Acting Auditions
One recent day, Li and I were approached by a woman who literally stopped us in the middle of the street. We were walking with our kids and didn’t initially understand what she wanted. She asked us if these were our kids and she said they were cute. We were used to people telling us that when the kids were babies and toddlers, but not when they were older.
She said she was a talent scout and she wanted Richard to try out for acting school. We thought it was a scam. We thought about it later. I even went and asked a few of my coworkers who worked in the movie industry. We concluded that it wouldn’t hurt to see what they wanted. They wanted us to bring Richard to audition.
When you get asked to audition, you’re not the only one. We showed up to a hotel lobby and got directed to a conference/ball room filled with hopeful kids and parents. You get assigned a number and you go line up. At the front of the stage, there’s a green screen and a camera. Kids are asked to introduce themselves and say a single line. Unknown to us at the time, there are a few talent evaluators in the back. After you say the line, you’re told “Thanks for coming. You may or may not hear from us within a week. After a week, if you don’t hear from us, you’re not going to hear from us.”
I was somewhat surprised by how many people were there. We were told that there were 500 other kids that day. After three days, we were surprised to get a call from an Alex saying that Richard has been selected to continue to the next round of audition. This time, he got a small number of sentences from a commercial to remember. Then after two days, we were supposed to go to another place to perform the commercial in front of another evaluator. This time, we were in a small room of 12 other kids. This time, there wasn’t a green screen, only a camera. The kids got to go up front and performed their commercial. Again, after the commercial, we were told the same thing as before: “Thanks for coming. You may or may not hear from us within a week. After a week, if you don’t hear from us, you’re not going to hear from us.”
Only this time, it took only one day before we heard back. We were asked to come to the school of Playground Acting School to see Alex again in his office.
After this audition, we were asked to enroll Richard into acting school. We thought long and hard about it. The experience was eye-opening and made us think a lot about what type of life actors have. Of course, not everyone makes it big. It takes a lot of work and effort to become a star. We also understand that there are way more actors than jobs. One thing we really like, and why we ultimately enrolled Richard into the school, is it helped Richard to communicate better. Public speaking is a hard skill to learn and to overcome that fear. While he never finished his year of school, he did complete most of it (more about this later). We think it helped him be a little more confident in himself, which is way more valuable than any acting job could be.