Try The Coffee

I'd been avoiding writing about auditions, because the lack of positive results lately has been a real downer. But this blog originally was intended for life-as-an-actor-et-al. commentary. And sometimes the auditions, or the journey to-and-from auditions, are too interesting -- such as a recent audition at Theatre of the First Amendment for Mariela in the Desert, by Karen Zacarias, to be directed by Nick Olcott. For this I ended up researching the Mexican artists like Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera, a fascinating, fiery pair. And at the audition Nick and I both gave each other that squinted eyes look that caused me to say, "Yes, you look familiar to me, too, and no, I don't know why, either." He checked my resume and thought we might have met in Montana when I worked at Missoula Children's Theatre and he was there for some NEA thing. This is certainly possible, but I recently realized we had met (again?) only a few months ago, at an audition at Imagination Stage. Karen Zacarias has a play being produced at Imagination Stage in the spring, and she saw me in Sleeping Beauty last fall. And so the world gets smaller.

(By the way, the audition was enjoyable, even though I haven't heard anything since.)

Yesterday I had an audition at Cumberland Theatre for Ten Little Indians. The audition itself wasn't anything spectacular: a cold reading, which Gary, the director, said was mostly for hearing dialects. Normally I'm quite good at dialects, but yesterday, not so much. The journey home included a stop at a Waffle House in Hagerstown. Waffle House is a guilty pleasure, and I'd been jonesing for weeks. One of the waitresses was named Shanice, though her tag said Shaynana. She said her manager likes giving employees nicknames (something he has in common with GWB), ergo the nametag -- she pronounced it "Sha-nay-nay," which make me wonder about her manager's gift for spelling. The tag also said "Salesperson." Later the jukebox revealed its own personality by abruptly dropping, then slowly raising, the volume as it played. I had a cheese omelet with grits, cinnamon-raisin toast, and coffee -- "Waffle House coffee . . . fresh ground . . . the best coffee for your meal." I always get the coffee, and it's always very strong and tastes lousy, requiring cream and sugar to make it palatable. It fascinates me.

This particular Waffle House is not far from Antietam, the location of the bloodiest one-day battle of the civil war.

I have more interesting stories regarding Waffle House -- including "ribbets," a car on fire, and a lousy day for all -- maybe, more on that later.