Characters Part 2

My collection of unintentionally funny job descriptions for actresses. Everything is as I found it.

“Blonde Barbie killer. Kate is a serial killer and is trying to find an emotional connection to feel apart of society by narrowing down her possible Prince Charming.”

“19, a coffee barista who works at the local coffee shop. He/She is brutally beaten to death.”

“Michelle is the classic naturally beautiful girl who is intelligent, thoughtful, kind, and extremely warm. She is average in height and weight, curvy, and **well endowed (DD or larger). MUST HAVE THIS BODY TYPE!** In regards to her demeanor, she is ethereal to the point of almost being angelic. She is the ultimate romantic and possesses a refined elegance that is very captivating. Her biggest character flaw is she is easily depressed. Think a young Christina Hendricks.”

“Red Head, 5’6″ to 5’11″, late 20s to early 30s, physically fit, martial arts helpful but not essential, nudity required.Rene is a nurse in the Peace Corps. She comes from an upper middle class family. Rene is confident in her looks but lacks the necessary street smarts. She is stranded on a deserted island when her hospital ship is attacked.” Martial arts helpful but not essential.

Life Saver

The brakes on my 2000 Beetle decided to stop working. Well, technically it was the ABS system, so I could still drive but without making abrupt stops. You can’t drive in LA without making abrupt stops. So I had to take the thing in to see my mechanic at Lube Masters. Yes, that’s what they’re called. An ex-boyfriend asked my mechanic if he was a master of lube and he laughed, so at least they have a sense of humor about their name. They don’t however have a waiting room that’s inside. In the summer it’s unbearably hot. In the winter it’s cold. My mechanic would need a week with the car, and it would cost $1500. In the meantime I would have to figure out how to live without the car. I called in all the favors the first week–borrowed the roomie’s car and hitched rides. Then I rented a car. I found the cheapest rental place possible–$26 a day. I hear there’s a mythical place that’s $15 a day, but I couldn’t find it. Rent 4 Savings was cheap enough. In fact I can’t even imagine what the $15 dollar place is like. First of all, when I called them to reserve a car, John answered the phone and the first thing he asked me was, “How did you get this number?” “Online,” I said. “Which website?” “Yours?!”

Characters

As I submit myself for acting jobs online, I come across some gems. Most of these character descriptions have no context, and they’re written as if you’re familiar with the project. The descriptions for the roles requiring nudity always say a lot about the producer, writer or director. Others are just ridiculous.

“Must be able to puppeteer a bird puppet.” Lizard puppeteers need not apply.

“Nervous. Over thinking and frantic, you are the X-Cite who was taken for re-configuration, but rejected it. You are the one who changes 331 into a thinker.” That’s helpful.

“Smart, sexy, “POWER OF NOW” living stripper. Obsessed with bicycles and the downside of globalization. NO Nudity. Strong comedy a must!” Seems like a cool role actually.

“Below average looking.” Few other professions force you to identify as “below average looking.”

“We are looking for someone male or female who is educated on the actions of leeches and human feeding. If you are unafraid of leeches and/or may have them as your pet, we would love to hear from you.” The actions of leeches.

“20-35, any ethnicity, strong improv, need not know how to cook or bake. Your breasts will be featured in every shot. This is a comedy so you must be okay with that. No Nudity or semi-nudity what so ever!” Baking with breasts.

“Good with emotions: He will visit fear, confusion, anger and revenge in this piece. Must also be athletic, lot of physical scenes. He is an everyday working guy pursuing his dreams of the arts. He has now been thrown into the unbelievable.” I hate when I visit fear.

“She is the oldest of the strippers (late 20s -early 30s). Still hot as hell, knows all the tricks and could teach the other girls a thing or twenty. She’s a bit garishly dressed, even for a stripper. Her hair teased a bit too high and maybe went too far on the dye. Has a playful, sassy sense of humor, yet the regulars love her…..LEAD (Any ethnicity) THIS ROLE REQUIRES NUDITY- This includes topless nudity in a strip scene (from Zombies vs. Strippers).” Still hot at 30.

