Freeze Tag Audition
Background: In "Freeze Tag", two players do a short scene, whereupon another player yells FREEZE! Both players freeze in position. The yeller steps in and must take the exact position of one of them and start a new, unrelated scene where his body position is justified.
Back in 1991, I auditioned for a troupe, then known as the Mighty Grunion Players. There were quite a few auditioners of very varied levels.
Not surprisingly, Freeze Tag was one of the audition pieces. It is often used as a way to see how clever players were, how well they could deal with the facts being thrown at them, and if they are capable of giving up whatever preconceived ideas they have.
Inevitably, it is the person who thinks he is a shoe-in that has the most to learn. I'll call him "Fred". Fred talked a lot about how experienced he was (although none of us had ever seen him before) but so far, nothing he'd done had impressed me.
Fred freezes a scene, taking the place of a young who had one hand outstretched in the air. His character has his back to his fellow scenemate, "Pete".
Fred says nothing, so Pete starts the scene for him by saying, "Say, could you pass me down one of the cans of peas on that shelf you're reaching?"
Fred replies, confidently, "How could I do that? I'm a statue!"
Whereupon he just stood there frozen. One could see all the auditioners eyes bug out. The hugest block of an offer we have ever seen. In my six years of teaching at levels right down to absolute beginners, I've never seen a block that direct before. An absolute denial of the reality the first player created!
Pete's jaw dropped for a moment before he stammered something like, "Oh, I'm sorry...you looked so real..." and then someone mercifully froze that scene and yanked Fred out. Pete was so shell-shocked that he didn't recover very well into the next scene, either.
Neither made callbacks. In fact, I've never seen either one again...
Milo Shapiro, "San Diego Theatresports"
San Diego, CA USA