So, I had an audition today. It was a pretty normal call in to Seattle, with a pretty innocuous audition listing. “Scruffy but handsome ‘man’s man'” who drinks a certain kind of beer. Little did I know that my scruffy would look awful in comparison to the other men auditioning.

I was auditioning against male models.

“Sure,” I think, “They look great, GREAT, but can they act?” I mean. I’m an ACTOR. The internal and external life of my character are on display here, I’m not just showing off my All-American good looks (Heh. That, right there, was me being optimistic.)

When the audition situation calls for you to just be yourself and have a chat, a la “in a bar” with two other really, ridiculously good looking dudes, it probably DOES only come down to a beauty contest. So, in this case, all that time spent in the conservatory, polishing my craft, honing my instincts and impulses, dissecting scripts, learning and sharpening my physical skills and vocabulary, studying the great playwrights and the great plays . . . all that might just not do me much good . . .

But, I see two outcomes.

In the first, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer physical confidence (and rightfully so, these dudes were really, REALLY good looking) of my scene partners, am underwhelmed by the premise we’re about to play, and fail to engage my own creative engine for the audition.

In the second, I take my own confidence from my training, my body of work, my un-shaven countenance, and really use my imagination to put myself “in a bar” having a conversation with my really, really handsome new friends.

I chose to have fun, and play. They probably didn’t even know I wasn’t a model.