Strangest audition you've ever had

As an auditionee, not an auditioner, that is. As an auditioner, I’ve found that they’re all a little strange.

I probably have a few stories, but this one stands out:

When I was a teen, I was desperately looking for a decent band to join. I looked in the classifieds and saw one particular band looking for a guitarist. I called and we set something up. The name of the band was MXR. “Hey”, I said, “Just like the name of the effects pedals!” “Hey, yeah, it is, come to think of it”, replied the guy. Strange coincidence, that a band would have the same name as an effects pedals company.

So I show up for the audition, which turned out to be in a factory. A factory where they made, of all things, effects pedals. They had stacks and stacks of Phase 90s lying about. They also had scads of guitar cables draped over everything.

I didn’t pass the audition, but they did give me a free cable. 30 years later, I still have it. And it doesn’t work for shit.

I did some acting in college. For the most part, auditions were something you came out of feeling, at best, relief that you didn’t make a total fool out of yourself. But one time was different. Auditions were being held for a one-act comedy called “The Public Eye”. I got a copy out of the library the night before and started reading it… and I LOVED it. The main character’s part was so well written that I could just hear exactly how every line should be done… I didn’t even have to think about it. I read the whole thing through in one sitting, and the next day I did the only audition in my life where I felt totally in command – “in the zone”, to use a hackneyed expression. Even the other people there seemed slightly awed.

And… I didn’t get the part. (The only time I auditioned for a college production and didn’t get any part, in fact.) I have the feeling that the director already had someone in mind. I haven’t done any acting since college, but I still wish I could do that part someday. (It’s a middle-aged character, so I could still do it!)

It’s become a certainty for me: when I nail a part, and the director and casting director light up like Christmas trees and tell me I’m by far the best they’ve seen, and exactly what they’re looking for, and confirm my availability, and say things like “see you next week” as I leave . . . I’ll never hear from them again. When I feel like I blew it and I get a cold “thank you” at the end without much else, I’ll almost always get the part. It’s sort of a joke with my wife if we talk after an audition: “how’d it go?”, “bad”, “good!”

I don’t know about strange…I will have to think about that one.

But I can tell you about a ballsy one: there was a guy in my town who was a pro drummer for years. He played Carnegie Hall, played with Chuck Berry in front of 100,000 people, auditioned for Billy Idol’s band (and was picked, but Idol made up with his original drummer Thommy Price, also of Scandal and Joan Jett’s Blackhearts). He had left the business and taken over a small company in another field and been quite successful.

So he had a reputation in town as both a great drummer and as a big ego. I didn’t know him, but approached him and basically said “hey, I hear you play - we should get together.” He gave me an up-and-down look and said “really?” and I said “yeah, I know: you probably have a lot of guitar players who want to jam - I’m pretty solid and have a lot of band experience” and he gave me another up-and-down look and said “really?” :rolleyes:

We tried getting together once, but with no bassist, which limited us - we connected on some Aerosmith tunes. But a few months later, he was tapped to pull a band together for a big black-tie social event in town. He called his Rolodex of gig buddies and assembled a top-flight band. Who promptly stunk up the joint - they were all great players, but the band leader he tapped had assumed that Black Tie = Boring, so they came ready to play Girl From Ipanema and Motown Covers.

I brought a guitar in my trunk - well, just in case ;). By 11pm or so, almost NO ONE had been on the dance floor and the band was just phoning it in, so I approached him and said “hey, talk to your guy - get me in there!” I mean, what could he say - “no, we’ve got the crowd going and can’t let up now”?! So he talked to the band leader, who rolled his eyes in my direction - he looked at the guitar player, who turned to me and asked if I knew chords (:rolleyes:) and how to tune a guitar (:rolleyes::rolleyes:) - I modestly replied yes to both.

I got my guitar, plugged it in, called out That’s What I About You (perfect for this type of stuff - E A D A so everyone can follow along) and launched. The dance floor got PACKED immediately - like 80+ people jumping all over themselves. At the solo break, I cued the sax player, who wailed, then pulled the band back to me and got into the third verse. I revved them up at the end, then toned it waaaay down for some whispered bits (you know, everybody kneels low, like dancing to Shout) and then blew it up again. Sold the ending hard, stretched it out - all good…

I finished, unplugged my guitar, smiled at the other guitarist and started to walk away. The drummer yelled to me and when I got close, quietly said “yeah, I think we can work together.”

:wink:

Although not a theater major or necessarily interested in pursuing acting, I acted in several of the big (semester-long) theater productions in college. (I was dating girls in the acting department, that was my main attraction to acting.)

