How Do You Take Your Rejection
Or, How Much Cheese Toast Do You Take With Your Rejection
🦻If you prefer to listen rather than read, I’ve recorded this newsletter above
“They decided to go in a different direction.”
A future version of me - one who has steady employment on a sure-to-be-hit-show - vanishes. I’m standing in my garden, checking an email, continuing to go in the direction of unemployed.
A different direction? A different direction?!?! What direction is that? Stupid? They went in a stupid direction??
After nearly two decades of job rejection, I’m happy to report that I always respond reasonably and rationally.
I guess they just want to make a bad show! I guess that’s what they want?! You can’t force people to make good decisions! You can’t make people not be stupid.
I’ve tossed my phone in a basket and am hacking away at a new garden bed, no longer sure if these words are in my head or my outside voice.
I heard that *insert producer/showrunner/director/otheractor here* was a nightmare! I probably woulda been miserable! Who needs a steady paycheck for 5 or 6 months a year anyway?? That sounds so boring! SO boring! Miserable!
Hack, hack, hacking away at the dirt.
I don’t even care. Such a dumb script. I hated it.
Hack.
Honestly, good for me that I could do anything with that janky dialogue. That’s probably why I didn’t get it. I was compensating for the script too much.
Hack. Hack.
….
HACK.
…I’m a terrible actor. One of the top worst. They’ve finally figured me out. I’ll never get a job again. I’m a big Dumb Failure With A Cherry On Top AND NOBODY LIKES ME.
There’s now a hole in my yard where there should be something slightly more resembling a bed.
I check my email one more time, just to make sure they haven’t changed their minds and are begging for forgiveness. They have not. A friend has texted me that he likes my recent essay. I tell him I appreciate that because I’ve just gotten word that I am once again not the “different direction.” He understands and shares a similar sad, dumb tale, which helps. But I don’t tell him how much I am pouting about it. I am pouting about the “different direction” and the “not this time” and the “we’ll get the next one” and the ever-ever-waiting of it all. I don’t care that they say “getting an avail check, or getting a callback, or being sent to producers is the real win!” In my heart, I know I couldn’t control anything more than I did, still, this does not comfort me. It occurs to me that “Avail Check” sounds like legal tender, but I can’t buy a single grocery with it.
I toss my shovel down and hear my stomach telling me I’m hungry for breakfast. At least I haven’t gone numb to all feelings yet. Lumbering into the kitchen, I see that I’m out of avocados, which is a cardinal sin of the basic white girl I am at breakfast time. I’m making toast anyway, searching the fridge for what I want to put on it, still thinking about all the dummy-heads I’m so happy I won’t have to work with now. And that’s when I see a shining block of sharp, white cheddar. I grab it, using my hacking skills again to make thick slices on top of the bread. Once it’s all melty and simmering from the air fryer, I pour a garlicky, cilantro sauce on top, because that will be a treat for the ol’ tastebuds.
My plate on my lap, I’m now back in the garden, looking at the work I’ve done. The work the earth is doing. Looking at the hole I will have to fill in. It only takes one small bite for the garlic to wake up my whole mouth, my whole body. The softness of the cheddar and the crispiness of the toast reminds me of all the bread I did not eat for almost a decade trying to be skinny enough to be loved by an industry incapable of love. I can cry a couple of tears now. About the job rejection. About the different direction I will not be going in. About the uneaten bread. About how deep is that hole in my garden. I take another bite then pull a strawberry from the patch at my side. It is sweet and juicy and I make a sound that would make a proper lady blush.
I’ve tried many methods of dealing with the constant rejection this business won’t stop throwing my way. Here is a list of things, in no particular order, and why they no longer work for me. (If you still love any of these, please skip the paragraph! Not trying to yuck anyone’s yum around here!)
1.) Don’t Take it Personally! This phrase was invented by someone so invested in the machine that they expected us all to behave as cogs! Don’t take it personally! Well how am I supposed to take it then, Janet?? Take it as a machine would take it! With the ambivalence of the inanimate! Sure, it may be a business decision on their end, but the fact is that on my end I put my whole actual person into my work. And I have this weird thing about being a person, that the only way I actually know how to take anything is… personally.
2.) The Audition is the Job, the Rest is Just Icing! This worked for my head for quite a few years. Got an email from my agent - that means I have a job tomorrow! Booking doesn’t matter - the job is taping it! But then it actually started making everything worse, because I cannot get around the feeling of being very taken advantage of, if I’m just out here doing job after job, for which I am never compensated... No thank you. Getting the audition is a win, absolutely. The audition is work, sure, and I love the work and am happy for the opportunity. But it is not the job.
3.) What is For You Will Not Pass You By! I really loved this one for a while. And again, if you love it and it works for you, skip the rest of this paragraph. But I can’t help but apply this theory to everyone else in the universe, and I just don’t believe that starvation, war, being unhoused, abuse, colonization, etc, etc, etc are really what is for some people. We’ve just built too many systems meant to take advantage of human life, for this one to bring me any comfort. The system of how actors become and stay actors doesn’t care about what is for anyone, it doesn’t even care about humanity, it cares about money and power.
So. I’ve come up with a different solution.
And I don’t like it.
But it’s the best I’ve got:
Just go through it. Live it. Take the rejection. The ones that don’t matter, laugh about. The ones that are important, cry about, yell about to friends who get it, pout about, dig holes about, eat cheese about. That’s it. Do not take the bypass. Go through the middle.
