Now Showing: THE DADDY DOCTRINE

THE DADDY DOCTRINE: Never accept a role if you’d rather die than have your father see the finished product.

Blacktress finds herself, sitting in CATZ studios, waiting for her turn to read for one of the leading roles in an indie film.

“I just got the audition notice this morning.  Haven’t even had time to read the script,” she leans over and admits to another auditioner, who looks exactly like her only a foot shorter.

“Me neither” her midget clone whispers back guiltily.

Nevertheless Blacktress is relaxed and stress free.  The girls share a smile.

 Same day auditions are the best, she thinks.  They give you no time to obsess about your choices or presumptuously spend the entire paycheck in your head.

Once in the room, Blacktress gets a good vibe from the cute writer/ Director.   Her attraction wanes once she notices his ridiculously tight jeans and decides he’s either very uncomfortable or has nuts the size of pomegranate seeds.  During her read she feels his eyes lingering over her body.   She’s unfazed.  He’s a director, of course he’s either horny or a wierdo.  Before the sun goes down, the horny/wierdo hyphenate calls to offer her the role.

 

Now Showing: HOMESICK

“Stevie Wonder Black” refers to someone you can tell is Black even with your eyes closed.

Today, Blacktress finds herself walking onto a small studio lot with a self-assuredness that surprises her.  In the last year she’s booked the role of a Ugandan refugee, a depression era jazz singer, a teenage Crip girl, and is in serious contention for the role of Chantal, a pre-op tranny hooker.  Today, she’s up for a part far less challenging.

This breakdown reads like my bio, she thinks.  Piece of cake.

 

Now Showing: NEXT!

It’s the closing night party for the play, Dusty Melody. The walls are lined with LA theater types, their plus ones and the kind of actors whose faces you know but names you don’t.  Blacktress is tangled within the crowd wearing  a short red dress, sipping a dry red wine.  But she’s more high from the successful run of the show than the libations.  People are buzzing about eager to acknowledge her performance.  A handsome man in his thirties taps her on the shoulder and immediately begins blowing smoke up her ass.

“I just wanted to say that you were absolutely wonderful.  Won- der- ful.   I saw the show twice.”

He leans in closer.

“And you were my favorite.”

Blacktress beams.

“Thank you.  It was a lot of fun.”

“So what’s up next for you?”  He asks.

 

Now Showing: The Grass Really Is Greener

Blacktress is driving through the NoHo arts district in the valley when she spots a marquee in front of a small theater that reads: Sexy and Suicidal, LA’s fourth longest running stage play.  Blacktress is glad to be driving away from the theater instead of towards it.    I can’t believe it’s still running, she thinks.

Blacktress is no stranger to the production.  She’d been cast in the show years ago after being in LA for only two months.  The playwright/director/producer Tony White called to give her the good news.

“But I didn’t audition,” Blacktress said dumbfounded.

“I went over your resume and I liked it.  I’ve been doing this a long time.  I can just tell you’ll be right.”

Blacktress was confused but in no position to turn down roles.  Tony went on to explain the intricacies of his masterpiece.

 

Now Showing: Type is of the Essence

Blacktress has just arrived at Get Cast Now Acting Workshops.  This week’s guest casting director Rick Peterson, on the other hand, has not.  But his reputation precedes him and it stinks up the place…

“He’s a snarky little asshole,” a workshop devotee cautions, while stapling her resume to the back of her headshot.

Twenty minutes later he barrels in, bitching about traffic.  Blacktress hands him her picture.  He studies it, then her, then the picture again.

“Ewww. You need new pictures. I hate this one.”

 

Now Showing: NeverLAnd

Photo by Miles Orion Feldsott

It is Saturday night and Blacktress is more than happy to spend it gabbing with her girlfriend Iyanla on the phone, while  playing Virtual Catch-up:  the ritual of perusing the Facebook pages of old friends from back home in lieu of ever actually calling them.

“Why would I ever call these people?   This is far more entertaining.” Blacktress says while scrolling through wedding photos of a girl she never much cared for in middle school.  “Terrible color scheme,” she notes.

“And they’re all married back home,” Iyanla bemoans.  “Every. Single. One.  By twenty- five.  And they all have two kids.  In LA we have two roommates, maybe. But home everyone’s got two goofy-ass kids.”

“I know, what’s up with that?”

“They grew up.”  “We moved to Never Never Land where everyone still has dreams.”

 

Now Showing: Prophets or Profits?

It’s the middle of the week and Blacktress is downtown at The Edison.  Her friend and former roommate Terrence Clarke, is slumped over on the barstool next to her.  It’s happy hour, but Terrence isn’t smiling.  He has become romantically (meaning sexually) entangled with Hollywood heavyweight, Sasha Brown, a successful actress.   Sasha also happens to be, not so successfully married to Keyvon Brown, a Hollywood featherweight.

“It’s a sin,” Terry says earnestly between gulps of his Cabernet.   “It goes against all my beliefs.”

Most of the people Blacktress meets in LA have long abandoned their childhood religious beliefs, in favor of practicing something more exotic, like Buddhism, Spiritualism or Narcissism (that is if they aren’t Scientologists.)  But Terry remains joyfully devoted to his Christian faith; a faith that, up until now, has always guided him down a righteous path…  Even if that path veered around golden career opportunities.

“I won’t trade in my integrity for an IMBD credit,” Terrence once told Bilal Patrick, an independent filmmaker.  A few months back, Bilal was desperate to cast him in the highly offensive role, “Monster Thug” in his movie, Hood Niggaz: Da Untold Story.

 

Now Showing: Stuck on You

Photo by Matt O'Callaghan

Blacktress is meeting her friend Shante Shannon for dinner at The Village Idiot, a gastro-pub on Melrose.  For the first time in history, Blacktress is on time for a social outing.  Shante calls to say she is stuck in traffic coming from the west side, and is going to be late.  Go figure.

While Blacktress waits at the bar for her friend to arrive, she catches the eye of Brandon Henry, a thirty something in a button down and jeans.  She buys his line.  He buys her a Lemon drop martini.  They engage in casual flirtatious banter.

 

Now Showing: Getting Out

Photo by Miles Feld

Blacktress is heading into the Intelligencia at Sunset Junction when she bumps into Seema Reddy, a brilliant actress she co-starred with in the 12 minute short: Bollyhood.  They hug and tell each other they look well.  Then Seema asks Blacktress the question all actors with agents in the valley feel the need to ask each other.

“So, are you getting out much?”

Blacktress plays up the co-star she booked last month on Angeltown but glosses over the fact that she hasn’t had a single theatrical audition in two and a half weeks.  Seema on the other hand lays her miserable truth right out there.

“I’m not getting out at all.  It’s so fucking discouraging.  There are so few parts for me.  And no good ones. ”

Her negativity catches like wildfire.  Blacktress is burned.

 

Now Showing: All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Park

Photo by Matt O'Callaghan for Blacktress World

Blacktress is meeting Nirvana, her flakey, hippie friend (everybody has one), at a house party in Koreatown.  Blacktress has circled the block about 10 times already looking for parking.  And this is her # 10 reason why LA is complete bullshit.  Looking for parking is all too often a nightmare, she thinks. But just before Blacktress is about to get pissy about having to make her 11^th rotation, she remembers something…