They decided to stage Equus. I auditioned as a matter of course. *Everyone *was auditioning, I went along with the crowd. I’d read through some of the script, but didn’t really grasp it. Like I said, I was in it for the chicks. In the audition I read for all the male parts.

For the audition I honestly didn’t know what I was doing, I just threw myself into it with wild abandon. I had nothing to lose. I wasn’t a theater major, I didn’t desperately want the lead role (as others stated openly they did), I really had nothing to lose and nothing to prove. At the audition itself I worked myself into a crying jag (during a read for Alan). It was surreal (as in… I really didn’t know what was going on). The theater major who said (repeatedly, to anyone who would listen) he desperately wanted the part of Alan had to follow me, reading the same scene, after I did the crying. I remember wondering if he hated me (he did) for turning on the water works. I wasn’t really trying for the part, but he was.

I, as were most other people, was thoroughly shocked when I got the part of Alan (the disturbed boy).

I actually do have some acting / performing talent (I was a music major and had extensive performance experience), we had a very good director, the rest of the cast and all the technical crew and the set were all great, it was a fantastic production that “worked” on every level, and was quite a hit. Yes, we (I) did the full nudity.

Once I got the role, however, I couldn’t just turn it down. It was an honor, and a challenge, and I felt I needed to step up. I think the director chose me for the part because I was talented but untrained, a lump of clay she could work with.

We did the first read-through. It was then that “nude scene” finally sunk in. “I’ve got to…. what?” Oh, yeah, and we’re doing it in the round, not up on stage with the audience a comfortable distance away. “I’ve got to…. what?” It was also then that the subtext, nuances, themes etc. started to come out. Religion / sex / homosexuality / etc. “I’ve got to…. what?” Really, I had no clue what I was getting into, and quite surprised when I found out.

But like I said, the whole production was very well done and a big hit all around.

Although most of my experience is voice work in radio and announcing, I’ve also done some community theatre in the past. One time, I heard that a community theatre group was doing a musical, and was having a hard time finding someone for a supporting role. I knew the show and the songs and the role, so I thought I’d call the director and see if they were still auditioning.

I did, and I was pleased to hear that they could still audition me. But they were growing desperate at filling this role, since rehearsals started in a couple of days. So the director said I could audition right now–as in over the phone. The director named a song from the show, and asked me to sing it, a capella, into the phone. As things turned out, I managed to do well enough singing into the phone that I got the part.

It was for an out-door drama in New Mexico. The first part was normal enough. I did my monologue and my song and then they asked me if I was familiar with revolvers and if I was familiar with horses. I then had to put the cartridge cylinder in a .44, then load it (empty cartridges). I then had to go outside behind the theater where the auditions were being held and saddle and mount a horse. I got the part (actually two parts one of Gov. Lew Wallace and of a buckboard driving minister from the late 1800s).

I had to do a voice audition for this thing called a Tongue Joy that is a vibrator you latch to your tongue. We basically did the radio commercial, which consisted of some dialogue regarding him giving me this for Valentine’s Day, and then me having an orgasm. I had no idea what the audition was for, and just did a Meg Ryan interpretation and got the part. That was easy money, and awful once I heard it on the radio all the time.

I also had a second audition for an independent movie that was at the Elizabeth Ney museum in Austin. He just filmed me walking around with this dumb hat on my head for awhile, I still have the video. Then the next location was his house where I laid on the floor and he just filmed my head. I got the hell out of there and told my agents I would only be going to regular auditions after that. I never heard anymore about the movie, but he did pay for my passport (It was Buffy the Vampire Slayer set in Florence, and we were going to film there, him and me). I think I was 19, I wouldn’t fall for that crap now.

Also had one for a T-Mobile commercial where I was supposed to play guitar and sing. I got the tape of the song they wanted me to play a few days in advance, had it down, went and they started the tape and it was a whole different song. That sucked and I stood there strumming the guitar and just looking completely lost. I didn’t get that commercial.

A friend of mine made it to the final call-back for a National Steak n’ Shake ad (which would have set her up pretty well for the next few months, at least). When she walked into the waiting room, she saw that she was one of only two people at the callback. It was herself (Caucasian) and another girl (African American).

They sat quietly for a minute, and then the other girl looked up and said “Well, I guess we know what they’re deciding on.” My friend told me she’d never felt less insulted to not get a part; it’s not like they were commenting on her talent.

Steak 'n Shake, incidentally, has a lifetime buyout clause. If you appear in one of their commercials, you can never again appear in a commercial for any other fast food restaurant. Ever. Until you die.

