A Greedy Bite

My dear friend had a bad week. “It’s a punch to the ego when someone drops out of your show,” she wrote to me. Her dejection melted through my screen. I could taste the agony of having been so utterly thrilled by a cast and then so devastated to have to find someone else.

It is mortifying.

You believe so greatly in your own choices and rationalise every decision. You bake the perfect line up and then someone in the cast flings the oven open too early, leaving you with a sunken centre and a goo to make sense of just a month or so out from opening week.

Unfortunately, this happens more often than we’d like it to.

It made me question, though, whose ego this was really about.

Auditioning for a show does require confidence. You do need to bet on yourself as a performer. You have to do the work. If you really want the role, you’ll study for it. If there are songs and scenes they want to see, you’ll learn them all. Even if it’s a cold read, you’ll research the role. Who is she? How have others performed her? How does she speak? Walk? Move? If she sings, you make sure you’re in range. If she’s big, you grow. If she’s small, you shrink. And if they ask you for something else on the day, you have to give it a go and believe you’ve done it well.

And you do have to take it on the chin when you don’t get in.

It’s awful to have cracked the eggs, poured the milk and measured out the flour for a role you so desperately wanted and to have it dropped on the floor - the metal bowl ringing in your ears.

Anyone who has been in theatre long enough knows this rejection can feel really personal. But those same people know it probably isn’t. There was probably just someone better suited than you on the day. The ingredients in their bowl: the right age, the right height, the right look for the director. It may have even been someone they knew and have used before. Someone they know they can rely on to work, to listen, to get the job done without hassle. After all, giving someone new a chance can be risky. Anyone who has been on a production team knows that.

But, as the saying goes, you can never have your cake and eat it too.

What I’ve noticed, particularly with youth, is that there is a danger in auditioning too much.

I can understand the desire to do it all. To be in everything you can and experience all there is to offer. At one point in my life, I was in four shows a year.

But to truly commit to a role, you cannot risk over whisking your desires. The ego of wanting everything all at once can make the mixture tough and gummy - stretched too thin for any real commitment to a particular show.

No theatre company wants to share an actor. Our company is always willing to try to negotiate, but when you can’t attend a vital rehearsal, particularly a dress rehearsal, because you’re at another, that’s like mistaking salt for sugar. It leaves a bitter dryness on the tongue that, unfortunately, lingers and can have implications for that performer for years.

In community theatre, there is no room for error in casting. It’s very hard to replace players. In many cases, those who aren’t cast are few, and men are even farther between. Unlike large companies, we don’t have the luxury of turning away stars - we often make them, softening the butter and folding delicately, allowing the formula to aerate and rise.

So it’s understandable that you cannot take a greedy bite and hope the ganache is untainted. The teeth marks are pretty obvious. A decision has to be made.

Being the smaller of productions, we often lose out. The offer of ensemble in a big show can easily outweigh a small speaking role with us. As the director, it often doesn’t make sense - you truly believed that person was worth more than dancer no. 29 in the back of the chorus.

But ego is a funny old foe.

He can be pretty tempting. That butter icing can look fairly delicious and that finger is ready to swipe.

I have had enough experience to know that bigger isn’t always better. Some of my greatest losses of roles have led to some of my most rewarding gains and have pushed me to pursue acting roles I may never have thought possible - a villain, a foreigner, a bogan, a survivor.

But one thing I have learnt is benevolence.

When you drop out of a show because the cake is too good not to devour, it hurts. It is a punch. A punch to the director. To the team. To the company. To YOUR community.

Kindness, generosity and altruism make community theatre. They are the true recipe for a cake well baked.

As for ego?

I don’t think it is the director’s ego that has been punched.

Sure, their belief in an actor has been overheated and their plan slightly charred on the edges. But the cake will rise and smell just as sweet with a new actor - the care and thought that goes into that replacement all the better for frosting.

My friend will put on her apron and get to work.

And our community will savour each piece of that delicious torte.