On January 17, 2015, I took tiny steps on the brick path outside of my dorm as I shifted carefully on a layer of ice disguised under the snow. By the time I woke up, the trees had become heavier with the year’s first heavy fall — which, two days later, grew into a blizzard that covered my entire window in merely a few hours and brought a week-long darkness to my room.
Tiny steps, I told myself. For the past few months, I had been taking care of myself in the most extreme way. I was getting ready for my graduate school auditions and my body was my most valuable asset. Less than a month ago, my dentist had referred me to an orthodontist who told me that I needed treatment as soon as possible — I had an extra tooth growing behind my front teeth — but I begged him no. I have to act in a few weeks, I said, I cannot go through surgery, let alone put on braces. My body and I were going to become Emily, Juliet — and if we were good enough, maybe even the Winter Tale’s Hermione.
While I was making plans for the big day, I decided it would be the best to buy a one-way ticket to New Haven as I didn’t know when the callbacks would end. “Ah, I don’t know about the Yale callbacks,” I told everyone if they asked me why I refused to buy tickets to a winter gala that was the same night. (Just a week ago, I had spent an entire day at NYU Tisch for callbacks.)
But I don’t know why, I still went shopping for a formal dress, and I still packed a box of makeup remover in case, you know, I would have to cry my heart out during the train ride back to Providence.
In a florescent-lit room that reminded me of P.E. classes in primary school, I got to be Emily, and then Juliet. After complaining about Romeo and love for a minute, the juror asked me for more: “What else can you show me?”
Hermione. Hermione. Hermione. My brain was speeding through my thoughts at 300 miles an hour.
There’s some ill planet reigns… I’m doing a third monologue. I am not prone to weeping, as our sex commonly are… This must be a good sign. Yes, of course this is a good sign. And so, the king’s will be perform’d… I have seen people leave after their first monologue. Adieu, my lord… Is the juror watching? Look at me. My women… Okay, he is back. Come: you have leave.
All of a sudden the entire monologue was done without my thinking of a single word I had said. The juror smiled, I thanked him and walked out.
It was almost as if I knew. A few minutes later, I was biting into a stale scone and plowing through the slush on the streets. We will have your file on deck, a current student who was ushering the auditions said, as she put out a callback list with one name. (The previous hour, another student had put up an empty callback list, eliciting a silent but in tune groan.)
I boarded the first train up north, took a last bite and let out everything I had been holding in from the audition room to the Amtrak platform. Then, I took out my makeup remover, turned on my front camera, and got rid of all the smudge. I did not cry about that day ever again.
But I did not forget; every single time I pass through New Haven, I nod. That’s how I pay homage to the biggest rejection of my life, and how that became the biggest lesson of my life. Now I know, there is an endless amount of destinations and twice as many roads.
Now and then, my monologues — which I unfortunately partially remember now — haunt me in dreams where I stand behind the curtain, frozen, the tech crew and fellow actors flailing their arms at me as I miss my cue and the stage drowns in silence. Christopher Durang would empathize.
On January 17, 2015, I went back and did what I always do best: recover. I got to act my favorite role so far (Viola from Twelfth Night) — and not a single performance did I spend listening to myself, Deno, talk. I looked into other people’s eyes and listened to what they had to say each night, as if I hadn’t heard a single word before.
I promised myself day after day to take it as it comes.
Northeast Regional, November 2017
