Playing Husband and Wife

As a child Mauritz played in a few adverts. I would always joke that he’d done more TV adverts than I had. Despite being an introvert he’s not a shy person and he’s a lot more comfortable doing presentations in front of people than I am. We also have hours of footage we have yet to edit from his gopro he never leaves home without.

Mauritz was walking next to me when I opened the email attachment on my phone for an audition. They wanted ‘real’ couples for the audition. We actors were asked to bring along our partners for this one. They wanted people who knew each other and had chemistry on screen. A real connection and a sense of being comfortable with each and in each other’s presence. We also had to know the dialogue.

I opened up a second the attachment steeling myself for the memorization I would have to spend the night doing. I was expecting at least a page of dialogue, but was rewarded with two lines. One line for each of us.

I showed Mauritz our two lines.

“So they want to see all of that,” he tapped on the character description “in two lines. About food.”

“Yes. Welcome to my world.” 

So the next day at lunch time I pulled the child star out of retirement to audition with me. I went in early to make sure that we were some of the first couples to audition. I bumped into a friend at the audition who asked if my husband was coming.

“He’s on his way. I came early to make sure he doesn’t have to wait too long. And your husband?”

“Oh. He doesn’t perform. He would just sit motionless in front of the camera without saying a word. A friend of mine is helping me out.”

I suppose the casting directors didn't necessarily think  that actors might date and marry people who are very different to themselves. Opposites attracting and all that.

The casting director was fabulous with the spouses/boyfriends/partners. Or at least she was with mine. Having seen me regularly she patiently guided Mauritz through the ID on camera before we did our two lines, and then explained what improv was before asking us to improvise a conversation.

The most important thing about the audition was how much fun Mauritz had doing the audition with me. I got to do what I love doing with the love of my life. And he enjoyed it too!

Wright Right?

It’s the quiet season. At the very least I’m heading into the quiet season. After back to back auditions one week I suddenly had no auditions for two weeks. There will still be a few auditions in drips and drags but the stream of auditions will probably start up again in September. Which means its time for me to start writing my own work. My Masters is finished, so there are no excuses not to be writing. Creating. Making.

I’ve done a lot of writing in the past. Plays, songs, music for university shows, for shows I’ve written, or just for myself. It had always been rather simple. Either I, or my partner and I, would sit down and create and it would be wonderful. Or after 15 minutes we’d throw in the towel, have a glass of wine and regroup the next day. Usually we’d write what we needed within minutes. We had also learned if we tried to force a melody or a lyric on a bad day it usually wasn’t very good.

I’ve never really needed a creative process before. It was as simple as sitting down and writing what I needed to write. Now I’m a new space physically, emotionally and spouse-ally. My writing partner is an ocean and a continent away. I’ve been stripped down to bare essentials which leaves just me with my life as it is right now. Writing about that has its own unique set of complications.

“I know the storyline. I know what I want to write. The ideas are rattling around in my head but I can’t get them onto paper.”

My mom raised an eyebrow.

“Metaphoric paper. I can’t get it into my word document in a ready-to-export-to-pdf form.”

My mom knowingly waited for me to finish.

“I’m not in a space where I can write. I"m not feeling it.”

“Then write about that. Write about your life. Write about why you feel you can’t write.”

And it worked.

I sat behind my computer last weekend in my husband’s office for hours as he worked on a deadline. I started and stopped. I went on to facebook, twitter, pinterest. Instagram. I stared at the script I started writing months ago, the cursor flickering in anticipation of pressure on keys. I’d written the first scene over and over again. Somewhere between boredome and frustration I opened another document. I just started typing. About anything and everything. 

As those words spilled over the digital page my other stories started to shake loose.

My Brother's Show

Before boyfriends and husbands came to watch my shows and helped me pick out what to wear for auditions there was my brother. Who came to watch my shows and help me pick out what to wear for auditions. He also brought forgotten hairclips and shoes to theatre back doors. Brought home made macaroni and cheese to late night rehearsals and made many late night cups of tea and coffee as either he or I or both of us sat and worked. Last year he started coming into his own right as a performer.

I started going to his shows, arranging flowers for his accompanists and making sure that there was infused water after his exam performance. Last weekend I watched him perform what will be his last performance in his home town before he heads off to America to start his Master’s Degree in Vocal Performance at Missouri State University.