(After you die, all bets are off, I suppose.)

That statement raises more questions than it answers.

It was a radio commercial for the product. They gave me a Tongue Joy as a parting gift. It will chip your teeth and also causes the person wearing it to drool uncontrollably. Needless to say, I don’t think they were the next big thing. I got paid, I don’t care!

Those weren’t even the questions I had. I was thinking more along the lines of…

  1. Where do you live that they are advertising something like this on the radio?

  2. How do you latch something to your tongue?
    But I’ve hijacked this thread enough. I don’t actually need answers, I’m just wondering if there are other people who consider those things to be less than obvious.

We sold these when I was working packing orders for an adult webstore. It’s basically a ring for your tongue. I believe there was also a way to use it with a tongue piercing, but it’s been many years.

Yep, it was like a ring, and this was in Austin, TX, and the commercial would play on the modern rock station a lot. Ok, more audition stories!

I got the giggles. And the director who was holding the audition had written the play himself. In fact he had written the part I was reading for his wife. So the character I’m playing is berating her no good husband for his low class ways and there’s a line about keeping chickens in the airing cupboard. I read chickens as kitchens and lost it. It was horrible, he kept getting me to go back and read again and I’d get to those damn chickens and corpse. No I didn’t get the part – nor audition for that company again.

I was thinking more along the lines of how do you do your lines with one of these things on your tongue? Do all the lines sound like “Nuh nuh nah nuh nuh”?

lol. That’s what I was thinking, too.

I used to do a lot of acting (local stuff) in high school and hadn’t even auditioned for anything since then (20+ years) when I came across an open audition. (I don’t even recall what it was for.) However, during the audition, they asked me if I could see without my glasses. I told them that I could hit a mark on stage, but not much more than that. They asked me if I could read without my glasses, and I told them no. Apparently, I was auditioning for the part of pathological liar because they asked if I would remove my glasses and read lines from the script. I couldn’t even SEE the lines on the script without holding the script nearly to my nose, which I’m sure that’s not what they had in mind, since I didn’t get the part.

No biggie, though.

By far my least favorite director I ever worked with was a man who was… well, imagine Monk as a college theater director. I don’t know if he was legitimately OCD or just an incompetent ass who really didn’t have a clue (in spite of the degrees he was inordinately proud of) how to direct a play, but the first clue was at rehearsal.

We did the cold reading, and he would have us re-read it, numerous times. “This time give it a deeper voice/more English accent/more enthusiasm/more authoritative” etc… All of these are completely understandable requests during rehearsal but this was auditioning when the roles weren’t cast yet! Consequently the auditions too for bloody ever (3 nights IIRC). And then he wanted to see us walk- he was completely obsessive about walking.

The play itself was a nightmare. It was The Crucible, formerly one of my favorite plays but now forever stained. We spent 80% of the rehearsal doing about 1/4 of the play because he was so obsessed with where and how we crossed (“No no no! You’re on the wrong board!”) and then rehearsed the other 3/4 at a rush because he’d wasted so much time making sure we led with this foot not that foot and stood exactly here and not there when we spoke. (And the costume he had me wear… oy… would have been perfect and in period if I’d been the emcee at an 1800 Prussian gay bar but ALLL WRONG for a Puritan judge.)

It left such a bad taste that I haven’t done a play since (except for some that just involved reading).

When I was young and beautiful, my headshot in Spotlight got me more than my fair share of callups.

Most of them seemed to be from single middle-aged women, who wanted me to audition in their house.

I declined them all, but the bizarrest one was a woman who kept on calling, and asking me to leave her a message in the following way: “Sing me a little song on my answering machine. No need to say your name, I’ll know it’s you!”

OK, I just remembered another. I was auditioning for the road company of (I think it was) Caberet, and I had worked with the director and musical director a number of times so we were pretty familiar with each other (actually we were very familiar with each other to the extent I was pretty sure of getting in the show). Anyway, I had already done my bit with the line read and done my steps with the choreographer and was up with the piano just starting my song, when all of a sudden out shoots the director and the choreograpoher from their rehearsal rooms as if there had been some major disaster take place, and the director looking surprisedly up at the stage on which I had just been singing said, “Oh, it’s just you TV, we thought someone was in pain.” And everybody who was in on the joke just broke up laughing. I was set up. As I said, we had worked together a number of times before.

On the positive end, they did end up casting me in a featured role. I even got a solo, well, until it was changed into the entire male chorus singing it instead of just me. (“I think it will be more powerful this way, TV.”)