It’s opening day! it’s opening day!
As a rabid fan I am always looking for ways to compare acting to baseball. This way, when my girlfriend gets on my case for spending all of my time and money on the Yankees I can truthfully respond that I am engaged in an important career activity. No, unfortunately, I can’t recommend trying this with your own significant other. It doesn’t work.
When we were kids and wanted to get a baseball game going it was a tough proposition. Even if the playing field was small we still needed four infielders plus a pitcher, and so did the other team (one of the waiting batters could always catch in a pinch). Hey, you try rounding up ten kids on a small street in suburbia. We’d let the neighbor’s dog play second base sometimes.
Non-professional acting situations are similar. It’s an “all hands on deck” dilemma– if the show is ever going to get off the ground then we need as many people as we can get. Since it’s all essentially a game the specific skill level of any one individual is usually not a deal-breaking concern.
This friendly, inclusive attitude is the one by which most folks, myself most certainly included, first “discover†acting. It could be in a school or church play, summer course, community organization, children’s theatre, or even “community†theatre situation. I think it’s a testament to our very innate and human need for creative expression that our society is absolutely jam-packed with such opportunities. As Bruce Campbell, one of my favorite actors, remarks on his website, if you want to act then there’s really nothing stopping you.
So why don’t the Yankees hold open try-outs? For the same reason that A-list feature films or primetime television series don’t: it’s not necessary. These institutions, and many, many more like them but on far lesser levels, are so inundated with outstanding talent that they can afford to be highly selective. It’s the opposite of the wonderfully inclusive attitude of non-professional acting situations. It also, quite frankly, sucks.
This fundamental shift in the nature of non-pro vs. pro acting situations causes enormous problems for people looking to leap from the former to the latter, and it’s because those same people are usually unaware of the profundity of the difference.
What it boils down to is, because the selection process has changed, so must our approach to being selected. What made us successful in the past almost definitely will not work at this level.