Expletive Deleted

Auditions are hard to come by. Especially when you're in a current or future production and your schedule doesn't allow you to apply for the part that you just know you're perfect for. Or when you're out of London for two weeks and that same part - only now with a £2,000+ pay tag because it's for commercial with worldwide buyout - comes up while you are watching a red squirrel play on the banks of Loch Awe.

So when a part does come up, and when the production company are interested enough in you to rejig their audition time to fit you in, of course you're keen to get it. In normal circumstances. Then, as the audition day draws near and you tell yourself that you really ought to learn a little more about the play and character you've put yourself up for, and you discover that the play is Sarah Kane's Cleansed and your role is that of Tinker who is, to put it mildly, a bit of a nutcase and a sadist who spends most of the play torturing, mutilating and raping most of the other characters, not to mention spouting frequent expletives, and you wonder whether this is the part for you. Is this violence and degradation for the sake of, as most reviewers assumed when it was premiered at the Royal Court in 1998 (from which I believe the picture comes), or is it Deep and Meaningful, as a few supporters of Kane, including H Pinter Esq, maintained.

I'm in two minds about the play when I go to sleep but when I arrive at the audition the next morning, I'm beginning to think that this might be an exciting role and production to be part of as long as the violence isn't gratuitous. When I met the producers and the director and Maria, one of the cast who has already been chosen, my interest level rises. As we wait to be let into the Cockpit Theatre we talk and it seems we get on well and are on the same wavelength. Inside, in the Studio space, we talk and I give them my audition piece - Azdak from The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which seems to go down well. Then Maria and I do a dialogue from Cleansed. For a first reading, I think I'm doing quite well and there seem to be approving noises, comments and glances from the three judges. 

Then I'm not sure what happens. We keep talking and it's all very positive and enthusiastic, but I'm not asked to read another piece, and it's soon clear that the audition is over and I am walking out the door. Nevertheless I'm on a roll, full of the energy I summoned up to impress them and I'm halfway down the street before I realise I haven't asked them when they will let me know whether I have the part. That's when I begin to Have Doubts, replaying the conversation in my mind. Was I not keen enough? Was I too honest, saying that last night I was in two minds about the show, but as time has passed and having met the production team and Maria I am now 99% certain I want this role as long as I can have a little more discussion with the director about the direction she wants to take it? Perhaps that wasn't enthusiastic enough. Perhaps I should have gone down on my knees and begged them to take me. Threatened, rather, because that it's my character's basic stance. But surely I was threatening enough in my acting... 

For the next half an hour I'm both optimistic that I was so good that they can't help but want me and pessimistic that if they really did want me they would have let me know there and then. As I write this, It's less than 12 hours since they saw me, but I suspect that at this late stage in their casting they would have let me know I had the part. Which means I haven't got it. Ah well, never mind. I live to audition another day.