Texts for Translation 2008:
  Joan Barere

Excerpts from “OLD ACTRESS”
by Joan Barere

Martha Stewart Would Be Proud

“Joan,” Barbara says, breathless, “I have an audition tonight.  It’s really important.  Will you help me run my lines?  I promise it won’t take more than fifteen minutes.”

Barbara is a fellow actor.  We are in scene study class.  Her request is the common opening gambit of an exercise called the two-action problem, which calls for one actor to interrupt the other, already busy with a chosen activity, to ask for help.  Barbara wants something, and I want something else.  Her goal is to do whatever she can to get me to drop what I’m doing and help her.  My goal is to frustrate and oppose her, no matter how urgent her need, and get on with what I’m doing. 

In this case, I’ve chosen to unravel a viciously tangled ball of yarn for one of my knitting clients.  Like Barbara, I have a deadline.  The detangling is a puzzle.  My work is absorbing, soothing, and my involvement in it both physical and cerebral.  Seated, I keep my eyes focused on the yarn splayed before me across a table, my fingers enmeshed in it. 
Rather than fighting with Barbara, or arguing with her, I calmly refuse her entreaties for help.  My responses consist of shrugs, sighs, non sequiturs, and plain truths, such as:  “I promised I’d have this in one neat ball by tomorrow morning.  There’s a really tough knot in here.” 

In contrast, Barbara becomes more and more agitated, striding around the small rehearsal space, making sweeping gestures to distract my eye.  She insults me:  “You’re just like all my knitting friends.  Give them a ball of yarn and they turn into babbling infants.”  She rails at me:  “You never do anything I ask.  You’re a terrible friend.  It’s always about you, you, you.”  She begs:  “What’s fifteen minutes?  Can’t you please just give me fifteen minutes?  No?  How about ten?”

Finally, Barbara explodes.  She jumps up and down in front of me, her back to the “fourth wall,” where our teacher and fellow students observe us.  “Obviously you don’t understand!” she yells.  “I have an audition!!”  I hear a snicker from our audience, and it’s all I can do to keep a straight face. 

I decide to shift tactics, to deflect Barbara by (pardon the pun) tangling her up in questions.  Without looking up, I murmur, “Where’s the audition?”  I expect her to name a theater or acting company, which will allow me to follow up with two or three useless inquiries about geography or parking. 

Barbara surprises me.  She says, “It’s in Stamford, and I’ve got to go because they have one role that’s actually appropriate for an actual woman.” 

Barbara is about my age.  For once, she has my interest—and my sympathy.  My fingers stop moving.  I look up at her.  Our eyes meet for the first time, and I say, “Oh!  You mean it’s not ‘willowy female 18+, looks 16, gorgeous female 20’s, even more gorgeous female 20’s-30’s—and eleven assorted males of all ages’?”

“Doesn’t it just kill you?” she says.  “There are always plenty of roles for men, and no one seems to care what they look like.”

I shrug—what can you do?

She asks me again, tentatively, as though she’s afraid to disturb our new bond, “So—can you help me?”

Help her?  I want to go to the audition myself.  I say, “It’s tonight?”

 “Yes,” she says.  Her look says I can’t believe my good luck.

“And you only need fifteen minutes of my time?”

“That’s all.  I promise.  Please, Joan, can you?”

I look back at the mess of yarn.  About half of it is rolled into a ball.  The other half looks like an octopus on Skid Row.  I sigh, and say, “Wait ‘til I get through with this.  It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes or so.”

Barbara’s eyes light and she hugs her prop script to her chest.  She simpers, “Oh, Joan, thank you.  Thanks.  I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” and exits, practically skipping.

I go back to working on the yarn.  The end.

Our teacher and the other students laugh, releasing the tension Barbara and I built during the scene.  Plus, all audiences enjoy a good tantrum, and Barbara has delivered a humdinger.  The teacher calls her in and gives us our notes, concluding by saying to Barbara, “You see how it pays to hang in there?  You finally got what you wanted.”

What?  I cry out, “Wait a minute!”  Everyone looks at me in surprise.  Don’t they see I’ve been wronged?  “I never said I’d run lines with her!”

“But you said wait twenty minutes,” the teacher answers.

“No!  I told her to wait until I got through!  It might take twenty minutes, but that knot could take me all night.” 

