Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

Yearning to be a Hollywood star? Or an actor ready to pay your dues by years of fine-tuning your craft, you can start with the audition experience. And you had your chance this past Saturday in Plattsburgh NY. Open auditions were held for locals with and without acting experience for a role in an eight-part series mirroring the real life drama that unfolded in the summer of 2015. Richard Matt and David Sweat, as we all recall, were two prisoners who escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.

Actor and director, Ben Stiller will immortalize the prisoners onscreen with Paul Dano and Benicio Del Toro playing the roles of Sweat and Matt. Patricia Arquette will play the part of Joyce Mitchell, who is now serving seven years in a federal prison. Mitchell was denied parole this year.

People started lining up at the Strand Theater in downtown Plattsburgh on a sunny Saturday morning. Doors opened at 10:30am and closed at 5:00pm. By 11:30 am over 500 actors, some armed with glossy 'headshots' and an acting resume had registered. Overwhelmingly, many were locals who had no acting experience at all. Some called the experience a 'bucket list' thing. I was in the latter category. My daughter was in the first category having acting experience onstage in live theater.

So... once we arrived we waited in line to complete the required information sheet, and then waited in the lobby to be called into the theater. Once called in the theater, we then waited to be called in line for informal headshots. Once that was completed, we were corralled to specific seating to wait for the actual audition. While seated, we were asked several times to move from one row to another in the theater as a 'host' masterfully moved us in order and kept us in order while we waited.

My daughter and I had a wonderful time visiting. I also had time to read every email, check eBay, catch up on the daily news from virtually every news source out there and spend quite a bit of time on Pinterest.

The wait took over seven hours and the audition itself took less than two minutes.

Casting Director, Rachel Tenner left her auditioning area several times to talk to the anxious and often nervous crowd. She expressed her thanks for the overwhelming turnout from 'local people', thanked us for our patience and said this was 'so wonderful'.

Tenner stated, "In my 25 years as a casting director, I have never had so many people turn out for an audition. I usually have 300 to 500 people audition. We have reached 800."

That was at 4:00pm. By time the doors were closed and locked at 5:00pm, over 1000 people had arrived, registered, had their photos taken and amazingly enough, spent 30 to 60 seconds in front of a camera for a live audition. The live audition happens all so quickly.

The scene inside the Strand Theater as prospective actors wait for their audition. The empty seat to the right were filled quickly by people waiting for their informal headshots.

This is very rare in auditioning. Most open auditions require you to complete your form, hand in your headshot and you're on your way. After waiting in line to get in, of course. At an open audition, they almost never put you in front of a camera. If your agent schedules the audition for you, you spend anywhere from an hour to thirty minutes waiting and you're on your way. A scheduled audition will always include being on camera.

Then you wait again, for "the call", the call that will take you from the North Country to one step closer to seeing Benicio Del Toro in real life. If at all, starring role actors rarely mingle with extras and one-line actors.

During the wait, I asked my daughter all kinds of questions about auditioning and acting and generally, after seven hours, about everything.

She said, "This is what you have to do if you are really serious about acting. You have to audition again and again and again. And then if you get a small role or a role as an extra, you have to wait hours for the shot to be taken. You could be asked to arrive at 5:00am in the morning and work until 8pm or later. You really have to dedicated and love acting to make this work for you."