“You haven’t done this in a while, have you?” he asked.
“Eleanor Vance. Amanda Wingfield, Scene 3.”
“Thank you, Ms. Vance. That was… unexpected.” matureauditions
She reached the end of the monologue, her voice dropping to a whisper: “I’ve had to put up a pretty fierce battle, but I’ve won.” Then silence.
The audition notice had caught her eye in the grocery store, pinned beneath a flyer for a lost cat. “The Glass Menagerie” – Auditions. All roles open. Mature actors strongly encouraged. “You haven’t done this in a while, have you
She took her mark. For a moment, the panic was a cold fist in her chest. She looked out at the empty seats, imagining them full. Then she thought of Amanda. Not the caricature of the nagging mother, but the real Amanda: a woman from a faded genteel South, abandoned by her husband, terrified of being forgotten, using her last reserves of charm and ferocity to hold her fragile family together.
Yet here she was, clutching a worn copy of the play, her knuckles white. The hallway was lined with them: the mature auditioners. A silver-haired man in a cardigan ran lines under his breath, his fingers trembling slightly. A woman with a chic grey bob and a velvet scarf sat perfectly still, her eyes closed, lips moving silently. Another woman, larger and louder, was recounting her triumph as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ten years ago, her voice a little too bright. “The Glass Menagerie” – Auditions
“Well,” the young man said, clearing his throat. “Don’t wait that long again.” The cast list went up the next day. Eleanor didn’t check it. She was in her garden, pruning the roses Harold had planted, telling herself that the audition itself had been enough. The doing of it, the being of Amanda for those three minutes, had been a gift.