Stella Adler says “The thing that must happen inside the actor is to experience it. If he doesn’t experience it, he does not understand it. Only the experience changes the circumstances in art, into truth… Your contribution is the ability to take life in and convey its truth.”
When I take something personally, when I live it as a person would live it, when I do not deny my own humanity in an industry increasingly bent on de-humanizing its workers, I inevitably become a better actor. I become more deeply human. There’s something about living it which disempowers its ability to eat me alive. “Soft front, strong back, wild heart” is how Brene Brown puts it.
Soon, I will be going upstairs to put another audition on tape. Perhaps I will channel the sad from this rejection into the sad for that character.
Soon, I will get another email from my agent or a theatre with an audition request and my heart will leap and my stomach will get butterflies. And despite this dumb day, I will put all I have into that audition because my work is personal, it means something to me. Even if it’s not a job yet. Even if someone arbitrarily decides it’s not for me.
Soon, a Deadline article will pop up and I will recognize the name of the show and character and will see the other actor who was, this time, the different direction. I will talk myself out of making comparisons. There are reasonable reactions, and there are useful, unreasonable reactions. Comparison is neither.
Soon, the strawberries will be done producing for the season but it will be time for beets and blueberries and cucumbers and tomatoes and then okra and edamame. Soon, I will fill that hole and something will grow in it. Things can’t help but keep growing. Growing and dying back, getting pulled up or covered with leaves to lie dormant until next spring.
A memory pops into my head of the first time I knew I had bombed a professional audition. After a summer internship and understudy position, I had been invited to audition for the main company of the next season at North Carolina Shakespeare Festival. Invited. I’m sorry, I was under the impression that auditions were something one had to beg and plead for. But of course… I put so much pressure on it. I had come up with a little joke to start out, and it landed like a bird landing on a streak free window. From above, I could see my body sliding down the glass and landing lifelessly in the dirt. Which is not a great place to start a Shakespearean monologue from, as a lifeless dirt bird. I did not get the job.
This was not my first, it will not be my last. Soon enough, I will be the different direction for something, soon enough, I won’t be the different direction again. And that’s why there are shovels and cheese and friends and card games and harmonizing and late night giggles and roller coasters and sunflowers. There’s a whole life of things that are more important than that one job. My brain will forget about this rejection faster than I realize. It’s the soreness in my left shoulder blade from all the hacking that will keep reminding me for at least a week.
And now, your weekly bonuses…
One Obsession Away
Wherein I share what I am obsessed with this week.
T-shirt tissues.
*Sounds of hundreds of humans hitting the unsubscribe button*
No really! About a year ago I saw this idea to cut up old T-shirts into squares and put them in jars to use as tissues. Both tissues and old T-shirts (even if donated) are going to wind up in landfills. My family made fun of me at first. Just like you are in your head right now! I can hear you! But they actually like them now too! You can rinse them first if you want, then put them in the laundry when you’re doing a hot water load! I got COVID last week from a rapturously wonderful experience doing a new play workshop at Alabama Shakespeare Festival and have been blowing my nose for 4 days straight on these suckers and my nose is not even a bit raw like it usually would be.
So. Anyway. That’ll stop the global warming for sure. Now we don’t have to worry about holding corporations accountable.1
Notable and Quotable
There’s a scene from Anne of Green Gables that I think about (taken from the book and put into script form, by me):
Marilla: You’re not eating anything.
Anne: I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you’re in the depths of despair?
Marilla: I’ve never been in the depths of despair, so I can’t say.
Anne: Weren’t you? Well, did you ever try to imagine you were in the depths of despair?
Marilla: No I didn’t.
Your Turn…
I’m super curious about how you handle the rejection of this business. What works for you, what doesn’t? What have you tried that really didn’t work or became unhealthy? What doesn’t work but you do it anyway? Please share!
This is a sarcasm.
I’ve gotta treat myself to something big or small after auditions/callbacks (not every audition, but you know the ones).
And then I obsessively watch my audition and think how good it was. Or which moments I’d like to change. And dream a little about how I’ll celebrate when get my health insurance back.
And then, when I find out they went a different direction (or enough time has passed to assume the obvious), I let myself grieve. And then I try *try *try to move on.
*not before checking my email to make sure nothing has changed
*and checking IMDB and deadline to see if I can figure out who booked it
When auditions are busy, the roller coaster is a very fast one, and I’m back at the top dreaming of taking my parents out to dinner to celebrate.
But when auditions are slow (LIKE NOW), It feels like the roller coaster is just gosh darn broken. Which makes me so sad, because I actually love the audition part and that little hope part just after where your stomach jumps up into your chest.
I wish it wasn’t the case, but the longer I do this, the harder the bottom part is. It’s not that I’m not used to the rejection, I think it’s just that the hope part means more.
But, all that said, that hope part is a strong sucker and keeps on keeping on. 💛
I finally learned what IYKYK means - this!
All of this! All of it. No, nothing to add. Still doing all of them. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they don't. But, yes, live through it is the only real answer. Use it if you can. Throw it away if you can't.
This won't help but here are two that happened to me and apparently have never left:
"They said you were the best actor they saw all day but they went in another direction" (Me: "What direction was that? Bad actor? Why didn't they say so, I can do bad actor!" Sound familiar?
Or how about this one? After a particularly terrific audition (or so I thought) I called my agent (back in the day) for feedback. I was told the new Breakdown had come out and it said "Looking for a Clayton Landey type". Me: Did you tell them they could have Fucking Clayton Landey?!?!?" Him: " Of course I did. They said they don't want Clayton Landey. They want a Clayton Landey type." 30 years later and I'm still chewing on that one.