OUT-CAST

What should one do, if one is beginning to suspect, that one is a loser?
Every January, for the past few years, I find myself in the same situation. Despite working tirelessly and diligently the rest of the year, I am broke, unemployed and desperate to find something to do, that will prove to me that I am not a loser. This recent January was no exception. Despite sweating away half my body weight in the last pantomime for three months, unforeseen expenses lay in ambush and January bared her teeth at me again. January is also “audition” month, and this January was brimming with gruelling auditions, followed by nerve-crippling call backs, and anxiety sprouting elimination rounds. There were auditions for: Films, sitcoms, commercials, theatre and musicals, all of them, providing their own unique brand of self-doubt and requiring a different type of fear-tackling. This year despite a few close calls, I didn’t get ANY of them. “Niks”, “Nada”. I was the “un-chosen” one. And it sucked like a surfaced Kreepy Krauley.
As I approach my 33rd birthday I am getting a bit long in the tooth to play ensemble and let’s face it, I wouldn’t be my first choice for the macho new game ranger in “The Wild” either!
So my house-of-cards-self-esteem comes crashing down and I begin to panic. What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I have what they want? What could I have done differently? Wait a minute! Why am I still single? Why hasn’t anyone hot, poked me on Facebook recently? Why am I getting fat? Why am I getting older? Why do hangovers last 3 days now when they used to last a morning? Why do I have to do squats and eat NOTHING delicious, if I want a flat stomach? Why Larry? Why?
Then out of the blue I am offered not one but two lecturing jobs. “You want me to teach three bunches of ‘twentysomethings’ for two hours every week for seven weeks?”, I ask in disbelief. “Me?” To which my very pregnant friend Sarah replies: “Yup.”
Then another University offers me the opportunity to teach my very own curriculum (Independent Theatre making self-created from scratch) for twelve weeks. I am flabbergasted and excited and even more petrified than I was, for any of the January auditions. What if the students get bored? What if they don’t listen? What if I suck?
What have I got to lose?
In less than two days it will be Valentine’s Day and I will be giving my first class at Wits. I am still single and broke, and will have to wait for two months before my first pay check. But this is something new. Maybe I can do this? Maybe this is the role I’ve been waiting to be cast in?
Maybe Valentine’s, this year, won’t be so bad, single or not.

Shanti.

I finished the matinee show and then decided not to go with my fellow cast members to a screening of the new Batman on Imax. I had some thinking to do. I sat on my ace and devoured a mediocre but filling lasagne, did some people watching and then popped into Exclusive books on my way home and bought a CD called Following Sound into Silence “Chanting your Way Beyond Ego into Bliss.” It’s a chant CD by a guy calling himself Kailash (previously known as Kurt A. Bruder.) It is now playing off my lap top as I write this. He is a little off key at times but it is quite soothing mixed with the steady cyclical “whooshing” sound of the dryer (I am washing my stinky hunchback and fishnets.) It’s nice to type this and hear the gentle click of my laptops space bar punctuated by the occasional “shanti, shanti” (even if it is a bit flat.) I am wondering what I should do with the rest of my life. AGAIN.
I love acting and singing and I feel completely alive on stage but I hate the uncertainty and the less than adequate salary. I’m always scrimping and saving just to pay rent and every month I bend my credit cards as though they were made of silicone. What are my options? I could teach. There is security as a teacher and benefits but the salary is not much better and my gut tells me that I’m not ready yet. But one day I will teach. I would love to study some form of applied psychology like Logotherapy or alternative medicine like Kinesiology so that my Cancerian desire to heal and nurture is satiated at least. But how long will my Leo rising sleep before it throws me back in the spotlight? And what of the big Gay pressure? You know the pressure that says you must have a good home that looks like a magazine photograph and a hot set of wheels? The same pressure that keeps us doing stomach crunches and sleeping in layers of self tan. This industry is a sea of insecurity and here I am in a gorgeous flat in Durban overlooking the sea and wondering how I’m going to make next month’s rent. I have decided to say in Johannesburg until the end of the year so that I can at least start feel a little bit more settled. Then there’s the one man show. To be honest I don’t really feel ready to do that just yet either. I don’t want to risk all that money (that doesn’t belong to me) on a project in a city that still has very little idea of who I am. I can’t imagine anything worse than creating a show only to see it bomb because nobody comes. I feel I need to wait a while. I know that I’m going to get it in the ear from quite a few people who I’ve been promising I’ll do the show to. But I have to follow my gut. I have no real sense of security at the moment, but I am beginning to realise that all notions of security are an illusion. Lovers come and go as do friendships. Shows rehearse, open and then in the blink of an eye they close. The family you make in these tiny dressing rooms and the life stories you shared as you paint on new faces, fade like wisps of smoke. I have to quote Riff Raff in the Time Warp: “It’s astounding, time is fleeting...” I wonder if Oprah, Ghandi and Bill Clinton have had days like this where they wonder if they weren’t sent to the wrong place like French luggage to an Ethiopian Airport. I pray that by the time I’m 30 I am at least clearer on what it is that I am supposed to be doing while I am here on this earth and also how this occupation will keep me in Calvin Klein’s and Clinique facial products as well as cover all my costs.