The concerts he held over two weekends were to raise funds for his studies across the ocean and on another continent. We always knew that he would relocate to the Northern hemisphere eventually. He’s wanted to be an opera singer for many years and has dedicated seven years of tertiary education to studying music and the voice. It has always been on the cards, but watching him perform and knowing that he is leaving soon made it so very real.

Theunis Botha will be hitting the American shores in July and I can’t wait to see the first video/live stream/youtube clip of whatever I can get my digitally inclined hands on of him performing there!

It was an honour being a stage-hand, video-coordinator and general gopher for my little brother. It was an honour to be the one sitting in the audience watching him do his thing. And a big thank you to my poor long-suffering husband for doing technical work for another Botha on the stage.

30 Minutes Played 3 Ways.

I’m always about 30 minutes early for an audition. It’s about one third a matter of etiquette, one third fear of traffic and one third trying to control how long I will wait. So I always arrive about 30 minutes early so that I am one of the first few ladies arriving for an audition, and I get to audition and be on my way. Just in case there are a 100 or so other ladies who want to the role. I’m not exaggerating. I’ve been to castings where more than 100 hopefuls pitch up for a handful of roles.

In the space of a week I had three auditions. All of which I arrived my usual 30 minutes early for. In the space of a week I went from vintage vixen to exercise girl to young unspecified professional. I also went from waiting an hour and a half  to start auditioning, to being done before the slot was set to start and being number 30 despite being 30 minutes early. You just never know.

Audition One: Vintage Vixen.

After arriving early I was fourth in the queue. I also had a headache which made seeing out of my left eye rather difficult. As I sat waiting with an ever growing number of ladies arriving we inevitably started chatting. It turned out that Number One and I were from the same agency. Number One also offered me a painkiller before my eye started watering. Maurtiz messaged me as I waited, asking me how it was going:

“We are still waiting to start, but I have a headache that’s making me spin.”

“Do I need to pick you up after your audition? Will you be able to drive?”

“I’ll be fine. One of the girls just gave me a pain killer”

“And you’re sure it’s not a roofie?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

After being at the audition venue for two hours Number One went in. I followed shortly. Of course the day that I looked my best I had to crawl around on the floor to audition. As I left the queue of girls still waiting to audition kept on growing.

Audition Two: Exercise Girl.

30 minutes early I was number 30. The venue was crawling with girls in crop tops, hot pants and other over the top exercise gear. Despite the audition brief insisting on shorts, a t-shirt and sneakers. I was huddled into the first group of performers to audition. Thankfully we started early and despite being number 30 I was finished within an hour of the auditions starting.

I had to do an aerobics routine hitting specific emotions as I went. I left sweating. 

Audition Three: Young Unspecified Professional.

Upon arrival I was Number Three of four. The casting director is a lot of fun at this particular casting venue and was showing us clips of what he was watching while we waited to start. The audition didn’t require me to roll around on the floor, or run around the room. I left the casting at 12:10. As I left only 4 more girls had arrived. I called Mauritz as I walked out.

I look nice, I’m not sweaty or dirty and I’m finished for the day. Let’s do lunch.

Finding the Fun!

As actors we get our get our highs and lows. Part of the job is the quiet periods in between the jobs. And when you are an actor auditioning is part of the job. And it does become work sometimes. Like when you receive a full page monologue at five in the afternoon for an audition at nine the next morning and you spend half the night pacing up and down your living room learning technical jargon. Finding the fun can be hard sometimes.

“You need to stop taking it so seriously.”

My mother’s advice while we were on holiday.

“When was the last time you enjoyed an audition?”

Admittedly it had been a while.

“Just have fun with it.”

When I saw Mauritz for lunch after an audition last week he asked me how it went:

“Uhm. I think I blew it, but I actually enjoyed auditioning this time. Which is good.”

During the audition the casting director had asked me if I’d ever seen a kid throw a tantrum in public sphere. The youngest kid in my family is currently in his second year at varsity and only one of my friends has a daughter. She has yet to reach the terrible twos. I froze a little:

“No.”

The guy auditioning with me had. I kicked myself a little for not just saying that I had. But despite this, I had fun. I had auditioned with someone comfortable and professional and we had made the casting director laugh.

