The Audition

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Going Gray in Tinseltown

Arts


A play-by-play of Mandy's first two auditions with her silver roots shining. Based on her Medium article of the same title. My name is Mandy, and I am a dye-a-holic. It has been 9 1/2 weeks since I last died my hair. As they say in the most famous of 12-step programs. ‘It’s not the drinking, it’s the thinking.’ When I first started acting as my professional career I was 35 years old. I was very worried that it was too late, but, after an insane series of events — losing my business, my house and the passing of my father in the same year — I decided to take life by the balls (I didn’t just decide, I did The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron — if you don’t know what that is, go buy it immediately. You’re welcome). Early on, I met with a neighbour who was an agent for some advice. She told me I would have a tough time breaking in because I was competing with other women my age with very deep resumes. ‘You don’t look your age though so that will help. You can pass for younger.’ And pass I did. I’ve never been the right age for anything. I left home at 15, had a child at 17, graduated from high school at 20, started my first business at 22, actress at 35, always trying to fit in, but always either way behind, or way ahead of everyone else in the room. In any case, her words stuck with me. You’re behind in skill, but ahead in looks. I clung to that, unknowingly, through stints in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles, building a resume of mostly work I created myself (wrote, starred in and sold two shows to networks in 2016), and digging deeply into the exploration of the craft. Despite being the wrong age for everything, I never felt there was anything wrong with my age until I started acting. I hadn’t realized how deeply ingrained the idea that I had to be able to pass for women who were younger was to succeed as an actor until I turned 40, then 41, then 42, and now, at 43, and as the work is just dwindling away, I am furious. I am furious that I am just starting to become great at this acting thing because, in mid-life, I am just starting to feel free enough as a woman to speak the truth about humanity through my art, and I am furious with myself for having acquiesced to this game of playing young so I could fit in and get work and uphold the objectification and sexualization of women in entertainment. I am furious enough that I decided to stop dying my hair. Because I just don’t want to pass anymore. There is something that happens to you around 40. A reckoning. I realized on some level that I was approaching a precipice I had not anticipated. I didn’t think I would be one of those women who have a mid-life crisis because I have a healthy set of self-esteems. I am living my dream, have ascertained that I’m not delusional in my assumption that I can make a living as an actress, and making real progress. But I did have a mid-life crisis, and it was a big one.* I think growing in my grey hair is my mid-life equivalent to a man who buys a Porsche and cheats on his wife. It was a big mid-life crisis because I decided to face the truth. Not THE truth, as though there is only one of us and we are all made of love, that is not something I believe we face, but that we practice moment to moment. The Truth that needed facing was to tell myself the truth about myself. I started to work with some acting coaches whose work is based on this, and it was an absolutely life-changing experience. They helped me to stop lying to myself by telling me the truth about the games I was playing by trying to pass as a little girl, crying, hiding, whining, denying my strength, denying my rage, manipulating. All of these things were (and still are) getting in the way of the artist I am. The artist in me didn’t want to play all of those games, or hide all of the facets of my personality, the beautiful and the ugly, she wanted to use them in our work, and use them in our life. As I slowly let my true self shine, I realized how normal it is to be angry, cunning, ugly, old, sexual, poor, successful, healthy, dysfunctional, all of it. The problem is, once you start to admit the truth in one area of your life, and do so consciously, it is really difficult to live the rest of your life in an unconscious state. If I listen to my artist and do what she says (which is really my ONLY job), she will tell me to eat, to exercise, to do my vocal exercises, to study my lines, to show up early, to do my laundry, and to play because she wants to express fully and deeply and she treats the work as a sacred expression of joy. She has also told me not to dye my hair. I mean, maybe yours tells you the opposite, but for me the message has been clear for some time. I am not dying my hair because I feel there is a deep connection between the vulnerability of facing the world in a truthful way about my age, and the vulnerability necessary to be the type of artist I desire to be. So, it’s been a week of going out without spraying or powdering my roots, and in that time I’ve had four auditions. Each one occurred with varying degrees of terror. Here I am the night before deciding to stop dying and go to the audition with exposed roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBgqX8f-dWw The first one was the catalyst for my making the choice to stop dying my hair. I had a melt-down on instagram. I decided to publicly come out about going grey because I knew if I didn’t make a big deal out of it I likely would not follow through. The night before the audition I stayed up all night googling videos about grey haired women and what they did to get through the grow out stage, if there were any ways to do it without the ‘demarcation line’ as they called it, and if there were any (mostly not) working actresses who were doing the same. Didn’t find any of those, but I sure found lots of opinions from friends