I remember last fall I walked into an audition with one of my favorite people in the whole world. I was excited to possibly be cast in a show with my favorite professor but was nervous because I never saw myself as a Shakespearean actor. I went through my monologue I prepared, and I remember this one thing from that audition, she told me, "Be brave."
I want to be an actor.
I've always loved live theatre, but it wasn't until my Junior year when I realized wow, I could do this for my career. Third-year theatre student and here I am, a long resume (well, for someone who has been acting for 8 years) and excited and scared to go out there in the world.
I know many of us actors go through self-doubt. Someone who has severe anxiety I really have a lot of self-doubts. Yet on my wall, I have a sign that says, "You're not going to be everyone's cup of tea." That goes two ways of acting. One, the director is looking for specific things for a character they have people read for. How you read the scene, how you look, how they see you as the character, and how you read with other people.
It's not always just about you.
Two, you honestly probably are just not their cup of tea. I've auditioned for people who haven't cast me. It's only happened a couple of times, but I really go through that self-doubt after the cast list goes up and I'm not on that list. I throw a little pity party, last time my friends and I took shots of vodka, and we moved on.
I am going to audition for so many shows in the real world, and I need to have thick skin and go out there and own the world.
Even at under five feet tall.
College theatre is competitive. Internships for the summer in state and out of state are competitive. Professional theatre is competitive. We all want to act and live our dreams and being paid is just a bonus because we need to pay the bills too.
Something I'm working on is my self-doubt. I have "be brave" tattooed on my right wrist so I have that with me always. When I walk into an audition with my headshot, resume and a smile on my face I will be ready. Everyone has self-doubts with their careers even if it's not competitive. We are so damn hard on ourselves that I'm surprised we hold ourselves together so well.
It's okay to have self-doubt I mean, we all have it. We're human. Yet we need to stop being so hard on ourselves. We're going to have bad days at work. We're going to have a bad audition or a bad show. That's part of life.
We're not perfect, and that's okay.
