hit you with something. It won’t be something heavy, so don’t worry, you won’t get hurt. But if you get it, when they shoot, they’ll put you in a harness and jerk you backwards so it looks like you got hit with something big, OK? Four-thirty, Beth Melskey Casting, Comcast. Bye.”

And a warm glow surrounded me. I felt like an actor again.