A few days after the audition my agent called.

I was first option for the shoot. The audition I thought I had botched apparently hadn't gone as terribly as I thought it had. And the director saw something he wanted to work with in me.

This week I’m waiting for the phone to ring. And for the next audition I’ll focus on acting and finding the joy in what I do.

Dramatization: Reenacting the Scene.

Weird is my staple. If I’m not rummaging through my closet for a weirdly specific outfit for a casting, the role I’m asked to do requires something odd. Or a shot that looks simple on-screen requires the most awkward angle you can imagine. From either you or the camera man. Very little is strange when you’ve worked for a while.

I got the call from a friend just after I had made plans for the next day. His friend, the producer for a local TV show, was in dire need for someone to shoot the next morning. Just for two hours. The producer worked for a local, and very popular journalism show. She needed a young lady for the dramatization of segments of the show. I was roughly adequate, and roughly available for the short time notice.I was also not going to turn down the opportunity to do some paid acting work.

The subject of the show was the exploitation of women who were donating their eggs in countries outside of South Africa.  I learned while driving with the producer of the segment to our first location that South African laws are quite strict on the subject. You learn many odd facts in this kind of work. They needed me to shoot reenactments of the girls in pain after their procedures caused complications in a hospital-like setting.

There are bonuses to shooting scenes where your face isn’t needed. With no makeup, wash and go hair and barefoot in my t-shirt and tracksuit pants we started with the clips they needed to shoot. But realising that my face wouldn't be needed I made sure that my hands, feet and nails were at least in a decent condition.

“The girls had really swollen abdomens due to their complications. I need you to push your stomach out as far as you can”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I don’t know if I can. I’ve held my stomach in for the last 13 years.”

As we shot the clips of me writhing in simulated pain I automatically drew on my training to make it look real. Despite only shooting visuals I used my breathing patterns to make the movements natural. That means my whole body is involved in what I'm doing not just the area that the camera is focused on. As we were shooting a second or third take the producer stopped the camera man halfway through:

"Oooh. Look at her feet. I want you to get a shot of that. Do that again with your feet."

The show aired last Sunday, featuring mostly my hands and feet. Despite shooting for 4 hours instead of 2 it was still the shortest shoot and fastest turn around for a project I’ve ever been part of. I’m used to waiting months before something I worked on airs. I said as much to the producer when she told me that show would be airing 5 days after she finished shooting with me.

This time it was her turn to laugh.

“That’s how it works in our business”.

Glamorous premiering: Mignon MOSSIE van Wyk

For some reason people always expect actors to be extroverts. As if because what we do on stage or in front of a camera somehow means that we are performing constantly.I like to think that the really good actors are the introverts. Those of us who watch people. How they move and interact. Not being constantly in the social spotlight so that we are blinded to the people and the lives around us. After all, if we are to portray different people as actors we need to understand them.

I think I function somewhere in between. I have my hermit periods, and times when I desperately need to leave. Even if it just means going shopping to be around other people. After my long societal exclusion due to my knee operation I was a both excited and apprehensive when I was invited to the premiere of Mignon ‘Mossie’ van Wyk. My friend Tarryn-Tanille Prinsoo wrote the script for the film and graciously invited myself and Mauritz to attend the premiere.

Dress code: Glamorous.

I have a fantastic grey number I had bought without an occasion to wear it to, and now I had an occasion. I was confident in the dress until I bumped into Tarryn two days before and saw a photo of her spectacular dress she would be wearing. My confidence in my dress waned slightly.

“I’m beginning to think my dress won’t be glamorous enough”

“Don't worry about being over-dressed. The way I look at it, you can either shine, or fizzle, and I think it’s always better to shine”.

So on Thursday evening we got all glammed up for the glamorous premiere of Mignon ‘Mossie’ van Wyk.

“I’m really glad I’m married to you. Now I always have someone who has to talk to me when I go to these events. And you can’t say no even if you want to.”

Mauritz is an introvert by nature, so he understands that I sometimes feel intimidated by crowds of people.

“There’s a very specific photo I want us to take when we get there”

 

The two introverts trying to act natural in a social environment.

