Mission: Audition

Walnut Creek is a city of love and joy where I have had some of my first-time experiences. What’s your novel experience in da happening city of Walnut Creek? I have a couple stellar to share: delivered my baby, took a boot camp and went looking at pianos (where a Chinese concert player cum salesperson reprimanded me for not buying one), shopped at Nordstrom with my ginormous German shepherd. He was with me in the fitting room too — oh my god their fitting rooms are so big! Don’t I love this town. Anything is possible here. So now, what next? I thought.

Auditioning class for people interested in any kind of theater or commercials was happening at Lareen Fender’s Ballet School that very evening on North Main. Seize the day, act on the goal. 

The Ballet School is the place I usually pass by, looking up at windows as the slim and trim dancers pirouette while my belly bursts with the kabab eaten at Pomegranate, the nearby Mediterranean place.

Hanging onto the familiarity of the street, I jumped into the unknown by calling the number. A woman answered and willingly gave me the info with flair. I told her I was just a mom and didn’t know how auditioning will help me. She took out all the awkwardness by saying that there were other women taking this class who were not professional actors. Anybody can do it. I asked if one had to come prepared with some piece or script. Nothing, she said, just bring yourself.

Still not happy, I said I wanted to speak with the teacher. She replied quickly this is she. I paused and asked, “Well, how will you know what I will like?”

She replied, “I will decide who gets which script to audition.”

With ease she said she could tell. Indeed yes.

She was Jennifer Perry, the casting director of Center Repertory Theater, Lesher Center for the Arts.

So I went exactly at 6:30, half an hour earlier. Lights. Camera, Action. I opened the door. The stairs were steep and narrow. I was determined to climb. I rushed to the counter and asked the lady about the class timings. I knew it started at 7.  And so it turns out she was the sister of the person I spoke to, and they were the granddaughters of Lareen. 

Her hair was pretty, twirled on the top and stayed there like an obedient puppy. I could not resist asking her how it stays that way, if she uses a gel, etc. She didn’t use any. But she already had bowed her head toward me. I touched it and yup, she was right. The next second, it was my turn to almost bow because I found myself nodding and smiling to Jennifer who came suddenly from nowhere like a high voltage train that stopped and asked if I was ready.

She wore a black top, black tights and her hair was also twirled like her sister. She looked straight into my eyes with her big round blue eyes. She disappeared into a room and was now teaching ballet while I sat on a bench.

So just before 7, she came out and together we marched over to another room. She asked my name and made me repeat it a couple times. On the winding way, she talked about her grandmother who passed away very recently. Her flip-flops made the pit pat noise. The easier she was with herself, exuding confidence, the more watchful I was. 

Don’t get me wrong because I had confidence too. See, I am the same person who at age 5 in kindergarten hid under the desk during roll call; at age six, stood on the stage, said hi to audience and ran away and then who at 35, came back to the stage, danced classical Indian dance, emoting a woman yearning for Lord Shiva’s love. 

We now were in the room, as perfect foils. Foils bring out the positive qualities by contrasting each other. While I for sure knew how charming and talented she was, I wasn’t sure about my own stellar self. What was I going to do in the next two hours with someone who had directed, acted, choreographed and casted more plays than I had seen in my entire life?

I met two women, who were mothers too, just like me. But they had been with her in other classes and so it was my rawness that got some audience.

We sat on the floor. She talked about herself and work. She said to prepare for auditions one needs to be ready with headshots. My mind wandered away to exciting hairdos that I never had before. She snipped that imagination by announcing that monologues were our theme.

We were given an engaging monologue that began with the sentence ‘We had good six years’ and ended exactly when the woman left the person she was talking to. Jennifer asked who we thought the characters were, the context and more.

Husband and wife relationship, others said. Woman 1 started crying thinking of her husband’s affair and how close they were to divorce. Tears were rolling from her pretty eyes. Jennifer said she was sorry she brought this piece up.

Woman 2 held on to her and was almost in tears. When my turn came, I said the characters could be my bird and me. Yes, that is right. My husband does not talk much. My bird does, and fights are natural to keep the love balance in proportion. The minute I blurted it out, I wished I could have eaten those words and stayed quiet lest sound and even look like an idiot. I thought of saying something wise and asked, if she knew the character in Doll’s House, Ibsen’s play, who stomps out the same way.

Jennifer looked at me and nodded while handing out other pieces.

We read several pieces, plays, and poems. She talked about the numerous times she was a judge and gave a peep inside that world.

She studied ballet but felt her body was not made for it. And so here she was thrusting papers in our hands, pushing us to reach within ourselves that night. Our first exercise, after reading Skylight, was to introduce ourselves while standing in the middle of the room, looking at her, her eyes now appearing to be even bigger rounder now.

You introduce yourself and then become the character you have practiced, she said. However, I became a character during my introduction of my own wisdom-proofed self. Hi, I am Vaishali Kirpekar. I am going to perform the role of Keira from Skylight is all I needed to say.

To make it easy, she put me in the end too. I flustered. I could not even say my name clearly or even slowly. Duh, my name is too long, I bleated. Isn’t it? And I said Keira from Luke Skywalker. Yeah, I was standing in Jennifer’s galactic empire, indeed, hellho. Instead of shimmering swords, I saw some giggles. Star Wars, go away. Ugh. Disaster. I thought. Worse, she told me to do it again.

More readings followed. By now, she was sure I was fit for drama.  She told me to enact a scene where the character was pleading god for death. I read it standing, pausing and stressing for what I thought was important. She said I could do better if knelt down and said the whole paragraph in that position. I dropped to my knees, obligingly. My breathing changed and I did better.

Woman 2 was to read a nostalgic piece and somewhere toward the end of it, her voice cracked and she started to cry. The piece was about a grownup reminiscing her childhood days with her grandma. Jennifer, who had just lost one, was sitting with the same expression she had 5 minutes ago, looking at the reader’s face. She didn’t even blink. Woman 1 joined woman 2 in crying when my throat was just starting to feel heavy. 

In my eyes, these two had opened their souls to the script, were not self conscious in the least and had the ball rolling the whole time. I was like a brand new crisp work shirt and they were all comfy pajamas that rolled in and out of the various scripts, funny, sentimental and dramatic.

For another poem, Jennifer said it is actually better if one could just lie down on the back and “say it.”  Thank god, I wasn’t asked to do it.

What I couldn’t do standing, sitting, kneeling, how could I do it lying down? Lying supine in front of judges, auditioning? Why not get thrown to the lions or for quicker death jump without a parachute?

Despite this resistance movement building up in my head, I was still willing to read the last poem for the evening. We all shared it, reading one stanza after each other. Something about that felt very good, our accents, our breathing and pauses.

We all got up. I told her I enjoyed it.

Did you? Were you there with me in the class?

So, I had yet another first time experience in Walnut Creek, auditions and who knew I would be reading playwright Neil Simon’s work. 

Bahaha Star Wars!

Do you think new experiences rewire you and even make you laugh at your glorious self?  

Well, I think it is a great mechanism that takes care of me from time to time. For example, last year I bought the piano (nah, not from that W.C. store) and have been learning it since. Therefore, I sit currently facing the Russian composer Tchaikovsky and his Symphony No. 6 in my living room.

My name is Vaishali. I was born in Delhi, India in 1976. I have been living in Pleasant Hill for five years with a husband and my family: a dog, 2 birds and a child. A ménagérie-à-six.