Good acting is for actors

As you have no doubt noticed, a lot of my acting work consists of cheesy dramatic reconstructions. There is big demand for them on Japanese TV, so there is consequently constant demand for actors.

In the acting industry here, the process goes as follows;

1. The agency calls you with a possible job. If you are available on those days, you give them "First Keep". If you might be available (i.e. you already have a first keep), then you give them "Second Keep" etc.
2. The agency sends your profile to the production company - "Picture Selection"
3. If the production company like you, you'll be invited to the audtion for the part.
4. Some time later, you get a call telling you if you got the part or not.

When it comes to reconstruction jobs, step 3 gets cut, and the production company chooses actors purely from the supplied photographs - basically taking a chance on acting ability. The voices get dubbed, so accents aren't an issue. In fact, you don't even need to speak English. Once, I had a role as a father. I spoke to my wife in English. She replied in Russian. My kids cheered on in Japanese. Wild times! Truly, an international family.
For the record, the pay rate for reconstructions (called Saigen here) is appropriately poor.

Anyway, seems this week that a Saigen director got a bit too big for her boots, and thought it might be a good idea to actually do some auditions this time. Man, I'm pretty sure that I don't want them to pick me for this one! I'm sure the pay is crap anyway.

Anyway, this is what I had to do "off the cuff" in the audition. This should shut up any of you guys who think that this job is a cakewalk. If it doesn't - well - you are welcome to try for yourselves. I guess some people prefer hugging Eastern European models.

Basically, I turned up at the audition along with two blonde females - a Slovakian and a Russian (you would probably have fancied both of them). As the only guy, I had to pair up for the both of them (arf).

First scene. Slovakian girl tells me that she is pregnant. But. She has two wombs**. There are two babies in one of them, and one in the other. The emotions swirl in my head - dazzled by elation, struck by shock, smitten with anxiety... then I do it all over again with the Russian girl.
My emotions frazzled, we move straight onto the next scene. Back with the Slovakian. The doctor looks us in the eye: "I'm afraid there has been a miscarriage...". Cue scenes of disbelief, anger, shock; yeh, we're talking about the whole spectrum here! This is pure gold, so we do it all over again with the Russian girl. She doesn't take the news very well, and crumbles into my masculine arms.
No time to waste, so we plunge straight into the next scene - my Slovakian wife is giving birth - and - just as I had always expected, it didn't look that painful (just looked like they had serious piles to me). The baby is out in no time, and we share our elation with the world. Should I kiss her? Probably not. The doctor shows us our new addition - a beautiful Panasonic remote control has emerged from her designer jeans. Classic prop that - I do hope they find something more realistic for the actual filming though.

Congratulations

No sooner are we celebrating all this than my Russian wife is shoved in the chair. Her feeble hands gently squeeze mine as I command her to must her utmost power to evict the alien mass from her spasming body. As I am whisked once more to the highest of human emotions, the doctor shows us our child - another Panasonic remote. I'm starting to realise why those TV repairs took so long now.

It's all over. The three of us leave the audition - elated, depressed and unsure whether we should feel a common bond or simple humility. As professional actors, we luckily have no emotions of our own save vanity, so we leave it at that.

This post started out serious, but seems to have degenerated into flip-flap based on real events. One can only apologise.

I wonder if I'll get this part. If I do, I will try to cry for you all. That would be a befitting climax, wouldn't it.

**I think both of the girls got confused. Or had never heard the English word "womb" before. They kept on telling me that they had "..two rooms - two babies in one, and one in the other". Luckily, I knew what they were really trying to say. I have a deep understanding of women like that, see.