There are few things better than really being impressed by a friend’s work. When you can honestly compliment them and tell them how fantastic it is and how much you enjoyed it. And I did. Tarryn’s Mignon ‘Mossie’ van Wyk is a beautiful story.I was moved by it. And as a slightly cynical film scholar I rarely am.

Mignon ‘Mossie’ van Wyk starts showing commercially on 6 May. 

The Acting Business: Per Usual

After three years of professional auditioning I rarely get nervous for an audition. Especially advert castings. For me, doing my hair and standing in front of the camera is basically a day of the office. I remember my first casting though. Driving through to Johannesburg, sitting and waiting next to a model for an hour and eventually standing in front of that camera for the first time. And as mundane as it can potentially be, it never is.

As per usual I got the usual email late on Thursday afternoon.An email attachment supplied me with a script for the Friday 10 o’clock audition. Well, more like a page long monologue with four lines dedicated to ‘Friend’. And filled with technical jargon. It took me just over an hour’s preparation to get the lines flowing naturally pacing up and down between from the kitchen to the living room.

As per usual I arrived about 30 minutes before the casting was scheduled to start. There’s usually a smattering of actors by then. We can start on our paperwork and no one minds as long we keep ourselves out of the way. It also helps to be a bit early so if 50 ladies pitch up for an audition you get to go in and get it done. And not wait for 50 other women to do the exact same thing before you walk into the room.

Not per usual, the casting studio was locked up tight when I arrived. It was the first time I had ever arrived at a closed studio for a casting. Two other ladies were sitting in their cars. When I climbed out and stood aimlessly in front of the locked gate I was informed by another actor that she had already contacted her agent, who was already trying to find out what was happening. After about 30 minutes of waiting around, I checked to make sure my lines were still fresh in my head. To the horror of two of three actors standing with me. They hadn’t received the script. I silently thanked my agent as I passed them my printed page and called my agent to hear what was happening. It was already past ten and the venue was slowly starting to crawl with impatient actors.

About 15 minutes later the casting director arrived, the doors were opened and our jobs began.Girls who didn’t receive scripts from their agents were given print outs and nervously stood trying not to hear anyone else’s voice as they desperately tried to memorize lines. Those of us who were prepared were asked to go first to give them time. I sat in my line with a number two label stuck to my shirt. Number three waiting next to me nervously informed me:

“This is my first casting. Ever.”

“I promise it doesn’t always go like this.”

She looked at me slightly skeptically.

“You’re going to be nervous when you walk in for this one. Then you are going to do another and you’ll be less nervous. By the fourth audition it will be business as usual.”

Because it is business. As per usual.

Rain or Shine or Glamorous Casting.

As an actor the work you do doesn’t always fit the season. I’ve been asked to shiver in South Africa’s January heat and I’ve done bikini castings in the dead of winter. I’ve run around in high heels and large feathery headpieces on sand dunes during extreme winds. I’ve performed dance shows in teeny-tiny costumes at 10 at night in a theatre so cold I could see the vapour of my breath as I danced on stage. It’s part of what we do. And timing is rarely great.

Last Thursday I had all my planning and timing done so as to leave on holiday for my father’s birthday at lunch. As usual just when I thought I had all my Ps and Qs in alphabetical order I got a late afternoon email for a casting in Thursday morning. The dress code: glamorous evening wear. The weather on Thursday morning: cold and pouring with rain.

The rain worked fantastically for my hair, but not so much for anything else. Not to mention that the dress I wanted to wear had already been packed into my suitcase. The first order of business was fishing it out of my suitcase. The second was protecting it from the weather. As I don’t have any rain coats with a hood, I grabbed one of my husband’s bulky jackets he often used for work which would cover my red dress and protect it from getting drops on it as I walked from my car to the venue. I ran into the audition venue heels in hand, flats shoes on and covered in a large black coat with water running off of me. In essence, I was ready to audition.

Post knee-op I only put on my high heeled shoes just before I had to audition. Even with a healthy knee I'm far from happy in heels. I won't mention the models on their high heels who all glide into castings already taller than myself without the help of their shoes. And as fate would have it, I was required to dance on my heels, exactly 5 weeks after my knee operation.

After my audition I walked out on my heels head held high and removed them as soon as I was out of the venue. Bundled up in my rain coat I headed home, this time not caring about the drops that could potentially wet my dress or flatten my hair.