2007-01-07 - 8:52 p.m.

This has been the most public of my many humiliations.

As I finished up, she said, �Well done, sweetheart.�

What she meant, of course, was, �Well done, sweetheart, for getting through that without actually ingesting your own spinal column in sheer, burn-cheeked embarrassment, even though it did look like you were imagining it for the last hour.�

What she meant, of course, was, �Well done, sweetheart, for not showing me completely up, but never do anything like that again.�

This is G, the director, who I know, being kind to be cruel.

So this is what auditions are REALLY like � none of that community-minded we�re all in it together social operatics like last time, this was hands-off-cocks, on-with-socks and lets see your acting skillzzzzz, bitches.

I don�t have any, I should probably mention.

Eight of us in there � 7 twenty year olds fresh out of drama school, previous productions coming out of their wazoos�and me. The warm up, as usual, involves remedial amounts of gayness, but nothing I can�t handle.

Oh, I should also mention that I thought I was auditioning for a nondescript singing part in the chorus, so you can imagine my surprise when we�re thrust headlong into �improvisation�.

Of course, this is bread and butter for the rest. It�s all they�ve been doing all day every day for the last four years, in between rolling cigarettes and sexual experimentation. Oh yeah, they�re fucking LOVING this. They LIVE for this. Me, I live to actively avoid improvisation of any kind in any aspect of my life.

OK, so�a minute on how I got married in Iceland to an Inuit last year? No problem! Coming RIGHT UP everyone in the room that�s staring at me. Oh, start NOW? OK�so I got married in Iceland last year to an Inuit�er�yeah�married�(is that a minute yet?). I have no idea what I said, I was too busy trying not to soil myself.

Then we were paired up � and I saw the fear in the eyes of the young lady who drew the short straw, her hopes dashed on the cliffs of my dramatic ineptitude � to �read� a �scene� from the �script�. I chose from my vast array of accents (one and a half) and went for ultra-northern. This did nothing for her fear, but it made me look at least like I was making the effort. The old switcheroo with enthusiasm for professionalism doesn�t really cut it in acting, surprisingly.

Then came the showtunes, which I nailed like a bastard. That bit was alright. Give me a catchy couple of verses � KEY CHANGE INVOLVED, MIGHT I ADD � and I�m happy as a pig in shit. But it was a bit of a posthumous swipe at talent. More like semi-digested bacon in shit, then.

By the time we got to our solo pieces � for the record, I did Ten Sec0nds to Midn1ght by the D1vine Comedy averagely well � I just wanted to be back home, not improvising on my couch. Though I did fulfil a personal ambition of walking into a room with a pianist and people at a desk and them saying �And what have you got for us today?� That was cool. Or it would have been if I�d felt like anything more than a hollowed�out shell with no accent repertoire.

2 mins 5 seconds later�

��ooooooone..wet..suuuun-daaay��

�Well done, sweetheart.�

What she meant, of course, was �Well done, sweetheart, on now going back to your old normal life where you don�t try and do things like this any more.�

It was a good point.

Apart from working 23 hours a day and not going out, that�s my 2007 so far. Great times.