-Naruto-
When I first started acting, I was told that my voice needed to echo off the walls. The whole cast was told, really, but I felt like it was addressed only to me. I was so in love with live theater. I was part of it! My voice was, and still is, loud. In a role I played when I was fifteen, I got too comfortable onstage and my voice barely reached the middle of the stage. My character was a pot-smoking (the director told me, but used a lot of euphemisms) hippie out of the 1960s, and it was the night we were being filmed for the DVD. I remember blushing onstage as I realized my voice wasn't carrying. When I watched the DVD, I cringed. I hate to say it, but the audience would have been forgiven for forming an impression I was intellectually impaired (feel free to throw rotten food at me for being so insensitive). I spoke louder. My voice carried, and the audience laughed uproariously upon realizing my character was a pothead who was smart, kind and high. It was a principal role.
In the nine years I acted with the company I did, only thrice did they hold auditions onstage. It was to hear who had the biggest voice and the strongest stage presence each time—whose voice echoed and who belted out song lyrics, who acted while speaking so loudly. Teenagers to adults, is the answer. Many greeted each other over various noise, then got yelled at by casting directors. "This little girl is trying to audition!" Enya played on a stereo. The child cried. The brat was cheating! We sing a capella for the auditions, and she brought a stereo and CD! She didn't get the role. Three years later, when she was ten, she landed the lead in a show and people bawled every night at the ending when she "died." I did. Even three years in theater allows a lot of growth. Ellen was a brat offstage for years. She probably still is. It is not because of the four-year age gap that I think that. Ellen was also my neighbor growing up.
That was the second time. The first, was actually my first audition. I was scared to death but was cast. My voice carried. The third was for a Shakespeare play, "Twelfth Night." I was Viola's understudy. I'd been with the theater six years by then. The lead actress never missed a performance. Nancy's still my hero. She later had a breakdown and stayed in a mental hospital. Nancy had confided in me what her illness was: back then, it was still called multiple personality disorder. Theater is actually a small community. Through the grapevine, I heard that she'd moved to a nearby state with her sister, Karen, to be with family. Karen and I were in our first play together. We laughed a lot.
There's auditions soon for a play I want to do, but actually the play doesn't matter. Which one it is, anyway. The theater does! It TRAINS actors for Broadway! I am so excited and nervous. I have my song all picked out. No pop songs here—it has to be one from a musical, preferably Broadway. Mine is. I haven't found a monologue though. My first theater did cold readings. Not here! Finding a monologue, and one that hasn't been done to death, is the hardest part of audition preparation. It's all I talked about in different meetings for a week. That was three meetings. I go to three, sometimes up to five, meetings a week. Twelve-step ones. We talk about what's going on with us. Theater nerds in the meetings made themselves known to me and encouraged me! People are so great! No matter what a person does for a living, from theater to construction to waitressing or working in the legal field, we're all here for the very same reason. There's twelve-step meetings for all kinds of things, but I go to certain ones for a certain thing.
"Hi, my name's Naruto and I'm an addict. I haven't had any heroin for over seven months."
"Hi, Naruto," the room rumbles. One of the men stands up. "Do you want your keytag and a hug?"
"Yes!" Our voices echo in the big room.
I live with a few other addicts in clean and sober housing. I get along with a few of them. The rest are completely batshit and we're always snapping at each other. They need to lighten up, anyway. Nate screamed at me this morning. Asshole. Last night, I put his hand in a bowl of warm water when he was sleeping. I wanted to know if the result was an urban legend or not. It wasn't! He pissed himself. It was just a test! He never leaves me alone, so I decided to use him as a test subject. I hope the fucker relapses, if he doesn't stop lecturing me. I hate roommate interviews, but I think a new guy could be worth it.
