Sabbath Audition

I had a great audition today, but first let me give you the back story:

I've been trying to start taking a Sabbath during the week. (Sabbath = day of rest where you don't do any work. See Exodus 20:10.)

It doesn't necessarily have to be my "day of church" (i.e. Sunday), but every week when I plan out my schedule, it usually just so happens I already don't have paid work on Sunday, so it seems fitting to make that my day of no work.

It's confusing though as to what is and isn't work in my life. I talked with my friend Katie about this, and we seem to think anything to do with acting should be considered work for me. I think this is probably right.

However, I got an audition today, Sunday. I got it a couple days ago, after I had already planned for Sunday to be my Sabbath, so every other day was full of paid work and unpaid work, and this day was really my only available day to take a full day of rest.

I took the audition anyway though because I was like, Well, I'm trying to do student films, and student films mostly shoot on the weekend, so I really can't make Sunday my day of rest anyway because it's never going to work so I might as well take this audition. (This was not a good argument because I never said my Sabbath always had to be Sunday. It just so happened that this week it was.)

But anyways, so I took the audition, and then yesterday I felt pretty terrible about it, not just because I was disobeying God according to the conviction he gave me, but also because I worked really hard this week all week and was really tired and could really have used a day of rest. And now I had to work on these sides and plan my outfit (which included fixing / sewing a skirt) and figure out directions and food to fit the audition in around church, and it was a lot to do for my supposed day of rest.

So I almost emailed the director to tell her I couldn't do it anymore. BUT.. I remembered what I read in the Bible yesterday in Joshua, Joshua 9 specifically. Okay so the Gibeonites were people the Israelites should have defeated in order to continue their conquest of Canaan (the promised land). But the enemy disguised themselves and came to Joshua pretending to be people traveling from far away and asked him to make peace with them and let them be their servants. Joshua wasn't sure at first but then agreed. Without asking God!

(This is the part that parallels to me deciding to take the audition without asking God first.)

Joshua 9:14-15 says, "So the men took some of their provisions, but did not ask counsel from the Lord. And Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them, to let them live, and the leaders of the congregation swore to them."

But then Israel found out that they were their neighbors and should have been destroyed, but they didn't destroy them because they had already given them their word that they wouldn't.

Joshua 9:18-19 - "But the people of Israel did not attack them, because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. Then all the congregation murmured against the leaders. But all the leaders said to all the congregation, 'We have sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them.'"

So maybe I shouldn't have taken an audition on the Sabbath, but because I gave this girl my word, I decided to follow through with it and just learn for next time. (I prayed about this before I decided, and that was when God reminded me of the Joshua story, so I very much felt God's blessing on this after I decided to go through with it.)

And the audition went so well! It was only three lines so I decided to memorize them (something I really need to start doing for all future auditions).

And I took my time at the beginning (something we've been learning in acting class). In the scene, my character was supposed to start out waiting at this guy's door, and then this woman, his wife, opens the door and that's when I have my first line. But at the audition I'm just saying my lines to a reader, so instead of saying my first line right away, I decided to act out just "standing at the door" for a bit, thinking about how excited I am to see this guy I'm in love with and I hope he likes my skirt, and I really need to tell him how much I love him so he can finally choose me over his wife blah blah blah, and that's when I decided she would "open the door" and I would say my line, "Oh, I didn't expect you to--"

So I do the whole scene, and at the end after the wife asks me to come in, the door is supposed to creepily close behind me, so I do this quick, scared, look-back thing and then walk a few steps forward in uncertainty.

After I did it, the director was like, "Wow. That was excellent, that was really good. I don't have any notes. Um.. I'd like to see it again, just for the sake of watching you do it again."

What a cool thing to hear!

So I did it again, pretty much the same way, and she goes, "That was great. That's exactly the way I pictured the character to be." She seemed surprised and happy and satisfied, it was really cool.

So anyways, I left the audition pretty excited. I'm glad I decided to ask God about it (the second time around). And hopefully next time I will ask Him the first time around and there will be even more blessings for doing it that way!

I am the most beautiful.

So at acting class last week, this guy had to do a monologue, and Cress (the teacher) asked him if he wanted anyone to be the person he was talking to, like for a focal point or whatever. He needed a girl, and there were a few of us, and I sort of gestured with my head that I could do it, so the guy was like, "You want to do it?" And I'm like, "Yeah, sure."

So I moved to a seat more in the center-front, and I said, "Do you need me to be any certain way?"

Cress interrupted the guy's potential answer with, "Just receive. Just receive it."

That was my first God-moment because I feel like that's something God's been telling me in my life lately, to stop trying so hard to be a certain way and "just receive," just receive his blessings and embrace this life he's given me, you know?

Then after the guy did his monologue, Cress reminded him that even though he's not saying it in the monologue, the whole time he's talking to me, what he really wants to be doing is telling me he loves me, but he keeps not saying it.

And there's this part in the monologue where he's talking about how he wants to experience the extremes in life, the things that are the most beautiful and the most ugly, and he's going off on those ideas but Cress is like, "When you're talking about things that are 'the most beautiful,' it's her," and he points to me, "she is the most beautiful." And he kept saying it, "She is the most beautiful."

It was really cool because even though it's just acting, and I wasn't even really acting, I was just being the "receiver," I had not too long before that been called in to audition for a role that was supposed to be an "ugly" girl. And even though they assured me at the audition that they didn't actually think I was ugly and that they would be using make up to "accentuate my homeliness," I did start to get a little depressed because it was the only audition I'd gotten in a while, and it was for an ugly part.

I started to think I was ugly, and also I haven't had a guy like me in a long time. I haven't had a boyfriend in forever, and it's been a while since I've been on a date. And yeah it's true I haven't been pursuing or really wanting those things in a while either, but still, you can get sort of caught up in the world's expectations and how you're not meeting them, and it can start to affect you.

So that day last week in the monologue scene, even though it wasn't real, I felt pretty encouraged. I felt like God was saying to me, "This is the truth, Tracy. This is how I feel about you. You are the most beautiful. Just receive it."