The first time was back when she was only twenty three. She had been asked to audition, so she felt like hot stuff. But when they asked her to sing, she froze. She was then commanded to "just sing Happy Birthday." Only tiny croaks came out of her mouth. Mortifying! Nearly thirty years passed before she dared to try again.
This time the aspirant got serious. She worked diligently for weeks beforehand. She'd gotten acting advice, voice lessons, and a wardrobe consult about how to dress to impress. She made sure to get plenty of sleep leading up to the event, and to drink lots of water. By the time the audition came up, she sounded like a rock star.
At home. Where no one could hear her.
When she entered the studio on the day of the audition, she immediately felt ill dressed. The other women were wearing character shoes and loose clothing. She was dressed in office attire, in smart little black pumps. Perhaps she should have asked a theater person, rather than a head hunter, what to wear to an audition.
One by one the others went into an adjoining studio. She could hear them sing. They sounded impossibly good! One after the other, they sang their best, and they could really belt it out! She began to sweat.
As her turn neared, she began to feel faint and to tremble.
When her turn arrived, she knew she'd made a terrible mistake! But in she went.
She handed the music to the accompanist. He began to play. His music sounded nothing like the boxed chords she had been rehearsing to and she didn't know where to start singing. Eventually she croaked out a few notes. The auditioners thanked her, and out she trudged, humiliated.
She got the rejection call, "we can't use you" a few days later.
But did these two events stop her? No indeed! She thought "You know, I'm sick of saying 'I can't sing.' I'm going to learn how to sing."
Such a simple solution! She'd merely take a few lessons and voila! she would get cast.
HA!
It took more than ten years of voice and acting lessons, and at least six more calamitous and humiliating auditions, before I managed to audition well enough to be cast.
But boy, was it worth it, because now I cannot wait to both audition, and to sing on any stage, whenever the opportunity comes up. Which is rare for little old ladies. And I usually get cast!
This is my entry to The Ink Well Community's weekly creative non-fiction challenge. This week's prompt is try, fail, try again.
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image by Diana Green. That's me, on the left, as The Duchess of Cornwall in Richard the III