and family about my hair off of my Instagram post. I got a lot of very supportive messages of course, but a small percentage of two categories of folks — older women and men of all ages — were NOT impressed. I got all the go-to responses: you’ll look 5–10 years older, you won’t be able to be as successful as an actress, you should meet my colourist, you’re being naive if you think you will work as an actor with gray hair, why don’t you use natural dyes, you’ll look like a grandma. But by the time those messages started coming in, I was in touch with my middle age rage, and I had already decided. As I had learned in that fabulous acting class; it’s making the admission that sets you free from the block that is holding you back, and once I had admitted what I was scared of in dying my hair — that everyone will know I’m infertile, and that I’ll never work again as an actress — I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. I strode out of the house the next day after negative five hours of sleep and took the world by storm. I felt like a Superhero! Iron-Haired Man! The Gray Hornet! Skunk-Woman! I realized so many things in that one trip to the audition. I was in my shoes and my eyeballs as my Mom would say. Looking people in the eyes. Striding!! I felt like a WOMAN, not like I was passing for a young girl. People were staring. Granted, it may have been because I was overcompensating with my outfit (lots of leopard, gold and very red lips), but I like think it was because I had that air about me. The same one that kids have before they hit like 7 or 8. Excited, engaged, present — ALIVE! As I sat in the waiting room I saw the other women looking at me too. I resisted the urge to talk about my grey, as much as I wanted to. I long ago learned my lesson of losing my chi in the waiting room by talking to everyone else. So I sat quietly. My hair at the stage that I could just be delusional enough to think no one sees the roots, or that the blowout is working as a comb-over, but one or two of the women noticed. One of them even looked at me with slight admiration. In the studio next to where the audition was held was a dance rehearsal. I could see the silhouettes of the women in the class through the curtain covered glass doors. They were dancing to Pussy Cat Dolls — the siren songs of us club going women in the aughts. I longed to be in there with them. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind then the monster in me tried to shut it down with “this is LA, all the women who dance here are young and professional, you can’t go to a dance class here, you’re too old!” Caught it, but not till I had finished the complete rant in my head, but my next thought was “wait a minute, you have grey hair now, if you went to dance class you’d actually be able to BE the ‘older’ woman that you are and not have to pretend it doesn’t hurt or that your memory isn’t as good as it used to be, and they would have ZERO expectations of you. You’d be the cute old lady who needs help in dance class! JOY!” It’s not the drinking; it’s the thinking. Ok, so all of those thoughts are pretty messed up, and the deeper concern I have for my sweet self is all of this drama about what everyone else thinks that is getting in the way of my joy. It’s getting in the way of my ability to see the world instead of being seen by it. Which is not only a waste of time, it is making me go through my day at the effect of the world instead of affecting it. Imagine this. You are 7. You walk into a room. Your first instinct is to look for the fun — fun toys, fun colours, fun people, fun smells, fun fun fun. Now, you are 8. Just before you go into the room, your friend tells you your hair is ugly. Now you walk into the room and think everyone is looking at you. You get quiet. You realize people can think mean things about you, and that makes you sad. You stop shining. There is a point between childhood and early adolescence when we start to become concerned with how we look to the room instead of how the room looks to us. One of the most important instincts I have trying to recover as an artist is that one — to see the world instead of worrying about how the world sees me, and the audition room is the toughest place in which to do so. It feels like a firing squad. I recently helped a friend run an audition and I seriously thought about sitting beside the actor while they performed. Sitting on the other side of the table felt combative. It pulled the essence of the person out of nearly every woman who came in, not matter how welcoming we tried to be, and most of them just gave us the safest version of themself and covered whatever it was they thought they were getting away with passing as. I discovered there that we are all trying to pass as something. So, back to the audition. It was for a play, written by a man, about abortion in which many of the characters’ experiences are based on misinformation and assumptions and that, although attempting to portray a liberal view, present some very deeply misogynistic views about the practice. The whole process was troubling. I very much wanted to call him out on many of the issues I had with the script, but I can only fight one battle at a time, and right now, it’s a battle with my addiction to passing as a younger woman, and dying my hair to feel like I still have sexual power over men. After a first reading of the sides, he asked me to re-do the monologue and make it more personal. The monologue was about another person having the right to determine what someone should or shouldn’t be able to do with their bodies. I am not into melodramatics, but it was pretty easy to get personal about this speech by thinking — oh, this is about my hair. I spit it right at him. He asked me immediately to come back for a call back. I was elated. I felt like anything was possible. I got on the phone with my friend Alice, a fellow actress and redhead, who had said the night before she would do it with me. She confessed she had relented and decided to keep dying until she finds a new agent. I felt all powerful. I told her I loved her no matter what she did, and that it would be better for the podcast we were going to start if she decided not to dye so we could have alternate experiences, but I knew I was right. I sent her a picture. She said ‘if the person casting was a guy, he may not have noticed your greys, they aren’t really long enough yet.’ That was a kicker. You mean, I’ve been walking around thinking EVERYONE sees this and is just accepting me, and it’s just because they haven’t actually noticed yet? Audition 2. The Call Back. He called a lot of people back, and gave us 25 pages of sides to prepare. Don’t get me started on how disrespectful it is to ask an actor to prepare 25 pages of sides for a callback. Particularly if the subject matter is heavy and the writing is awkward (sorry, had to do it — God I’m such a judgmental control freak). He told me I would read through 5 scenes with the different actors in the room. I read through two and he cut me off and told me I could go. A clear sign that my auditioning process was over for this project. I left feeling dejected with that adrenaline you have when you know you’ve blown it. My first thought? The grey was longer today. He discovered that I am too old for the role. Firstly the character is a lawyer with several years experience, married for 11 years with a 9 year old daughter. So shut the hell up. But what I realized is that OLD is my go to response. Since the beginning of my acting career I have been working hard to ensure that no one discovers the secret I have been hiding (and the one that is blocking my artist from playing as deeply as she desires!), the secret that I am older than I look, that I have a grown, 26 year old child! I always feel like if casting knows these things, or any other thing I’m trying to hide on that particular day, that I will be out of the running for doing the thing that I so long to do, to act, to play! So I try to hide it, and in return miss out on what casting really wants. Me. I went to a coffee shop to drown my sorrows in a chocolate chip cookie and called my Mom. I told her all of the things I hated about the project, and compared my disappointment to the same disappointment I felt every time a guy I knew I was better than ditched me (we are all one, we are all love). Guys know when you don’t like them. Writer/director/casting directors know when you are judging their plays. I only want them when they don’t want me. I felt better. I threw out my script. I remembered that I now had my grey haired super power. I started to notice how many men have grey hair. I wonder what going grey is like for them. 20 minutes later I’m on the subway and a (barely) 20 year old guy sits across from me and tells me I’m really beautiful. Thought #1: Can you see my grey hair? Thought #2: Do you have Mommy issues? Thought #3: Are you trying to steal my wallet? He’s fresh off the plane, still has that starry look in his eyes. He wants to hang out cause he has no life yet. I can’t. I have grey hair, and have to go start my new life going to art openings where grey hair is seen more as a political statement than giving up on your career. He’s confused, but he moves on easily from the rejection because he’s still young. As I walk away from him in my hurried older woman pace my phone pings. A message from the director/writer/casting director asking my availability for a second call back for the project I was slamming not less than 60 minutes ago. I was thrilled, and felt like a jerk. And I would have to print those 25 pages out again. Next audition is for a Mom in a MOW. I drive to Calabassas in a torrential rainstorm because I need to stay in the habit of going to the places I say I will go, otherwise I will crawl into a pit and not leave again until my face catches up with my hair. The audition itself goes well. I think I showed a lot of love and some conflict. No notes. Just on to the next cause they are running late. On my way out the door, my ego takes over and starts moving my mouth: ‘So, I’m growing out my hair’ (aggressively slicks hair down at the part) ‘so I can spray it, there’s this root spray, if they don’t like it, or they can just let me ROCK IT like it is, or whatever, ha ha ha.’ The man smiles and nods and fake chuckles while escorting me out of the room. I realize that my having grey haired roots has made me think that I am suddenly one of the people. That I am no longer just a lowly actress trying to pretend she is younger, I am honest and truthful and waaaaay better than everyone else (we are all one, we are all love), and I know what it’s like to sit on that side of the camera cause I did it those other two times, and I know you would have just cast me right away if I had just emailed you about the grey hair thing before coming in and I wouldn’t have to have risked my life on the Zumba Flume Log Ride that was the 101 after three days of solid rain, but I came, and I just said what was on your mind already cause I’m sure the grey roots are a big consideration for this job. OMG shut up! It’s not the drinking it’s the thinking. It’s not the dying it’s the hiding. I have a lot more work to do to get to the state where I am in my shoes and my eyeballs. Present. Doing my work, not concerned with approval, just collaboration. I am practicing it with my day to day life. They choice to go grey is accelerating that learning. I am proud of myself. I am taking it one day at a time. PS: Send love. I still need the external validation. *I actually think middle-aged rage is some sort of Darwinian trait that rears its head at this point in life to make sure we, as elders, get mad enough to use our wealth and power to fix all the stuff in the world that we can before we die to secure the survival of our progeny. Now that the sexual urges and motivations are waning we need something to take its place, no?