Over the last few years, production has put such time and resource pressure on casting directors in Hollywood that they now often ask us actors to tape our auditions ourselves, rather than in their offices. The blessing is that sometimes this means we can avoid both a long drive to Santa Monica and getting cut out of the audition process entirely (if we don’t have “a name” or a top tier manager). The struggle is that we’ve gone from being actors who learn lines and develop characters for performance to also being lighting technicians, space designers, camera ops, film editors, and the kind of friend who really, really needs you to come over later this afternoon to be their reader. This week as I pulled together a sixteen page series regular audition for a pilot, including casting one of my best friends to do his best as a sparkly eleven-year-old girl, I felt incredibly grateful to have developed the ability to handle all these demands at once. And hopeful, too, that casting will be able to look past the imperfect intersection of my foundation and fill light skills to see my performance.