The teacher looks at me, confused.   “You mean—you lied?”

Lying is too strong a word, I think. “Well, I misled her.  Is there a rule against that?  Aren’t I supposed to do anything I can to get her to leave me alone?”

“Um….”  He nods.  “Yes….”

I thought so.  “Didn’t it work?”

7,000 Actors Can’t Be Wrong

I register online for the Entertainment Industry Expo—the EIE for short.  According to EIE’s website, the promoters are expecting 5,000 “industry professionals” at their all-day smorgasbord of seminars, promotions, mixers, and on-camera auditions at the Westin Hotel in midtown Manhattan.  At noon, with the event in full swing, I arrive to find over 6,000 registered and even more in attendance.  The city’s fire department won’t allow so many people in at once.  I’m shunted to the end of a line stretching along 8th Avenue, around the corner and down 42nd Street almost to Broadway. 

Despite bright sunshine, the temperature is below freezing.  I’ll need something to keep my hands warm while I wait.  The Starbucks is jammed, so I run across to the McDonald’s on 42nd and score a large coffee with milk to go.  When I return to the line, it’s grown.  Standing at the end is a man of about sixty, sporting a black faux astrakhan hat and luxuriant white mustache.  I ask if he’s waiting for EIE, and he gives me the sort of what-else shrug you only get from a real New Yorker. 

I start a conversation.  Michael has also come to acting late.  After years as a professional photographer of buildings, fruits, and other inanimate objects, he’s learned he prefers to work with people.  These days he uses his cameras to take headshots.  He’s also studied standup and gotten some print and commercial work, mostly in ads for medication.  He’d like more acting gigs, and he’s here at EIE to see a few of the agents and casting directors who are busy staying warm upstairs. 

The line makes very slow progress.  My coffee is practically ice.  Eventually we turn the corner onto 8th Avenue.  A clean cut, handsome young man in a blue parka makes his way along the line, asking over and over, “Are you an actor?  Are you an actor?”  He hands respondents a two-sided promotional card on glossy stock.  When he reaches the red-haired woman in front of me, I prepare to answer next and take my card.  (I love answering “Yes” when anyone asks if I’m an actor.)  But young ParkaMan passes directly to the hunky youth behind me, skipping me and Michael too. 

Michael and I look at one another.  He taps ParkaMan’s shoulder and says, “I’m an actor.” The younger man’s eyes swing toward us like turquoise high beams, taking in Michael’s mustache and my bundled figure.  Their wattage clicks to low.  He dispenses two of his precious cards without a word.  Moving on, he restores the high beams and his drop-dead gorgeous smile.  According to the card, ParkaMan is offering management services for actors.  I don’t know—I think he should find another line of work.

A few minutes later, and no closer to the door, we see another young man approaching, this one wearing EIE insignia and an official looking headset.  He explains about the capacity crowd indoors and promises that as people leave EIE, others will be admitted.  Michael leans toward him and whispers something into his ear.  The young man glances at Michael, looks long into my eyes—with what seems like recognition—then motions to us to follow him.  He bypasses the line of freezing faces, opens the hotel door, and deposits us inside, where another EIE guy lets us cut into the line.  We’ll have a twenty minute wait in the lobby, but at least we’ll be warm.  Stamping to awaken my toes, I’m overjoyed, but mystified.  What did Michael say?  Who did the EIE guy think I was?   I don’t want to ask, in case we’re overheard and sent back to Siberia. 

Finally, after an escalator ride and another fifteen minute wait on the third floor, we reach the registration desk, where Michael and I have planned to go our separate ways.  It’s safe to ask now, so I do.  “What did you say to that guy outside?” 

“Nothing special,” Michael says.  “I think it was just a confluence of events.”

“But what did you say?  Who did he think I was?”

“I have no idea,” he answers.  “I just said, ‘How much longer?’”

Maybe I look like the EIE guy’s mother—or his grandmother.  Whatever the reason, I’m in, and ParkaMan and the Twenty-Somethings are still shivering on 42nd Street.  Occasionally age does go before beauty in this business.

Swirl, Sniff, Sip, Sigh

I’ve snagged an audition for a local cable access series seeking two hosts and a wine taster.  I’ve been tasting wines for perhaps longer than Lynda, the producer, has been on this earth.  On the strength of my swirling and sniffing credentials, and despite my lack of a decent headshot, she’s giving me a chance. 

