Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at issues of respect in terms of How We Can Make Your Job Easier. What about the issue of auditioning for roles that don’t exist? That’s certainly something that has pushed a few buttons, according to the emails you’ve sent my way.

If a role is cast or if a “name” is in the works, don’t list that role in the breakdown. This is mostly for theatre (and AEA is different from SAG in that AEA requires EPAs to be held before a cast is announced) but this rule is moot. We come out, spend money on coaching, wake up at 5am just to sit on the cold street all morning — sometimes in the rain, and sometimes even in the snow — with the nasty tourists walking over us and the garbage trucks loudly lifting lots of trash, letting rancid coffee and who knows what else spurt in our direction, making us scream and run for cover, to four hours later finally getting in and being able to register for an appointment only to find that we got there five minutes too late that morning and we’re now alternate number 67 and won’t get seen unless an act of god strikes and lots of people miss their appointments, so we sit around for five hours waiting for people not to show and other alternates not to show, finally to get in front of the CD who sits there staring at the ceiling wishing they were really on a beach somewhere and our self-esteem just goes down the drain, just to find the role was cast the entire time. Well, the point of all of that is, we’d like to go to auditions that are always actively casting.

What a colorful depiction of life at a required EPA! Wow! I feel for you!

Certainly no one likes to endure a colossal waste of time when they’ve been led to believe they will be seen for a role that actually exists. I’ve only ever cast one AEA play, and that was one that fell under the 99-Seat Agreement. We did have one role already cast, and that role never went out in the Breakdowns. There would be no reason for us to accept submissions or see actors for a role that was already filled. Of course, the rules for contracts above the 99-Seat Agreement are the ones you’re talking about and I’m certain there are measures you could take within the union to file complaints against producers who hold sessions for roles that have already been filled.

I have seen Breakdowns released for projects in which a role is already cast. And it’s usually pretty clear that is the case. For example, a lead character who is mentioned in the description of other characters will need to be explained, even if the role is already cast.

JOHN: male, 35, brooding husband. CAST. DO NOT SUBMIT.
JANE: female, 28-35, emotionally detached, JOHN’s wife.
JIM: male, to play 4, JOHN’s son from a previous relationship.

So, in the above example, the role of JOHN is cast, but his character description remains on the breakdown in an attempt to make descriptions of other characters more specific. The sad part is, no matter how clear we attempt to make it that a particular role is cast at the time we release the breakdown, we will always, always, always receive submissions and pitch calls for that role.

While most casting directors would never truly want to cost themselves the extra work it’s going to take to filter submissions, hear pitches, and review tapes on actors who have no shot at being cast in a particular role, I suppose it happens every now and then that a CD does put out a breakdown when a role isn’t available. I’ve just never met a CD who does such things (and I’ve met most of ’em). I’d like to suggest that, outside of the occasional trying-to-get-away-with-something people who do, for some unimaginable reason, put out a breakdown when there is no role to cast, most roles are actually “available.” And there are plenty of reasons to go on auditions for such roles. I’ll get to those reasons shortly.

First I want to look at situations in which you are called in to audition for a role that really doesn’t sync up to who you are, physically or chronologically.

From your emails:

My teen daughter was constantly called in for auditions that went to 25 year olds. I know they can’t always tell in advance what ages they want to hire, but if they are hiring guys who are in their 20s to play teens, then they need to bring in girls who at least look like a match. Mine has always looked much younger than her age, so as a teen could not have probably played her actual age if the guys hired were 20-something.

For those of us who play a large age range, it helps to know WHAT age we are going in for. A manager, who represented me as a teenager, only sent me on one audition: for a late-20s married woman. This would have been fine (silly and pointless, but fine) if she had TOLD ME. I had no idea I was going in for the role of an adult, so I went in as a teen. Yeah, I was NOT prepared for that at all.

Regarding the first email, I’d suggest a headshot makeover may be in order. If there are consistent circumstances in which you are called in outside of your true age range, it’s likely that your headshot isn’t “advertising” you correctly. Obviously, if that’s not the problem and you’re still showing up way outside of the age range for the role, based on the others in the waiting room, I’ll remind you that there are many more actors than those you’ll see in the waiting room with whom you are being compared. It’s so easy to imagine that we’re “getting it wrong” when you don’t see your type in the lobby. Truth is, we may have been reading people for your particular role for days and there is no way for you to know whether you are right on the money, type-wise, or if you’re our wildcard. Even so, I’d suggest that the audition hasn’t been a waste of your time.

Same with the height issue, especially regarding our young performers. Obviously, it’s frustrating when you know that the average child of a certain age is a particular height, and that’s not being properly represented in terms of how the CDs are calling actors in. However, I’d say the same level of frustration can legitimately be reached over issues such as the “average composition of types” in most fictional worlds we see on screen. Are most of the films and television series we watch populated by types that match, demographically, physically, or chronologically the types who live in the “real world” every day? Heck no! We’re not in the business of creating “reality” when it comes to casting. If we were, Law & Order would look a lot more like The People’s Court in terms of age, race, weight, and level of education. So, I wouldn’t get too worked up about the reality factor. It’s not at all the point of casting, in most situations.

Now, regarding the third of the above emails, I’d like to group that in with another, below, which is much more about communication than an issue of being “called in incorrectly” by the casting director.

So many times we wonder, “Was my child submitted for xyz role?” And we are not questioning the agents but we are also discouraged from calling to ask these types of questions for fear of being a “stage parent.” We are not trying to be a stage parent. We are trying to obtain information.

This issue is not unique to young actors whose parents worry about coming off as “stage parents” if they were to call and check in too much. Most actors wonder if they’re being submitted correctly (or at all) by their agents. Most actors question the occasional oddball audition. You can’t know whether you were seen as the wildcard or if you were, like I detailed above, an actor who just happened to be in the waiting room at a time when no one else of your type was there. Because you can’t possibly know all of the intricacies of the submission, pitch, selection, and overall casting process from your point of view as an actor, you simply must find a way to get over thinking that you can apply logic to the business you’ve chosen.

I think, in doing these “How We Can Make Your Job Easier” columns for the past couple of months, I’ve come up with one very clear piece of advice: stop trying to make sense of it all.

It seems that actors really crave some logic, some science, some empirical statistical relatable data to help them through the times when show business doesn’t make sense. Gotta tell ya, it’s never gonna happen. There may be times when there are formulas that work. There may be moments when everything comes together like clockwork and you really did put things into motion in such a way that you knew it would turn out right. There may even be great career-long runs of glory in which you feel you’ve got it all figured out. But just as sure as that stuff can exist, it can just as easily stop being true. And it definitely isn’t something you could ever expect to apply again, having it yield the same results. It’s just not how this business works.

Now, back to the issue at hand: auditions that “don’t count.” Overall, I’d recommend that you remember the following:

No audition is ever a waste of your time. Sure, you may not have a chance in hell of landing that particular role at this time (for whatever reason), but you have not wasted your time by auditioning. You have increased your confidence, you have improved your ability to rebound, you have deepened your knowledge of what auditioning in a particular casting office is like, you’ve updated us on what your work is like these days (and what you look like lately, what sort of vibe you’re giving off, how much that last class helped, whether you’ve shifted into another type category since we last met), and most of all you’ve invested another moment in the ever-increasing bank account that is your career as an actor. Every moment you spend on acting is an investment in what you have chosen for your life’s work. How can that ever be a bad thing?

Next week, FEEDBACK. You want it. You really, really want it. Are you SURE about that? We’ll see!

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000345.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.