When I was looking at getting into the theatre scene in Denver, I saw an ad for a new dinner theatre that was opening up in Aurora. They were looking for actors to take part in an original production called "Punch." It was based on the puppet characters Punch and Judy. The play was about Punch becoming a real person and all the trouble he got into.
They held the auditions around 9am on a Saturday morning. It had snowed pretty heavily the day before. While there was still snow on the ground, I was able to drive okay. I left extra early to make sure I got there on time. I was the first to arrive. The interior of the venue was still under construction, but they had built a stage. They still needed to complete the dining area. There were several folding chairs on the main floor. There were two men standing by a piano, talking. I went up and introduced myself. They asked me to take a seat.
After a few minutes, some other actors arrived for the audition. There wound up being five men and two women who eventually showed up. We were told about the production and the vision the producer and director had. First, we each had to sing a song we had prepared. I brought my old standby from high school: "Captain Mac." I performed it very well. However, one of the men in charge asked me to come off the stage and sing it among the actors while making eye contact with them. This was an odd request, but I did it. I thought it went okay.
They only asked one other actor to redo his piece a different way (and different from mine). Next, we got to read scenes from the script. When I looked at the list of characters, I noticed that the play called for five men and two women. I thought, "Alright! I'm a shoo-in!" However, at the end of the auditions, the producer and director said, "Okay, we're going to have to have more auditions." They mentioned two of the guys they wanted to see again and they wanted to see the two women again, but the three of us who remained were basically SLAPPED IN THE FACE! And in front of the other actors.
It didn't make sense to me. I mean, which would you rather have: Actors who braved snowy streets to come to the audition, or actors who are only going to show up when they're not being inconvenienced by the weather? And I didn't see that any one of us wasn't capable of performing the material that was written.
Before the dinner theatre had its opening night, I found out from Ruad that the men running it really didn't know how to do professional theatre. All their experience was doing small, independent projects. One of the biggest mistakes they were making was that they were paying the actors $600 a week, EVEN DURING THE REHEARSALS! No one did that in Denver. I auditioned for a production of "Noises Off" in Arvada and they paid the actors $50 a performance, for a limited run of 10 performances. Basically, that's $500 for at least two months' worth of work. No one was making a living as an actor in the Denver area. (Interestingly enough, I auditioned with one of the same actors during “Noises Off.” I told him about how they paid the actors. He was also disappointed that he didn’t get in on that.)
So that explained why they were being so picky about who they were going to cast. They wanted REAL pros on their stage. Those of us who barely passed muster in college just weren’t going to cut it.
And of course that dinner theatre closed up shop very quickly after opening. It didn't surprise me. What I read of the play was mildly vulgar and didn't make for good dinner theatre in my opinion.
But that wasn’t the only time I got shafted by a startup dinner theatre company. After I had completed the crew work on the production of “The Three Musketeers,” Rid brought a want ad to my attention. A new professional dinner theatre called The Ascot Theatre was about to open up in Littleton and was looking for people to work on its stage crew. After what I knew about “Punch,” I knew that this was going to be an organization that paid its employees for the work they did. I updated my theatre resume to include my Rocky Mountain Theatre Guild experience and mailed it in.
Within a few days, I got a phone call from the director. He asked me to come over to a certain address to interview. The day before the interview, I noticed his name had been mentioned in The Rocky Mountain News in connection with the Ascot. I arrived at the address and found out that it was the location of a house that actually had a theatre in its basement. I was told to just walk in the front door and wait. I could hear two men talking in another room. After a while, I saw this black man about my age come out and go through the front door. He was smiling, but did not make eye contact with me.
The director came out and introduced himself. I told him about seeing his name in the paper. He seemed pleased that I noticed. The interview went very well. I talked about my recent experience. He knew JA very well. I told him about the projects I had worked on in college and did what I could to appear well-rounded in terms of stage productions. He told me he would let me know if he wanted me to do another interview. I left feeling pretty confident about the interview and knew that he would be calling me back. However, I did not get to see the theatre in the basement.
About a week later, he called me to come over to the Ascot to interview with him and the producer. I went in and saw that it was under construction, like the other dinner theatre. I was able to find my way to the main office. I was greeted by the receptionist, who asked me to take a seat.
While I was sitting there, the same black guy I saw before came out of the office. He was laughing and smiling as were the director and producer. Again, he did not make eye contact with me. The director then asked me to come into the office. I got to meet the producer. We exchanged pleasantries.
And then it all went downhill from there. I talked about my extensive experience in college, where I had gotten to design the lighting and audio effects for a couple of productions. The producer said that college wasn’t real experience because all they do is just get everyone together and toss ideas around until something sticks. (While that’s true, it didn’t make our productions terrible.) Basically, he was slamming my degree.
Then the director told him to ask me the “blue sky” question. The question was what I most wanted to do working for a theatre, the sky’s the limit. I responded with wanting to do lighting design, since I excelled at it in college and did pretty impressive things. The producer didn’t seem satisfied with that answer.
Then the producer said they really didn’t have any running crew positions available and asked if I might be interested in working as a fill-in for the person who was running the spotlight. I told him, yeah, I could do that. I wanted to get back into theatre, and if this was how I got my foot in the door, so be it.
When I left that interview, no one was laughing or smiling. Again, I felt like I had been SLAPPED IN THE FACE! Sometime later, I figured out what had likely happened. They had probably decided to hire that black guy before I went in to interview. Since they didn’t want me to outshine that guy (which I wouldn’t have been able to do), they conspired to make my interview as difficult as possible, pretty much like that Monty Python interview sketch in which John Cleese reveals at the end that the position Graham Chapman was applying for had been filled a long time ago.
I wished I’d been able to figure that out during the interview. I could have at least left with my dignity. I would have said something like, “Well, in college, I had to put up with a lot of mind games. I’d hoped that I had left that behind, but I come here to find more mind games. I want to work for a professional organization, which you don’t appear to have here. Goodbye.”
Yeah, you always think of that stuff when it does you no good.
The Ascot Theatre put on some impressive productions, but even they had a hard time keeping it profitable and shut it down after a couple of years. (That means the guy they hired found himself out of a job sooner than he expected.) There were several more attempts to open it and at one point, it was a nightclub, but its latest incarnation shut down a couple of years ago and no one has tried anything new there since.
But this would not be the last time I would receive disrespect from a theatre company. I will eventually get around to that story.
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