My First Commercial Audition... aka The Day I Couldn't Stop Laughing.

So I'm on my couch (read: futon), dicking around on my laptop doing whatever it is I do while I'm on the internet (read: Luke and Noah on YouTube.) My cell phone rings and its someone from a casting office I'd never heard of. She says she found me on Actors Access, and would like to bring me in for a Panasonic commercial she's casting.

Actors Access is a website that lists casting breakdowns for just about everything, from stage to commericals to webisodes (seriously, that's a genre now. I'm not sure where to put my emotions about that) Actors can create a profile with their headshots and resumes, peruse the breakdowns, and if they come across a project they'd like to be seen for, the can electronically submit their info to the casting directors for $2. Its a pretty sweet way to avoid open calls, and I've actually been called several times from submissions I've made there.

Because your info is on the website, they're able to create this database of actors which can then be searched by producers and casting directors according to whatever they're looking for (por ejemplo: blonde actress in her 30's who can play the uklele). Just search "blonde, 30, ukelele", and you're off!

And so this casting director (or the intern who works at the front desk, I never found out which) says that she would like me to come in because of a certain special skill I have listed.


What could it be? My belt to an E? Quick study of dialects? Killer "Xena" call?


Beatboxing.


I'll give you a moment.


Yes. I can (kinda) beatbox. I learned in college while I was a member of the all-female a capella group and took to it like a duck to water. This of course led to me having to do the beatboxing for EVERY song and getting to actually sing maybe once or twice. I quit the group after a year and a half. Irrecconcilable differences.


Anywho, Ms Casting Director/Intern asks me if I'd like to come in and beatbox for her.


Ha, um... Yeah. Sure, why not?


She schedules me an appointment time and I click my phone closed. I then proceed to laugh hysterically.


WHAT??? Of all the things to be called in for, my mediocre vocal percussion skills? Ridiculous. What do I need to bring? Do I prepare a little beatbox demo? And what does one wear to the beatbox call?

So I set off for midtown the next day. I had practiced the few beats I knew earlier that day and had compiled them into a nice little demo. I wore jeans, a black button down, my converse sneakers and my sassy black knit cap that I'm so fond of. At the casting office, I was joined by a nice guy in his 30's, who was also a beatboxer. He asked if I was there to dance, and I said I was indeed there to beatbox.

"That's so cool, I've never met a female beatboxer!"

And today is no exception, I thought.

I was called into the office, slated, and the CD asked me to beatbox a little. I did, screwing up in the middle and losing the beat, but I finished. She then told me we would do a little "battle of the beats", in which she'd start a bad beat, and I would jump in with something better. "And like, attack the camera, lots of attitude, you know?"

People, it was all I could do to not die laughing right there.

So she gave be a bad beat, and I did my best to jump in and come up with something on the fly. I kind of wish I could have this same attitude for every audition... the "I'm so not gonna get this job, lets just have fun" feeling you get sometimes.

She thanked me and told me "Not bad. Not the best we've seen, but we've certainly seen worse."

Um, thank you? Was that even a compliment?

I thanked her and left. And then cracked up laughing in the elevator.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?