Just finished reading the script for study time, after all last night flipping through the Diary and other materials.
My heart hurts.
…It’s also really clamped onto Mama Frank. I know I wanted the break with Mrs. V.D., and that’s what the Director is primarily calling me back for, but there is a much more visceral connection to Edith while reading it.
Age is the biggest opponent I have to fight at the moment.
…Have already been told the numbers at callbacks will be higher than usual because the Director is wisely insistent on getting the best chemistry and talent for the job. That means the turn-out was solid and appropriate, and he doesn’t need to reach out to achieve or “make do” with anything…he can just pluck specifics straight from the casting tree.
This is the hard part about auditions.
…The part where you have nothing you can do to accommodate your own worst mark against you. I can study my ass off…prep the hell out of the sides, eat up the emotion, spit out the angst, and be filled with horrifying fear…I can work and act to the best of my ability…and in the end this will very prob’ly come down to none of that. The lack of age is just enough to push me off the scale, if I should at any point come up neck-and-neck with another woman for either of these roles.
…But…
…If I can gain a solid connection with the children…
…If I can really put my focus there tonight…for both of the women…to concentrate first and foremost on being a mother whose given birth to these people (whom I’m only just going to be meeting for the first time, with about three minute scenes in order to achieve it)…I might be able to hold onto this thing to the end. Gain the trust of the younger actors I work with…relate to them with as much ease as I can muster…add that calming element into the room and focus on them.
It’s what Edith did.
…It’s not necessarily always what Mrs. V.D. was able to…but that difference could be worked out later in book work. The point is: I have to be a believable mother of young people who will (no doubt) tower over me in height…and read opposite men as husbands who will (no doubt) out-age me by about a decade and a-half (in keeping with the trends.) For about four hours tonight, I gotta kill off tragic lesbian spinster Martha for good, and embrace “wife” and “mother” to the extent that people will actually buy it…and all, while first and foremost servicing the script.
I gotta lot of work to do.
…But I have friends in the room once I get there.
And there’s an awful lot to be said about that.
I won’t be doin’ it alone.
And I’m excited to get to work on it. Even if just for tonight.
~D
