Guest Blog: Thirsty

Courtesy of the hilarious Robert Buscemi who blogs at http://littlefishpants.blogspot.com/ :

"So I was venturing a toe back into the waters of theater, trying desperately to get back in after having unwisely strayed from the stage to go into grad school in English Lit, after having two fantastic experiences in plays senior year in undergrad.

I hated grad school and had no business there, and secretly lusted to go back into theater. The problem is I hadn't been in a play in about three years, and I'd never memorized or performed an audition monologue before, ever. The two plays I'd gotten into in undergrad had just entailed script-readings, if I recall correctly.

I was so nervous to audition that I signed up on the sheet late at night after everyone had left the building. I was that nervous and awed still by theater in general. I remember it was dark outside and I memorized a monologue for the audition from "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" after seeing the movie with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman.

The monologue is this riddling tongue-twister thing about being buried alive in a box. Very funny and playful and dark, like the play. Though I later read that it's a completely over-done monologue. But that afternoon I forced a friend to listen to me do it over and over, and by the end I had it down pretty well.

The entire monologue fled me almost immediately in the audition, and I just rambled and panicked. I got SUPER nervous and MASSIVELY flustered, so much so that
I ...
I ...
I ... grabbed one of the two auditioner's cans of soda off their table to take a swig to wet my mouth and try again.

Do you follow that? It wasn't my soda, and I didn't know them. It was just totally impulsive and unconscious. One of them said "Whoa!" or something. I just blathered out some apology and got the hell out of there.

I think I got some weird, perverse, masochistic thrill out of it though, as I often do from botched theater experiences.

That's my story."