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Setback

As I write this, it's 3:22am in the morning of Friday 9th October 2009. I'm a second year student at one of the better universities in the UK. It's not quite Oxbridge, but it's fairly well up there on the league tables.

3:24am now. If you're reading this, it might strike you as a funny time to start a blog. And yes, it is. It's been something I've been planning to do for some time now, but I've not got around to it until now.
And that's me all over really. Never got around to it. I could apply it to so much. I have a problem y'see: I'm an insomniac. It's that least sympathetic of problems. But I can't, for the life of me, sleep at night. It's not a case of a guilty conscience, or a lifestyle inconducive to keeping proper hours (not much, anyway). But for whatever reason, I'm so often awake during the night, and therefore asleep in the day.

This created a rather lazy apathy from me last year, and it's also very lonely. I passed the first year of my course, but not by a great deal. Coming back just under two weeks ago, I was committed to getting my act together this time around.

When you feel sad, or dwell on negative things from your life, the best thing you can do is try to be as busy as possible. On the other hand, when you're feeling down in that way, there's nothing harder than putting the effort in. I speak for myself, of course, and this is why I mentioned my insomnia. It's another barrier to making the most of my time. So often when I think of getting something done - say, trying to write a screenplay, or picking up my guitar and getting some songs down, or even just reading a good book - I'll yawn and think "no, I'm too tired", and watch some TV and play Facebook Scrabble until I can sleep.

"Too tired" is an excuse though. It's just too easy. I should have recognised sooner that life's too precious to waste.

BUT...

This year, I'm determined to get my act together. At the fresher's fair, I joined the theatre society. I've never acted before, but I've always thought it's something I could do. I'm more critical than most when I see poor acting on television or in film, so by my individual logic, I should therefore know how best to go about it. I went along to the first theatre night last Sunday, and signed up for auditions for all three plays that are being put on this term.

The first play audition, on Tuesday, was a tricky one, and the one I'd be least likely to get. Come to that, it wasn't one I'd particularly want to be in. The play is called "Decadence". The audition consisted of reading out a monologue of a posh drunkard, talking about drinking/being sick for a page and a half. There wasn't anything in the way of direction in how he was meant to sound, but to me, it seemed as though he was hovering between excitable and melancholy. That's how I tried to read it anyway. Turned out he was meant to sound happy. I did a second reading, for a working class cockney, and that went better, but I didn't get the callback. I'm not too bothered though. They're only after two actors, male and female (I'm male, to clarify...well, technically...) to play four roles each. As I've said, I've never acted before, so it'd be a huge stretch anyway.

The second audition was right after the first. The play was called "Our Town", about some small town Americans. I auditioned with an attempted accent, and it seemed fairly promising. I didn't receive the callback e-mail, however. This seems more odd to me, because for the other two plays, the e-mail went out to everyone who auditioned, with a list of the names they want back, so everyone knows right away whether they're in or not. Now I think of it, maybe the callback for this play is later than the others, and there's a chance I'll get a part. There are 20ish characters of varying importance, so now I think of it, maybe they just send out a later callback. After all, it would take longer to compile a list of those suitable for roles in a play with so many parts. Or maybe I'm clutching at straws.

The third audition was on Wednesday, and for a play called "Table Talk". It's set in Yorkshire and follows two characters as 7 year olds in the first act, and jumps ahead 15 years in the second act. Now this audition went very well. Indeed, when I gave my first reading, they said it was the best reading for the part that they'd seen. Well, they didn't say best, they said funniest. But the play's a comedy, and they clearly meant it in a good way. It certainly seemed promising, and I got the callback e-mail.

Table Talk has 9 characters: 4 male and 5 female. 15 people got callbacks (including me), 6 of which were males. So statistics would seem to me on my side. And the callback audition seemed to go great(ly?). I tried out in both a northern accent (I have a just-north-of-London accent usually), and they (the director and...I dunno, producer?) seemed to like both ways I tried of reading it. All the more promising. Indeed, from the way they spoke, it sounded like I was all but guaranteed a part. I'd be told formally by e-mail anyway, and the next meeting was tomorrow (now today) evening.

So I came back home feeling great. I'd only had three hours sleep over the past day and a half, so I watched David Cameron's speech to the Tory conference on BBC iPlayer, and fell asleep nearly immediately afterwards (I'd hasten to add that the two are unrelated, but politics is one for another post). I'd just found time to set a cheery Facebook status, saying that it looked near certain I was now an actor.

Talk about setting yourself up for a fall.

I woke up around 2:30am. I'd had around 4 hours sleep, which isn't much, especially when factoring in that I've got a cold and a bit of a sore throat at the moment, not making for great sleep. Still, I feel ok on it. Then I absent-mindedly checked my e-mails, not really expecting anything (the callback e-mail wasn't sent until just before midday the next day, so I'd expected this one to follow suit). However, the e-mail was there.

I didn't get a part.

It's really not that big a deal. It's just a university theatre production. Even so though, I felt really disappointed. It's got a very busy rehearsal schedule, but I was really up for it. I could try and sour the grapes and tell myself it's too busy, but I was really looking forward to this. At first reading the e-mail, I was sure they'd made a mistake. I thought it was a mere formality, and I was guaranteed a part (I was fairly sure it would be the leading one, at that).

Still, there'll be three more plays next term. There'll be other times.

But it's telling myself that there'll be other times that really makes me feel I wasted my first year. I won't do it again. Life can pass you by so easily if you let it. Right here, right now, I vow never to let it. No more putting things off. You only get one life.

Well, it's nice to have that out in the open. I'm writing this as an anonymous blog, and I don't plan on telling people I know about it. It'd be nice to think that someone might stumble across it and read it, but I suppose that's not the important thing. And I know the danger of getting one's hopes up.

It's 4:46am now. As I've been writing this, I've watched some TV and drank some tea. I've only got one class today, but as sod's law would have it, it's at 9am, so I certainly won't get any more sleep for a while. I'm not sure how often I'll update this blog. Maybe once a week, maybe every day. But there's definitely something to be said for getting your thoughts out in the open.

Please don't think me dry or humourless, or even a sad person. It's merely my state of being at the time of writing. If you have, thanks for reading.

~Mercuria

Posted by Mercuria on 2009-10-09 00:15:14 | Rating: