This Was Awesome

So I auditioned for the school play the other day, and accidentally failed myself into success.

I showed up in the green room (which is basically the locker room for actors) and got settled in. I had over an hour to kill before my audition, so I decided to look over my monologue and maybe make some conversation with people. This soon proved to be impossible, as trying to make conversation with an actor while they're practicing for an audition is tantamount to blasphemy and likely to get you ostracized from a community that generally prides itself on being batshit insane. Bit of a double whammy there, really.

After a moment, something struck me as odd. I nudged a guy that I know kinda sorta well and asked "Did I miss the memo or something? Why is everybody dressed up?"

He replied "Well, most people dress up for their auditions."

"Are we supposed to do it? Like, is it required?"

"Well...only if you want a part in the play, yeah."

I looked down at my grey sweats and brown t-shirt. "...Shit."

There was no way I was gonna find a suit, so I resigned myself to just trying to do amazingly well and hope they didn't care that I looked as if I had just crawled out of bed. Now, the drama teacher usually gives us 4 monologues (2 male and 2 female) to choose from for our auditions. After asking around, I discovered that virtually every guy and several girls were doing the same monologue as me. This annoyed me greatly, as I didn't want to do the same thing as everybody else. "But Johann," I said to myself, "there's no way you're gonna be able to memorize another monologue before your audition. You've got, like, half an hour left!"

"Fuck you," I told myself, which is what I consider to be a great pep talk. I decided that my monologue sucked and memorized another one in less than 15 minutes. Feeling much better, I tried to find a way to calm my nerves as well as take up the rest of the time leading up to my audition. The senseless babble of the other students (there was 40ish of them) was driving me insane, and in a bid to find a quiet spot, I ran to the men's dressing room.

In the dressing room, I stood in the middle of the floor and just stared at myself in the mirror. As I was psyching myself out, I noticed that the closet door was open. With an idea forming in my head, I gingerly opened the closet door and discovered....

A ton of purple robes. There was about 20 them.

Seriously, who needs that many purple robes? I sighed and was about to exit the dressing room when I noticed another closet was unlocked. This time, when I opened it, I discovered dozens of suits. "This is exactly what I need!" I thought. "But wait...no, this won't work. I'm 6"2, none of these are gonna fit me and God knows how long they've been sitting in this closet." Defeated, I left the men's dressing room.

2 seconds later, I said "damnit, I'm finding a suit." After much scrambling and changing of clothes, I found myself in a terribly ill-fitting suit that looked something like this.

Notice the unbridled enthusiasm and the pink phone. My parents should be so proud of me.

And here's my Clint Eastwood impression, before he turned into leather. Also, the ruffles on that shirt were sick.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any proper dress shoes, so I ended up using my basketball shoes instead.

Awww yeah.

So I performed my audition with a monologue that I had memorized less than half an hour ago in a suit that I cobbled together in all of 5 minutes. The teacher apparently liked me enough to include me in the callbacks, so that's nice. I'll be sure to update this when I find out if I got a spot in the production.*

*Editor's Note: I got a spot in the play. Win.

Sir Francis Chesney: Johann Mannloch (Donovan Lynch).