The next audition is at 2 pm, at the same location just a flight down. Gypsy, the great American musical is coming to Broadway starring Patti LuPone. The production had a three-week run last summer at City Center Encores!, which meant that all the parts are already cast. That morning I gossiped with one of the lucky dancers about to make her Broadway debut in Gypsy, and she said they were hiring one swing (the understudy for all the chorus roles). Look young she urged, and I felt confident I could do that better than I could look Scottish - I often get mistaken for a high school student though I've been out of school for a long time. So I decided to stay, despite my urge to go home, eat and take a needed shower.
Today they are typing, a process most dancers have a complex love/hate relationship with. We enter the room 20 at a time and stand in two horizontal lines. Two elderly men tell us they are looking for something specific, and it hurts their soul to do this, but they must ask most of us to leave. They then scan down the line, looking us up and down as they whisper to each other. Do we look back at them, smile, look natural? It is awkward.
A few girls are asked to stay. I get to go home, which is nice, but we are all baffled by their criteria. Was it the youngest? The shortest? Blondes and redheads? We can't determine the dividing line between those they like and us rejects, and we go home alternating between wondering if we should change something about ourselves and feeling frustrated that we probably can't.
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