Side Gig

(Actor of undetermined gender, age, race, etc. travels to center stage where they remain motionless for some time. Beat. The Actor suddenly dives into indignant rage all at once.)

Actor: Why the fuck are you staring at me like that? (Scowls at audience).

(A Voice is heard within the audience.)

Voice: It’s a casting call, dear. What else are they supposed to do?

Actor: (Sudden realization) Oh… oh my. I’m so sorry. Yes. (Instantly peps up) Hi, I’m Actor. I’m here to try out for the part of… (checks script) Um… it says here the character’s name is “Lead”…

Voice: Yeah this is a passion project of mine, very avant garde.

Actor: Alright, well awesome. I love pieces that play with form a bit. Thank you for the opportunity.

Voice: Whenever you’re ready, Actor…

Actor: Alright… (Beat, breath, scans page once, leaps into character) There I was, strolling up and down the stage in front of the worst audience who’d ever payed to see community theatre. I was excited. I felt my heart beating in my throat, and I nearly lost my train of thought when my performance was interrupted–

Voice:–Wait, wait, Actor. I think I get where you’re going with this, but I’m not really feeling this yet. (Loud single scratch sound is heard, as if an item of a list has been struck. Actor seems alarmed, but nods along with Voice) Hey, why don’t you read for Side on page 5. Top of the page (Actor searches script, finds page). Now, Side is a great piece for a character actor. They are the sibling of Lead, really important to the show, great development, crazy arc. Try it out.

Actor: You made a role named Side Character?

Voice: Yeah, and your name is Actor, just read it.

Actor: Um, alright, well what are they supposed to be like?

Voice: Doesn’t matter. (Beat) Okay, skim the page, do whatever works for you.

(Actor takes a moment skimming the page, seems dubious)

Actor: (Reading from script, acting serious) Hello, sibling. How long have you been trapped on this stage? It seems cold up here. I don’t like it at all (fizzles out, unsure of where to end).

Voice: Oh okay, I like what you’re doing here, but Actor, could you give me just a little more… sniveling? Like kind of a dorky little brother type? I loved that moment right at the end, that feeling that you don’t know what you’re doing. That is Side. Perfect. More of that.

Actor: Oh sorry, you had said it didn’t matter, yeah I can–

Voice: Oh no! Actor, that was great, through the process you found something really good there. Now let’s dig into it a little more.

Actor: (Beat) Alright… (Starts off more timid) Um… hello sibling–

Voice: —Good! Now even more pathetic.

Actor: (hunches, makes themself seem smaller) Oh sibling… how long have you been trapped on this stage?–

Voice:—Worse.

Actor:–I uh… um… it’s SO brrrrrrr… (shivering, chattering teeth) COLD up here—

Voice: —PATHETIC. Bring it home!–

Actor:–(falling into a ball, crying, rocking back and forth) It’s so cold brother! So cold! I don’t like it at ALL! (Falls over in heap. Beat.)

Voice: Actor, that was great. You made some really keen choices there. I think you’re really well suited for this part. Why do you think you’re connecting so well with Side?

Actor: (Sitting up) How the fuck should I know? There’ nothing to them! I have no idea what you’re seeing right now.

Voice: (Defensive) Hey hey hey… when you have the look, you have the look. That’s a good thing. You’re valuable, you’re unique. I don’t think anyone could play this part like you could.

Actor: Well, maybe I don’t want to be a pathetic nobody!

Voice: And that’s absolutely your decision. You don’t have to accept our callback, but honestly, the show would suffer without your talent, Actor.

Actor: I don’t want to play the loser no one likes.

Voice: Actor, I’ll forgive you, because you don’t know the script, but Side is not an unlikable character. With everyone I’ve had read this, they end up saying Side is their favorite character.

Actor: Oh? Why is that?

Voice: Because of all the slapstick bits in Act 3! Side falls all over the stage. It’s going to look great, really funny stuff.

Actor: You just think I’m nothing, don’t you?

