Ego is English in Japanese

The Japanese are too polite.

If you are intent on making it as an artist you will have to endure thousands of auditions. Seeing as I'm intent, I've endured my fair share of auditions. Good, bad and ugly. Rejection is the name of the game, so I've developed a thick skin. You have to. I've come to realize that rejection isn't personal, and that more often than not it has to do with factors outside of my control, outside of the actual talent I possess, or my ability to perform a particular part.

Seeing that rejection is 9/10ths of the law of the audition, most theaters don't mince words when telling you no. There's no sugar coating, hand holding or niceties. It's straight forward and to the point. I kind of like it. I'm built for it.

I never thought I'd miss that.

I've auditioned for two things since being in Japan. A quasi-audition for The Tokyo Comedy Store, where I spoke to the director and was observed at a couple pay-to-play classes and I was in. That has worked out great and I've been performing with them for months now. And my second audition, which I just blogged about.

It had been about a week since I had auditioned for the children's show. I hadn't heard from the agent who "discovered" me at the comedy show and asked me to audition. So I just assumed that no news was the answer: I didn't get the part. Moving right a long. No hard feelings, just another audition.

Just when I had put the whole Sea, Sea, Sea audition behind me, I got an email that said:

I hate to tell you this but unfortunately they decided not to have you in
the cast this time.

They liked you but the reason why was that they think you would be too good
and you would be stand out more than the lead girl.

Now, that's sweet. But I don't for one second actually think that the reason I wasn't cast was that I was "too good." Call me cynical, but it's true. The agent for this audition was amazingly fantastic, kind and as made evident by her email, truly concerned with the feelings of her clients.

How completely unAmerican.

I have survived auditions in the states where an auditor ate a meatball sub while I was doing a dramatic peace, been interrupted while a director took a phone call, and been told "thanks," (the six letter mark of death for any audition) mid-monologue. Only for one of the biggest, most costly auditions of my life did I get an actual reason for not being cast (which is still rare). The reason? "You were great, but we didn't need you." Harsh, desho? Of course, but that is what I signed up for.

Niceties in the vein of this email in the States would cause a person to guffaw in the face of their auditors. Seeing as it was an email, I guffawed to myself.

My cynical side wants to believe that my inability to sing A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea and the subsequent train wreck of an audition were the real reasons for my not being cast. But seeing as I am in the land of the painfully polite, I am going to indulge in the idea that my talent is so amazing that to have it on stage with lesser beings would have ruined the production.

Who would have thought that auditioning could ever give me an ego boost?