Contrary to what you may have seen on the new show "Smash," a typical audition day looks like this:
5:00AM Wake Up. FOOD (always first). Pack bag - audition book, audition dress, dance clothes, pumps, character heels, jazz shoes, sometimes tap shoes and character taps, snacks, water. Little bit of hair. Little bit of makeup.
6:30AM Leave for the train. On weekdays they run really often, so I usually don't have to wait too long.
7:15AM Arrive at audition location. There are several different studios where auditions are located. A few of them are Ripley-Grier, Pearl, Nola, and Chelsea. Depending upon the day of the week, studio, and season, the building may not be open when I arrive to sign up/get in line. Often times there is a line starting at the door to the building that will wrap around the block if the audition is popular enough. Auditions do not generally begin until 10AM, and the monitor doesn't arrive until...
9:00AM Monitor Arrives (At the earliest! Sometimes it's not until 9:30). So you are getting to the audition early to wait in line to sign up (in my case on the non-union list). Depending on the audition, the company decides whether or not it wants to see non-union actors. Sometimes, they don't make a decision right at the start of the audition, and they tell the non-union actors to leave and come back usually after lunch.
10:15AM Leave. Go find a place to park in the hallway, or go to a coffee shop nearby for a while. This is the fun time when you usually get to just watch the amazing things people choose to do at auditions. The clothes, the hair, the makeup. It's all amazing.
1:30PM Sometimes lunch is over around this time, and the monitor will come out of the room and say, "All of my non-eq ladies, thank you so much for sticking around. They would like to get a chance to see some of you, but they may only be able to see the first 25 or so on the list. Thank you." So, this is when you make the decision to either stay, because let's say you're number 45, but, hey, maybe 20 of those girls had to leave to go to work by now. However, you run the risk of experiencing the inevitable weekly intense pain of having sat in a studio all day, changed into audition clothes, put on a full face of makeup in hopes of just getting in that last group before...
5:00PM Audition ends. Didn't get seen. Wondering the value of the makeup that you just wasted putting on your face.
I won't say that this is always the case. It's just the worst case scenario for a non-union actor trying to get seen at an equity call. It's the only way to really break into the equity world - getting a job for an equity theatre, but they like to make it almost impossible.
This is what my January audition schedule was. Almost every single day since I arrived, I had an audition to go to.
I took this video during one such day. Luckily I had my friend Kathleen with me. We kept each other mostly sane that day. This is the hallway outside of the holding room. The holding room was so full of girls (and so boiling hot) that all of us had to sit outside to wait.
I can't complain, because I got a job out of this crazy process. However, I thought I would just attempt to give a little insight into what I've been doing.
