I'm a very specific Jew
Last week I started a slate of casting director workshops through a company called Talent to Go and I've been really happy with them. Jeff, Mitch and I have all signed up with them over the past week with Jeff and I performing a scene together and Mitch and our other friend Kurtis doing a scene that Mitch wrote.
Basically, these auditions are more along the lines of "general meetings" that casting directors used to hold back in the day (and don't seem to much anymore). There's no specific part that you're reading for, you just go in with a prepared scene and perform for the CD and it allows them to see you work and also talk to you, get to know you and what you "bring into the room".
Last Wednesday we did an audition for a major casting office and it went great. The CD loved our scene and thought it was "perfect, nothing to redirect", but then came the "chat" portion of the meeting.
She looks at Jeff (who is half Japanese)and said (I'm paraphrasing) "well you're Asian so the part would have to call for an Asian, or maybe a slacker type. Or anything that wasn't specifically calling for an ethnicity."
And then she turned to me...
"You, you're VERY specific. You would have to be the level headed, sensitive type...I mean, you're obviously Jewish..."
Huh?
Um, sure. If by Jewish you mean Irish/Italian Catholic.
She actually even wrote "Jewish" on my resume and had to cross it out and write Italian after I revealed my true nationality. I'm getting hit with anti-Semitism and I never even got to have a Bah Mitzvah!
She looked over our resumes and saw our representation and was like "oh you guys have good representation, we work with them a lot, you'll be fine."
I kind of got the feeling the above translated to "you guys will get called in a lot...of course, not from this office unless we're making a show about a rabbi and an Asian stoner who come from different worlds..."
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