The Winter Of My Discontent: Washington, DC

Wednesday January 31

Day two in Washington proved to be a frustrating experience, indeed.

In the end, I was incapable of booking any auditions at any of the Washington theatres on this tour. Schedules prevented, people were traveling, beginning rehearsals or just unwilling to meet me. The timing just seemed to be completely off. I started the day feeling very down and disappointed. Since the Signature audition had not happened, and nothing else had materialized, it seemed that I had come to the area for no reason. Feeling that I was wasting two valuable days of my trip, I began to regret the decision to come to Washington.

For the first half of the day I wallowed in this disappointment, and received more disturbing news: apparently a huge snow and ice storm was going to be blowing through the Southeast over the next couple of days, just in time for some of my heaviest driving days.

To complicate matters, I was feeling slightly under the weather, my throat sore and my body achy. And the full weight of my exhaustion was setting in along with a sense of despair. I missed my bed. I missed my cats. I missed my time with the cello. I dreaded the idea of coordinating another day of driving and throwing myself in people’s faces. I hated living out of a suitcase. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the length of my departure from New York, and a powerful homesickness developed.

How had it come to this? The trip until now had been incredibly successful. But the shut-out of this whole market felt like an enormous setback. And with only one audition left this week, I was feeling let down. It was as though last week I’d had all the excitement of an opening night gala, an audience full of celebrities and love letters from the New York times…and now I was suddenly playing my final performance on a Sunday matinee for an audience of three people.

For the first time, I considered cutting the rest of the trip short and leaving that day for home.

But this bitch ain’t called Salty for nothing, dear readers.

I began to think of my Dad on his long rigorous business trips, endlessly toiling to sell his product to new clients. I remembered all the times I heard the exhaustion, the disappointment in his voice, and yet in spite of those days (and at times they seemed more frequent than others), he was able to pull himself through it and continue in his attempts to realize his dreams.

Summoning my last remaining reserves of energy and strength I reminded myself of the great work I had done thus far, and resolved to snatch myself and the rest of the day from the jaws of defeat.

I ventured forth into downtown Washington, searching out first the Shakespeare Theatre and then the Studio, hunting down the contacts I had made there via email to introduce myself in person and get my face in their heads. True, this was not as good as if I’d managed to book auditions at these places, but it was definitely a bold, solid networking opportunity, a good use of my time, and a Salty deed of derring do.

After spending forever looking for parking, I also went to see Shakespeare Theatre’s production of RICHARD III. I am intimately familiar with this play, having done an adaptation of Shakespeare’s four War of the Roses plays (of which RIII is a part) into THE ROSE WAR, a trilogy to be performed by nine actors.

I was disappointed in the production. To me that play is electric; this version lacked the pace and energy and vitality I feel is innate to the verse. This was all the more egregious considering that the play is being performed a scant few blocks from the White House, where our very own perversion of nature usurps the throne. It should have been earth shattering and life/mind/spirit/climate/attitude changing. It fell far short of this, in spite of some nice moments here and there.

On the way back to the hotel, after driving along the Mall and getting shivers at the sight of the reflecting pool and the site of Martin luther King, Jr.’s speech, I was forced to stop along the highway to allow a group of deer to cross the roadway.

Sleep was welcome and too short.