Appointment to wait.

If you were to look among the special skills and abilities section of my CV you would not find 'patience' listed. Actually you won't find a special skills and ability section on my CV any more. Ever since including "fire eating" on it when I left drama school, it's been an area where the items listed have only diminished. As has my patience over the years. Indeed as have my fire eating skills. 

Of course, as we are told, Patience is a virtue and it's certainly something that any working actor is going to need. Patience is needed as you hang around for seven hours only to be told that the scene you're there to film has been rescheduled and you'll be doing it on another day. News that has to be greeted with a smile. Patience as you wait for the results of an audition, and then slowly work out that you haven't got the job when you haven't heard anything three weeks later. Gone are the days when people send out a "sorry but no" as well as an offer. A little strange that in these email friendly days when communication is so much easier, we actually get less of it.

Another thing we get less of are commercial castings. Once the staple diet of every actors working week, now commercial castings can be few and far between. Mainly because many agencies have decided to undercut the Equity agreements in place, and reputable agents have decided not to supply actors to people who are paying below the agreed rates.

So an appointment for a commercial is a rarity. You do get an appointment. An agreed time put in the diary by your agent, and it's very advisable to arrive at least 10 or 15 minutes before that agreed time so you can fill out all the paperwork involved and have a look at the script. You may have been sent the script. Indeed I was this week, but you can guarantee that the script you get when you arrive at the casting will have changed. The world of advertising seems to be a world of indecision. Or more accurately a world where nobody wants to commit to any decision until the last moment, so all options are pursued. That's why when being asked to attend an interview for a butler (please could you wear a white shirt and a black tie with a dark jacket as we have no imagination) you walk into a room full of people dressed like you, but of every shape and size and look imaginable. This is somebody covering every option.

Having arrived ten minutes early for my  3:10 PM interview, I realised I had walked into chaos. The director for the commercial had only arrived ten minutes ago, and indeed left ten minutes later. Actors were being fed into the room in the order they had arrived, rather than the order dictated by their appointment times. Something I objected to. The person behind the desk at the casting suite had obviously had their fill of actors. After all it was a Friday afternoon, and suddenly having to manage a..... What is the correct collective noun?....... a sneer of butlers was probably the last thing they needed.

Perhaps I might be over dramatising to say that the interaction that ensued between myself and this young man behind reception was a row, but it certainly involve raised voices and him telling me that I could go if I wanted. I'm pretty sure the casting director would have been rather unimpressed by that advice, but it's something that I was well aware of.

Things moved slowly forward and twenty minutes after my appointed time I was shown into the room. The casting director was delightful, pleasant, and full of apologies for the delay. When I told her that actually we were being fed into the room in the order of the people arrived, she was appalled.

"What's the point of giving an appointment time then?" she asked. I don't know whether she did anything about it, but her agreement was calming in itself.

Of course what had been expected of me was to sit quietly and accept whatever was heaped on me because as an actor I should be lucky for the opportunity. That was certainly the impression that the reception young man gave me.

I should have had a book, or at least a book on my Kindle, to read. Working in the business and corporate world frequently as I do, I have grown used to the fact that people honour appointment times.  In the world of the casting, I know that they will run late. As a director myself running castings, I have overrun. I would hope that I have always been profuse with the apologies, and have kept people waiting in the know. This is not always the case.

So how best to deal with this?

1. Always get to an interview a minimum of 10 minutes before your appointed time. Remember that public transport will have done its best to delay you, but on arrival you may have scripts to look at and paperwork to fill in. Also the office where the casting is taking place may be a good 10 minutes journey from reception. Always the case with the BBC!
2. Make sure you have got something with you to keep you busy. Yes of course you can look at the script, but you can also overwork that, so Kindle on your iPhone is a good option, and although I can barely bring myself to say it, the dreaded Candy Crush saga can fill the time amicably.
3. Don't schedule your next appointment too soon after your casting time. Even if you're just meeting friends for coffee, work out how long you think the casting will take  and then add 30 minutes. Better you end up doing some window-shopping, rather than endlessly texting to friends waiting in a down at heel branch of Starbucks.( Is there any other sort of Starbucks?)
4. Take large reserves of patience. Or at least five drops of Rescue remedy.  And a deep breath before you enter the building. Turn on a pleasant and not too fixed smile as you approach reception, and resign yourself to a delay. That means that if the whole operation runs to time, you'll be pleasantly surprised, and probably light up during the interview itself.

Having written this, I'm going to copy it out and make sure that it's in my pocket the next time I go in for a commercial casting. Even if I don't heed it, at the very least it will give me something to read.