“VANILLA: 18-25 is black, packed and stacked (from Zombies vs. Strippers).” Enough said.

I’ll keep posting new breakdowns as I find them. To be continued…

Acting Origins: MLK Jr.

I began my acting career playing a coat rack. When I showed up in her life, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Gardner, had long given up on actually teaching. She constantly looked surprised to find herself in a classroom. She mostly was interested in maintaining her bee hive, white jeans and Delorean. What a sight. When the door of that car raised up, she might as well have been arriving in an alien pod. All she needed was her own theme song.

School plays have no blocking

Anyway, Mrs. Gardner must have cleverly realized that if she put on a play, rehearsals would take up a lot of lesson time, and the performances would prove to our parents we were learning. She chose plays about people of historical importance. Elementary school actors are more like re-enactors and sports announcers, declaiming what’s happening. “Hark, it’s Plymouth Rock.” Haven’t they ever heard showing is so much better than telling? Elementary school theater also isn’t big on character-driven, relationship-based plays, probably because the idea isn’t to create a bunch of actors (heaven forbid). No, the school play is supposed to teach you something, but I’m not sure what.

My LA Stage Debut

I’m associate producing a play in Los Angeles, which means I serve the refreshments during intermission. I like to think I’m an integral part of the show. Tonight we had a class of college theater students, and I imagined they would write about me in their essays analyzing the play. It’s a Christmas play, so my serving apple cider during intermission becomes an extension of the holiday spirit expressed by the play. I break the fourth wall to bring people a tangible piece of joy. It’s really very Brechtian, especially since I serve the food on the stage.

I prepare for my serving of the goodies like I am preparing for a performance. I check all my props (candle-lighter, cookies), put on my costume (apron) and wait anxiously for my cue. Then I warm up the audience with hot cups of cider. I’m a performance art piece made of gingerbread. After I’m done serving, I collect trash from the audience, feeling like a stewardess. People ask for the cider recipe. They want to know the secret of my art. Unfortunately, I don’t make the cider. That’s the producer’s job.

Me? Make the speech?

Okay, I know I’m not really part of the show, but I haven’t been near a backstage in a year. I missed the adrenaline. One night, five minutes before we opened one of the producers asked me if I would do the front of house speech–”Please turn off your cell phone. Exits are this way etc.” I sputtered that I didn’t know what to say. No one had given me a rehearsal. I probably was the least qualified to represent the production. It was only slightly better than having one of the audience members read the program out loud, but I was ready to step out from behind the cider table. I felt like I was leading an army into battle, and I was petrified.

Every time I go to a fancy movie theater, where they pay the ushers to make an opening house speech, I think I would do the speech better. I would just talk, rather than making a show of it. When it was actually my turn to make an opening speech, I managed to just talk, but I talked louder. There were five people in the audience, but I filled the space with sound. I was announcing my presence, even as I tried to be nonchalant. A part of me loved being center stage.

Everything went smoothly until I tried to make a joke. I told people to put their cell phones away–to stop bothering people. I shouted, “Cut it out.” I got a couple of smiles, but I felt awkward. This wasn’t my moment. No one came to see me and my return to the stage. I scurried away. The actors waiting in the wings whispered “Good job,” as they went to take their places on the sacred stage. I felt simultaneously patted on the head, like a good pet, and proud.

I went backstage and shimmied with joy. All the anticipation, waiting to find my way back to performing was over. I stood on a stage and spoke to an audience purely coincidentally. A pressure lifted. If I put myself in the right place things will happen. If I stand with a ladle above a crock pot of cider, the two are bound to find each other.

An Inspirational Story

I’ve cancelled my subscription to Backstage because it’s just too depressing. The article that did it for me was about Peg Entwistle (with a name like that, you’d think she would have known her Hollywood fate). Backstage explained that back in the 1930s she’d left a successful stage career in New York to try the movies. Things didn’t go so well. She starred in a couple of plays that were poorly reviewed, and RKO dropped her contract. After a night of drinking and shame spiralling, Peg crawled her way up the Hollywood hills to that famous sign (or taunt). She neatly folded her coat and climbed the ladder leading up the “H.” She did a perfect swan dive off the fifty-feet letter. She was only twenty four.

