Its an audition, the same as any other anywhere in the world.
It was held in a slightly seedy bar, almost studious in it's fervent mission to be a dive.
As I walked upstairs to the "lounge", there was a painted texture sign on the wall that stated "Girls are this way!"
Then I had a flashback to another audition a few years back. It was in one of those converted rehearsal studios around the 42nd Street area. Its entrance was a unmarked door and a narrow hallway leading to a dark stairwell. There was some feeble light coming from a dirty skylight at the top augmented by the occasional bare bulb in each landing. On every floor was shown a warren of long corridors honeycombed with hive like doors. I could hear the requisite noises of artists at work. Singers singing. Actors acting. Some stray laughter. The "lobby" gave signs of its recent gentrification, it had a new, somewhat lackluster paint job. But as I climbed further into the hive, the gentrification stopped and the walls were smudgy and streaked.
There was another young woman climbing the stairs with me. We were heading to the same audition. She was like me, young, quirky perky in that NY actress way. No matter how hard all of us tried to stand out, we always ended up looking the same.
She gave me a bright eyed smile as I looked dubiously down a dirty hallway of the correct floor.
"I've heard this was once a whorehouse." She laughed.
"I believe it, it still looks it." I answered.
We walked into a cramped waiting room filled with other young women clutching scripts and mumbling their speeches to themselves. While a weary proctor took our headshots and CVs.
The whole affair had this stained cover. In fact acting in general takes place on the outer edges. Our profession may have gained more respectability in the past few decades but we have only just come out of the night. We aren't too far from our brethren in the whorehouses and strip joints. Most of the theaters only look good to patrons, while actors are forced to share communal changing rooms that often smell of B.O. and stirred up dust/dirt.
I'm always amazed that even in the VR of SL, acting holds fast to its heritage of outcasts. Most may think its just wallowing in cool atmosphere. But I've seen the nicest theaters and the lowest, all of them have horrible dirty changing rooms.
The VR girls sign just indicated to me that it was the same old same. And it made me feel at home. Oddly enough.Labels: acting, culture, mmorpgs, second life, technology, virtual reality