You Can’t Be Serious(15)

Mrs. Cummings laughed again, this time with genuine amusement. “I have never seen these results before,” she said. “They always give you a specific set of answers.” I broke the test. I was the anomaly, the oddball, the misfit. She sighed. “I guess no matter what you do, you’ll be happy doing it.”



* * *



Around the same time, the wonderful, caring director of my performing arts high school, Mr. Green, tried a different tactic based more on emotion than a test. “I’m going to flip a coin. Call heads or tails. Whatever it lands on, stick to that decision. If it’s heads, you’re going to drama school. If it’s tails, you major in political science.”

The coin landed on tails.

“You’re doing political science. How does that make you feel?” he asked.

“I dunno, not great.”

“You have to go with drama school then.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know about drama school either. I kinda want both.”

Well-meaning tricks like the coin toss or a standardized interests test didn’t work on me because I didn’t see the world as binary. Had I taken that test a few years prior, these results might have ruined me. We’re Indian. We don’t do that. Now, I knew who Mira Nair was. I had Nathans and Bens in my life. The confusing results were actually freeing. Maybe I could trust my instincts and become an actor. Or maybe I really could pursue a bunch of academic paths at once.

I kept my options open and applied to sixteen universities—some known broadly for liberal arts (with no clue what I’d specifically major in), and some for a BFA in theater, film, and television. Nothing with passion is ever as simple as heads or tails. Sometimes you’re the guy who just wants a bunch of coins.



* * *



In addition to the standard university application, most theater programs require you to go through an audition and interview: pick two monologues, one classical, one contemporary (mine were from Henry V and The Catcher in the Rye), perform them, and then “discuss them with us while we ask why you want to major in theater, film, and television instead of becoming a doctor like everybody expected.”

FPAC had a dedicated monologue study in the weeks leading up to college interviews. Since most of the class was applying to theater programs, the performance and critique sessions with our teacher allowed us to hone our skills when they mattered most. I was confident in my choices and had defended them in class several times.

The country’s top theater programs hold satellite auditions for students who don’t live close to the campus. This meant that my audition for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) was held in New York City, not LA. As I did with my NYU audition a few weeks prior, I planned to take New Jersey Transit to Penn Station, then hop on the subway. Unfortunately, the night before, a massive blizzard plowed through the Northeast. Power lines were down. Ice was everywhere. Trains and buses into the city stopped working. I called a hotline that UCLA listed for inclement weather issues to find that since subway service within the five boroughs wasn’t disrupted, the auditions were still being held. How was I going to get into New York City?

“Get dressed, I’ll take you,” my dad said. I was touched that he’d do this, in a blizzard, in treacherous conditions, just so I could audition for an acting program that he and Mom probably wished I wouldn’t pursue in the first place. “I know how excited you are to audition for this school. Let’s go, you’ll be late.”

On a good day, the drive into Manhattan takes forty-five minutes. That day, it took two hours. Plows were out in full force on the Garden State Parkway, but the snow was coming down so fast that an inch still blanketed the asphalt. We pulled up to the small black box theater in Greenwich Village five minutes before my audition slot. I jumped out and ran in while my dad went on a long search for parking.

I delivered my classical monologue first, then contemporary, in front of a well-dressed older man—round glasses, sweater, sports coat—sitting behind a folding table. I later learned he was popular UCLA theater professor Gary Gardner. “I’ve been doing this for twenty-two years and nobody has ever chosen a chapter from The Catcher in the Rye before,” he grilled. “Why did you pick something from a book when the instructions clearly said to deliver a monologue?” I was momentarily intimidated, but it’s not like I hadn’t noticed the instructions when I chose it.

“Well,” I began with an honest smile, “I love The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield is so different from who I am in real life, but when I read that book, I found that I could identify with him intimately. I probably won’t ever get cast to play him—or to play any rich New England boarding school kid for that matter. But I assume there won’t be a Catcher in the Rye movie anyway because Salinger has always refused to sell the rights. So, I figured this is the only time I would get to bring Holden Caulfield to life. And in the application, I noticed the instructions said the monologue just needed to be a contemporary piece, not that it had to be from a play or couldn’t be from a novel. The whole book is written in first person. It’s actually one amazing, gigantic monologue, and the beginning of chapter three seemed self-contained enough to make sense for me today.”

Gary Gardner smiled.

I left.

My dad was in the waiting room when I got out of the interview, and we made the treacherous drive back home, where Mom was waiting with lunch.