I found out at work today that I’m going to have to come in an hour earlier and take on some extra responsibilities for a while, starting next week. I am, at this point, so glad I didn’t start rehearsing for a play this week.

I was soaking in the tub this evening when I heard my cell phone ringing downstairs. I dripped my way down to the living room, thinking it might be Charlie Winton calling; it was.

As regular readers may recall, I tried out on Sunday for a production of Shakespeare In Hollywood. The session on Sunday was poorly-attended; there was to be another session on Monday, but I had to miss that one for a Mountain T.O.P. board meeting.

I hadn’t heard anything since that time and wondered what was going on. I didn’t have Charlie’s contact information (he’s the director), so I e-mailed someone whose address I did have today asking what was going on.

Well, it turns out that there’s been a schedule conflict. Charlie already felt that the rehearsal schedule for the play was too short, and now there’s been a problem obtaining the playbooks. The play will still be produced at some point, but at this moment we don’t know when — November, January or February being possibilities. Charlie doesn’t want to tie down the casting until he has production dates, because obviously there’s a possibility that the dates could affect who is available. He did tell me I did well at the audition, and I feel like I’ll get some sort of interesting part, but for the moment we’re all in limbo.

I’m sort of relieved; I’m looking forward to doing the play, but this has been a really ridiculous work week, both in terms of workload and personal stress, and I was dreading going right into rehearsal next week.

Well, I tried out for Shakespeare In Hollywood this afternoon in Tullahoma.

I think Charlie Winton, the director, is expecting a much better turnout Monday night; let’s hope so, because there were very few of us there today, which really limited the various scenes he could put us through. And I can’t make the Monday night audition because of the Mountain T.O.P. board meeting.

I still haven’t seen the whole play — we used photocopied scenes for the audition today — but what I’ve seen is very, very funny. There are also some double entendres and salty dialogue. Charlie made it clear, as has been made clear in similar situations at Community Playhouse* in the past, that anyone who isn’t comfortable with a profanity in their lines is more than welcome to leave it out or substitute another word. But there’s at least one “f-bomb” in the play, and if the person who winds up with that role decides to say it, I wonder about the reaction of some of the folks whom I’d want to invite, such as my parents.

The play, in case you didn’t click on the link above, takes a real event — the filming of Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1934 — and puts a fantasy spin on it, bringing two of Shakespeare’s fairy characters to life and having them cast as themselves in the play. So a lot of the characters are real people, like studio head Jack Warner.

I wasn’t prepared to do a German accent, and so I botched my reading as director Max Reinhardt, who from what I can tell would be the central character. I did a terrific reading as Hollywood censor Will Hays, who is definitely an antagonist in Ludwig’s story, in a monologue where, thanks to a magic spell by Puck, Hays literally falls in love with his own reflection. Everyone was laughing, and the person who had to read the monologue afterward muttered to me that I’d given him a tough act to follow.

What my successful simulated narcissism says about me as a human being, I’d really rather not think about.

*The playhouse’s abysmal web site may not work properly if you’re not using Internet Explorer.