The call is for actors 25 to 50—which includes me, but just barely.  I have three days to prepare.  It can’t hurt to update my look.  I try on several outfits, practice on-camera makeup (to minimize what the Restylane commercials refer to as my “nasolabial folds”), and schedule a haircut.  All for a gig that doesn’t pay a cent but would add some much-needed heft to my resume.

Stacy has been cutting my hair for ten years.  We’ve gone from short crop to waist length, blunt to layers, straight to curly and back.  Now, I tell her, I want it sleek and blunt cut, brushing the collarbone.  “Classic is back,” she says, and $110 later, not including tips, I’ve been conditioned, cut, and styled, and look like a poster child for ‘50 is the new 30’.

The next morning, on the way to the audition and looking good, I clutch at remnants of the confidence I felt leaving the salon.  I tell myself I’m not nervous.  Digging deeper, I admit the presence of nerves, however well suppressed.

I arrive at the studio early.  Good thing, because I’m first up.  Other actors already occupy the few available chairs.  On the advice of authors Mari Lyn Henry and Lynne Rogers, of “How to Be a Working Actor,” I’m polite to a fault and smile at everyone, crew and actors alike. I exude a general delight at being there.  It’s not an act.  I’m overjoyed to have the opportunity.  In the ladies’ room, I check my makeup, rehearse my lines, and take a few yoga breaths.  Minutes before my call, I emerge, with increased prana and as much self possession as I can muster, to stand outside the studio, watching through a window as Lynda runs over everything with her crew.

Just as the production assistant beckons to me, another actor runs up, very agitated, and says, “I must leave in ten minutes.”  Her short-sleeved dress is all wrong (my upper arms are at least twenty years older than hers, and quite a bit firmer, for one thing).  She balks at signing a waiver, and I wonder if she’s a lawyer, or married to one, or has an agent, or is just having a really bad day.  The production assistant, intimidated, asks if I mind waiting.  I smile at them both, delighted.  Going second, I get to watch my rival go first and, with her attitude alone, remove herself from consideration.

On soundless monitors, I watch Ms. SulkyFace yank the mike from the stand, smile continuously while speaking and tilt her head every so often, a calculated cuteness that wouldn’t be out of place in a character with Tourette’s syndrome.  She pours well from decanter to glass, but fails to swirl correctly, and falters during the wrap-up.  A moment later, she slams out the studio door without a word and disappears.  It’s my turn.  I smile once more at the production assistant, thank her for holding the door, and sail into the studio.  Relaxed, I meet Lynda’s level gaze, then whip through the introduction, mock interview, and decanting, in command of script and stage. 

Conducting a three-minute tasting, using as props two stemmed glasses full of tap water, Lynda and I trade quips, praising the “wine’s” intensity and bouquet with mounting enthusiasm.  By the time I finish, I’ve heard her murmur “excellent” three separate times.  Whether I land the gig or not, I’ve gotten what I came for.  Beaming, I thank her, and everyone else, even the security guard who signs me out.

I float on a confident cloud to the subway.  The uptown express opens at my feet and I feel like Queen for a Day.  But once I’m in my seat, I recall the studio monitors.  I wasn’t watching myself—in fact, I was trying not to watch.  But in searching for the right camera, I scanned the studio several times.  Now those few unavoidable glimpses are looping on my private screen, and early reviews are discouraging.  I give myself points for rapport with the camera but wince at my left profile, a curtain of hair.  Worse, my relatively mild nasolabial folds loom like fissures on the 40-inch monitor above Camera 3.  The East River, San Andreas Fault, and Grand Canyon come to mind, then Planet of the Apes.  I repress the urge to open my compact and stare at them.

Climbing to street level in need of consolation, I phone my friend Kathy, who can be depended on to say something encouraging.  She answers right away with a cheerful “How’d it go?”

I swallow a deep breath of Times Square, recall the euphoria I felt on camera, and remind myself I was there for the experience.  There won’t be any feedback on my audition for at least a week, if ever, and by then I expect to have others.  “Great,” I answer.  “Really, it was great.”

Copyright © 2008 by Sign of the Ear, LLC

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Joan Barere is an actor, writer, and knitting teacher.

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