ROCKY AUDITION

Director Glen Walford points to the bold letters on her oversized T-shirt and asks the group of prospective actors before her, “What does this say?”

From our horseshoe formation on the stage of the Wright Hall theatre, 60 of us chirrup in unison: “Think Big!”

The Granada artist-in-residence smiles. “Yes, I want you to start thinking very big,” she says. “Think Mondavi’s Jackson Hall.”

There’s a momentary hush, as each of us visualizes stepping onto the Mondavi Center’s stately proscenium—clad in scanty black leather and fishnet tights. That’s because tonight we’re auditioning for the quintessence of cult classics, The Rocky Horror Show.

Tonight I’ve abandoned the safety and structure of my biology studies to indulge my love of theatre. And though I’ve toughed my way through monologues and cold readings, this huge group audition has me jittery. Should I have brought a résumé? Am I wearing the right thing? To top it off, this is that gut-wrenching subspecies of terror: a musical audition.

I barely have time to remove my shoes, and we’re off and running with a simple warm-up: stepping forward from our semi-circle at random and speaking our name to the mostly empty house. I peek at Glen and her casting team sitting in the first few rows with their pads of paper, and realize that we’re already being evaluated.

Soon we’re wandering about the stage, feeding off each other’s energy, speaking the lines and contorting into the characters that are called out to us. We’re all UC Davis students, studying music, psychology and entomology by day—but in this shadowy, half-lit comfort of the stage, we transform into aliens, vampires and sensual virgins. When we’re asked to imitate mad scientists, I wonder if trying to channel my knowledge of the Krebs cycle will give me an edge.

We play with projection at the front of the stage, casting our voices from deep within ourselves to the unseen audience in the very back row. Glen urges us to infuse our voices with madness, with obsession, to explore the play’s extremes of bleakness and hope that are rather glossed over by the popular film. As I hear our voices chime out that “There’s a light over at the Frankenstein place,” my spine shivers with exhilaration—I’m really quite enjoying myself.

But lurking after some group improvisation is the dreaded vocal audition, and my stomach plummets to my toes. Due to our large number, each of us is asked to sing only a few words—yet as the music director makes his way down our chorus line, I feel my mouth go dry. Though it hits me at this point that I’m out of my league, that my voice is quavering and my face is flushed, somehow I push out the words, “Let’s do the time warp again!” And louder: “Let’s do the time warp again!”

And as I sigh with relief, I realize—it’s over. Glen returns to the stage, thanking us for our enthusiasm on this Sunday evening. I take a glance around me and see that we’re a grab-bag of different ages, genders, races and majors—brought together by our desire to be part of this outrageous show.

A select few from tonight’s group, and some from the night before, will advance to the next round of call backs—but for many of us this is as far as we’ll come. Yet tonight we all have performed, all have exposed a unique piece of ourselves.

Glen closes by saying that the first exercise of simply saying our given name is one of the hardest we’ll have to face as actors. By asserting ourselves, we’ve overcome a great hurdle—because many actors use theatre to hide from themselves. We all have reason to be proud.

I leave the theatre through the revolving door of my double life, returning to my bio books with slightly more spark than before. Ribosomes can take a backseat to rock and roll. I’m still riding high on the wave of transformation, of stepping into crazy shoes and becoming a liberated “Creature of the Night.”

And until the show rolls around in February, there’s always room in my kitchen to do the time warp again.

— Erin Loury