Auditioning for this play was like the plot of the Groucho Marx, Carmen Miranda film “Copacabana.”
My agents set up an audition for 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday to play the role of bigoted red-neck Bob Ewell in a production of To Kill A Mockingbird at the Dallas Theater Center.
A couple of days later my agents called again saying that they had another audition for me at 3:00 p.m. on the same day at the same rehearsal studio on Eighth Avenue, to play the role of Theodore Whitman the male half of a vaudeville dance team in the upcoming Broadway revival of “Follies.”
These two characters are the exact opposites. Ewell being a drunken, racist bigot and Whitman, an elegant light-hearted song and dance man.
I let my beard stubble grow for a few days, put on an old pair of jeans, a crumpled up T-shirt and the dirtiest boots that I owned; put my suit, white shirt and tie in a garment bag and threw my sheet music, photo & resume, dance shoes and dop kit with all of my shaving and hair grooming stuff into a backpack. I also threw in a big book of matches (I’ll explain that later).
I did the Mockingbird audition and it went well. I was unshaven and really felt like a derelict. Director Wendy Dann said “that’s really scary.” She gave me another scene to read and I didn’t understand what scene she meant. I was waiting for the reader who was seated across the room to start reading; we stared at each other for a minute, and in character, I yelled across the room “We’ll are you gonna say somethin’ or not?” He was confused and taken aback. We got it straightened out and started the scene. I felt good about what I was doing. Once more the director said “that was really scary.”
When the audition was over, I hurried out of the room so that I could shave, change clothes and prepare for the Follies audition. As I was halfway down the hallway, the casting director came out of the room and yelled down the hall “James, we’d like you to come back at 4:00.”
The To Kill a Mockingbird audition was on the 2nd floor and the Follies audition was on the 12th floor. There was a restroom on the 4th floor which seemed empty, so I went in, shaved off the stubble and changed my clothes. (The reference to the film “Copacabana” is that Carmen was booked into the Copa as Brazilian Bombshell Carmen; she was broke and needed another job so she put a veil over her face to disguise herself and worked the downstairs lounge as Mme. Fifi.)
The Follies audition went well. I sang my two songs and read a scene from the show. When it was over, I went back down to the restroom on the 4th floor to get back into my Bob Ewell dingy clothes, messed up hair and dirty boots and because I had shaved my stubble off — here’s where the matchbook comes in — burned the book of the matches and used them to dirty up my face, went back down to the 2nd floor just in time for the 4:00 p.m. callback.
“Chance favors the man prepared.” I GOT THE JOB !!!