Now, Backstage included this cheery little story because after she killed herself, an offer from the Beverly Hills Playhouse came in the mail, giving her a leading role. I’m supposed to be inspired by this story–never give up, the next part is just around the corner! I can guarantee you other trade magazines, carpentry, dentistry, don’t have stories like this. The implication is that at some point in your acting career you will contemplate suicide. But Backstage, always helpful, sees her story as “career guidance.” “Believe in yourself! Have faith!” Personally, I have a hard time renewing my faith when the inspirational story involves suicide. Thanks, Backstage! Does this mean that contemplating suicide will increase my chances of getting a role?

The Re-Enactor

Other re-enactors honing their craft.

With any luck I could soon be a re-enactor. A re-enactor reenacts bloody crimes or pivotal moments in a documentary. I could be on “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” a Discovery Health Channel show. The show is exactly what it sounds like. Women tell their horror stories, “I had a cramp and then bang, out came a baby.” For this episode they needed a redhead, so they called me in. In a particularly noticeable instance of “redism,” they thought I looked like the subject of the documentary only because of the color of my hair. She weighs two hundred pounds or more, but redheads all look the same. The voice message I got from the casting director acknowledged that I look differently, but they were looking for a younger version of the subject. I interpreted this as, “You are the Hollywood version of a two hundred pound woman.”

This is what I would look like after finding out I was pregnant AND going into labor.

The audition would be improv based, but an outline of two scenes was provided. In one scene, Heather receives a birth-control implant and rejoices that she won’t get her period and doesn’t have to use another form off birth-control for five years. In the next scene, she’s buckled over in pain, screaming about food poisoning, but it’s not food poisoning. She’s going into labor. I researched labor pains and began imagining what that would feel like. Then I tried imagining what it would feel like to have someone tell me I was pregnant, right as I was about to give birth. This situation boggles the mind. I like to imagine that if my stomach grew a baby I would notice. If I weighed two hundred pounds, however, it might be a different story. The audition went well, and I’m building a relationship with this casting director. But I haven’t heard back, which frankly, is a relief.

Desperate Creatures

In Backstage, the actor trade paper, next to the audition notices, there’s always an ad for egg donors. This isn’t very encouraging. It disparages the hope suggested by the listing of potential roles. It implies that harvesting a part of your body is part of being an actor. I don’t need the implications of this ad from the acting trade paper. I read Backstage to feel empowered and proud of my chosen career. At my internship, I pull out Backstage to subtly hint at my future dreams. If I read Backstage enough at work, they’ll see me in a whole new light and cast me in their next movie. At the moment, they don’t know that I’m actor.

No one wants to hire an actor, so I’ve kept mum. How do I get them to respect me and think of me as an actor? I barely respect actors. We are desperate creatures, struggling for recognition. They could promptly fire me because it would be assumed that I couldn’t be trusted. I’d be scheming to get a role, and in some ways they’d be right. I’ve contemplated adding my name to the list of actors they’re thinking of calling in for an audition. I’ve never done it because these lists always have the actor’s name and then their previous credits. What am I supposed to put, UC Santa Cruz Mainstage production? If I was really clever, I would trick them into thinking putting me in a movie was their idea.

Anthony Figueroa, Actor

There are actors who are way ahead of me in terms of mastering the psychological game of getting their name recognized. Anthony Figueroa adopted a highway, so that his name would be on one of those “Highway Adopted By” signs. His placard’s on a wall right around the Santa Monica exit on the 101 N. The sign reads, “Anthony Figueroa, Actor.” It’s brilliant when you think about it. Everyone gets stuck in traffic. There’s no telling who’s looking at his name every day. The next thing you know, his headshot comes across an important someone’s desk, and they go, “Where have I heard that name? It sounds so familiar.”

I looked Mr. Figueroa up online. His strategy doesn’t seem to be working. His last role was as an uncredited “Inmate.” At least he has a strategy. At least he knows that he’s doing something to further his acting career, while supporting California highways. I’m not even really comfortable with identifying as an actor, probably because actors adopt highways in order to promote themselves.