Voice: I think you’re expendable. (Loud pen scratch again.) I think, while you have an undeniable look, you’re going to get denied every role you want, and you’ll always settle for less. (Scratch) You’re not the lead in anything, and I’ll be damned before I let you ruin my play by acting like an entitled jackass. You know that all you have are these little moments of success. You only get a little time in the spotlight, and you’ll beat down everyone in your way to get your 15 minutes of fame. I’m offering you 20. You’ll take it. You’ll whine about the part to everyone in the cast. You’ll talk shit behind the Lead’s back, saying you could do the job a million times better than they could, but you know that it would never work that way because no one can even imagine you pretending to be serious, so no one would even let you try–

Actor: –You let me–

Voice: –I’m not fucking finished. I let you try because I have to, because all these people in here need to tell themselves that I gave everyone a fair shot, when we all know I have had this play dream-cast since before I wrote it. When someone walks on the stage, I know in 5 seconds whether they are worth my time or not. Are you really going to stick to your guns? Are you going to deny a role that you know you can do just because it isn’t what you wanted? (Beat) How long has it been since you’ve been able to be in a show?

(Silence, Actor shifts uneasily)

Voice: I figured. Get off my stage. We’ll be in touch.

(Actor silently exits)

---

I wrote this piece as a generalization of American Moor. In American Moor, the playwright and lead, Keith Hamilton Cobb, discusses his reoccurring trauma from being told how to act out Shakespeare’s character, Othello, and being told to do so over and over. While I could never fully understand the struggles of a black man trying to make his way in theatre, I did know that the troubles of type-casting were wide and all-encompassing. People are literally told whether they have “the look” for any given role, which is a tacit admission of discrimination of people who do not fit predetermined molds.

First, in my search for more information, I sought out some quick responses to a question on my Facebook.

I collected a few little snippets from my friends. They discussed their own struggles with type-casting, and how it changed their theatre aspirations.

Now, I’ve never been a director, and I do understand that there is a lot one must consider when casting a play. Often, when someone is picked to be a lead over someone else, that second person can feel slighted even if the first is a more capable actor for the role. This can all lead to a destructive work environment, with jealous actors who aren’t working at their highest potential. You also do not want to let the show suffer in any way, so a lot of the time you will follow your instincts, even with the aesthetics of the actors. This can really hurt people though.

In my personally time acting, I was always given the funny-guy/fool/quick-witted characters. It made sense for most of my directors to make those decisions, but I always noticed that with comedy came a distinct bumbling energy, and stupidity in many. I was told straight to my face that I was not a leading man. I was told I couldn’t pull it off, and it stabbed me in the gut. I was told that “We need you to play [comedic character] because [the lead character] is so easy! [Comedic character] actually requires a good actor.”

I was told this more than once, that I was getting the spots whether I liked it or not, because of what I brought to the table. I didn’t look the part, I didn’t act the part, and was never given a chance to. Many actors never get a chance to try new things, because of their “undeniable look”.

There is also a great deal to be said about ableism in theatre. I was writing this piece to be completely blank. I wanted Actor to be entirely playable by any person who walked onto the stage, but as I was writing, and imagining what I needed Actor to do on stage, I had to edit the part that once read “Actor of undetermined gender, age, race, ability, etc. travels to center stage where they remain motionless for some time.” Not all people could physically do the motions asked for in the stage directions. Now, a creative director could cast my piece with anyone and work out the blocking to tell a similar story, but I’ve put up a huge barrier to many people who are disabled, even while explicitly trying not to. Many directors would see the stage directions as a necessity, so they would never even consider someone, say, who uses a wheelchair. I did an ableism. But that’s my point here, writing anything with the explicit purpose of having human bodies in the roles means that you are always imagining real people portraying those roles. Short of writing a pure stage-reading, I don’t know how you write anything for an actor without excluding some people.

We need to open our minds to allow more diverse casting options in theatre. I see this happening slowly already, but it is nowhere near my utopian dream of allowing anyone to play anything, but those lines are dissolving slowly.

However, there is still one hurdle that stands in my path, and in the paths of so many actors:

Now, the golden question… why does literature matter? Well here I see it as catharsis. I wrote this whole piece in a sitting. I was panting, fuming, angry as a tore up my keyboard, inhabiting the mind of Actor and Voice. I thought about every bad interaction I had with a director, every time I pleaded for a lead role, and I just screamed it onto the page. I do not know what Cobb’s life is like, even after he gave me a look into it in American Moor, I still lack crucial detail, but I know how angry it made me when I was pigeon-holed. To imagine things much worse than my own just twisted me up into knots and I needed to get it out. I saw, even in the few responses on my Facebook, some of that tied-up anger. Empathy, in small doses, comes from reading, and catharsis, in waves, comes from writing. Literature, in that way, is a flow of that tension.

It is important to have a way to scream when you need to.