Flung: Announcing … Auditions!

If you build it, they will come.

Such is the mantra of a theatre artist trying to recruit actors to the try-outs.

It’s an insane delusion which directors must sustain, especially in these beginning labor pains of putting a play together. The delusion that people are going to give their time, without pay. That they’ll be committed to building a world that doesn’t exist, and pretending for a couple months to be people they are not, only to tear it all away like so much gift wrap and move on to the next fictional adventure by the time the weather warms up again.

Yet that’s the gig. To be just a little bit delusional.

Because the ideas are fun — and even rather sexy — but the doing, that’s where you really have to drum up your inner crazy person.

Case in point: enduring the drudgery of creating publicity. Can’t create a thing if nobody knows you’re doing the thing.

But egads, it can be plodding sometimes.

Sometimes, these things are a slow exercise in teeth pulling, trying to get each piece of the puzzle approved by committee, then revised, then approved again, then it’s a waiting game before the details finally “go to print”.

Sometimes, it’s so cumbersome as to make Congress look like a well-oiled machine.

And yet … Not so, for this project.

I had been mentally preparing myself for at least a week of follow ups and questions, oversight and required modifications. That’s not what happened, at all. What happened was a single day — today — in which there was a flurry of emails and texts, back and forth, with a speed that would rival NASCAR. Filled with devoted volunteers who want nothing more than to see the project be successful. Who are utterly dedicated to supporting the vision.

Et voila, we now have publicity.

We are building it, and holy frak I do hope they will come.

Meanwhile, today was a wonderful reminder of why I have called this theatre group, my home. My deepest thanks and respect to everyone who stepped up and made this first step such a terrific experience.

Thus it continues …