My Acting Career, As Envisioned By Supportive Relatives
My Acting Career, As Envisioned By Supportive Relatives

“Have you tried auditioning for Broadway?” inquires my brilliant aunt Carol. I have not. I would be lost without her.

Image Credit: Jon Tyson

Aunt Carol

I move to New York City, confident in the knowledge that graduating at the top of my theatre class means that stardom is just around the corner. After several months of pounding the pavement and waiting to be discovered in line at the bank, however, I’m still having trouble getting my big break.

“Have you tried auditioning for Broadway?” inquires my brilliant aunt Carol. I have not. I would be lost without her.

I run to Broadway and announce that I wish to audition. The Broadway casting director is stunned: no one has ever been so assertive as to just ask before. He stops me before I can dazzle them with my monologue from The Golden Girls and declares that someone with my confidence deserves to create and star in a brand-new show.

I begin rehearsals the next day for the musical adaptation of my aunt’s favorite Fox News program, Special Report with Bret Baier. We go on to win a Tony award for the show’s opening number, “Fair, Balanced, Unafraid, and Fabulous.”

Grandma

I confess to my grandmother that I can’t seem to find an agent. The competition is steep, and it often takes years of hard work, perseverance, and luck to land representation. All I’ve had so far is rejection.

My grandmother is unphased. “Well, you just tell those agents that you’re very talented and they would be lucky to have you!” she beams.

Stunned by the task’s simplicity, I rush to the phone, call up the industry’s top agents and reiterate my grandmother’s words of wisdom. She hops on the other line and adds that she will bake cookies for whoever takes me on. A desperate bidding war immediately ensues for the honor of having a very talented actor on their roster.

I end up being represented by the same agent as Pierce Brosnan. My grandmother assures me that I’ll be more famous than him in no time. Pierce agrees, and invites my grandmother over for weekly tea.

Mom

My mother and I are walking past a popular legal drama filming its final season in downtown Manhattan. I casually mention how much I wish I could be on it.

“You should go and ask them for a part!” my mother urges.

Buoyed by her enthusiasm, I march onto the set and tell the director that I am an actor and would like a role in the show.

Thrilled with the novelty of meeting a thespian in New York, he immediately casts me in a new role he invents on the spot. The show is picked up for another five seasons with me as the lead. When I eventually win an Emmy I bring my mother to the awards ceremony and dedicate my entire acceptance speech to her. I would have never won this award, I acknowledge tearfully, if she hadn’t forced me to take that one year of tap-dancing lessons when I was six.

Uncle Dave

A famous director is casting a star-studded production of King Lear in Central Park. I have zero classical experience on my resume and don’t even own a Shakespeare play. What I do have, however, is my divorced uncle Dave.

Dave tells me he went to kindergarten with the celebrity director 60 years ago. After a few beers, he offers to “Put me in touch with her and probably get me in the show if I want.”

Dave finds the director on Facebook and messages her with a glowing recommendation of my skills and a ten-page summary of the last six decades of his life. The director is thrilled to be able to give a role to her former classmate’s niece, and offers me the lead without an audition, replacing Idris Elba in the titular role.

The production is a huge success, with critics calling the casting “surprising” and “diverse.” Uncle Dave and the director hook up after reminiscing about their time eating Elmer’s glue together on the playground.

Dad

After years of professional and financial success, I experience a brief but terrifying period where there is no work to be had. Fellow actors assure me that this is normal: every artist has slow times, they say, and I will no doubt book a job soon enough.

My father, thankfully, is wiser than all of them.

“I’m just saying, it’s never too late to go back to school,” he says. “Being an accountant would be much more stable. I can get you a job at my firm.”

He’s right, and somehow I have known that all along. I quit the arts, move back home, and begin a career in accounting, a job I find more artistically fulfilling than any movie deal or Mamet play could ever hope to be.

I have a pension. My father has someone to help him with his computer. I am astoundingly happy.
['Clare Blackwood']
['Satire', 'Comedy', 'Funny', 'Acting', 'Humor']