That Tall Blonde at the Callback — The Actor’s Nightmare

This week has been a doozy, with a whole lot of pretty severe anxiety-producing situations. So I should have known to expect it. It’s the return of the ACTOR’S NIGHTMARE! You’d be hard pressed to find someone who is active in theatre that doesn’t experience this, but I’ll define it just in case you have no idea what I’m talking about. The actor’s nightmare is a bad dream where you are in a theater or performance setting and have no idea what you are doing. For example, you are pushed on stage, wearing the wrong costume, into a production number you don’t know the words or choreography to, and you are trying to fake your way through or get off stage as quick as possible or just figure out what the heck is happening! I’ve had this version a million times, and it’s always a relief to wake up. It is the theater variation of that dream where you are back in high school or college and it’s the final and you’ve never been to class.

We all have them and we all know what produces them — stress and insecurity. Are we good enough? Did we do enough to prepare? Do people actually like us? What did they say about me behind my back? Our insecurities eat away at us, and even if you try to push them away, they will force themselves to be heard, even if it’s in your dreams. So apparently my insecurities were on high alert this week, so I had a rather unusual variation on the dream. It’s totally ridiculous and pretty embarrassing to share, but here it goes.

In real life, I had a stressful work situation in full tilt, left in the late afternoon and hopped directly into the car to drive to an audition. Professional theatre, super nice and accommodating people that made me feel welcome (even though I’d had to change my audition time slot at the 11th hour). Did my monologue and bumbled some words early on, but recovered and finished strong. Did my song and, with the extra adrenaline, probably over belted it. But overall felt good about my work, and was hopeful that I’d made a good impression. Was told “good job” which most panels do not volunteer, and was also asked if I’d ever auditioned there before (I hadn’t), and then told “I didn’t think so — I would have remembered you”, which made me feel great. Drove home happy but with a splitting headache.

There is even a play written about this phenomenon! From Wikipedia: “The play was inspired by dreams actors and performers often have in which they are about to go onstage and cannot remember their lines/rehearsal instructions. Durang himself had an actor’s nightmare after performing in this play in which he could not remember any lines, could not find his script, and when he did find the script it was gibberish to him.”

In the dream, a day or two later. I open my email and there is an email response from the theatre. It’s on my phone and it’s an attachment so I’m struggling to read it and make sense of it. There are names up front that appear to be a cast list in an Excel spreadsheet, but the characters are all jumbled and they aren’t really the characters from the show I’ve auditioned for. I scroll through and don’t see my name, so I’m disappointed and resigned to the fact that I’m not cast — oh well. But then I notice there are other columns and one of the columns has NOTES about the people’s auditions. I look at mine and I’m mortified. It says I sang like I was at a funeral. That I was drooling (what the what, brain???), and that I stared at my belt. (This is verbatim what I dreamed — I know it doesn’t make sense — I wasn’t even wearing a belt). I’m freaking out now, because not only has the casting panel not liked me, but these details have been seemingly shared with everyone who auditioned for the show in this mass email. I’M A GROSS, DROOLING, MAUDLIN MONSTER. And then I woke up. Whew!

I’m usually NOT an insecure person (I don’t think). Lot of times I don’t care what others think of me (which enables me to do my own thing, and to be successful in theatre in the first place — I know a LOT of people who can’t do what we do, because they would be CONSUMED by what people might think of them and constantly feeling judged). But the truth is also that sometimes I DO really care about what others think. And I can obsess about it. And wonder what they meant by that comment. Or what they meant when they said to so-and-so. Ugh, insecurity. Perhaps exacerbating the dream was that I also watched “Ralph Breaks the Internet” with my under-the-weather 10-year-old on Wednesday night. The climax of the movie (spoiler alert) has a bazillion “insecure virus” copies of Wreck-It-Ralph taking over and smothering his friendship with Vanellope because he’s being an insecure friend and doesn’t want her to leave to pursue her dreams. Perhaps that found its way into my dream, too. I think there was some drooling involved…

I’m still waiting to hear about callbacks, and I may never hear. But I’m fine, and I feel good about what I did either way. I’m grateful I have a job, the world’s best family and this wonderful performing side gig. And hopefully next week is a LITTLE less stressful. And if you feel like sharing, let me know your most bizarre actor’s nightmares in the comments — they are truly hilarious once you wake up!