Audition for Jon Jory
Jon Jory was artistic director at Actors Theater of Louisville. The Theater had
blossomed under Jory’s stewardship and was becoming even bigger, premiering
shows which would transfer to Broadway or Off-Broadway, fostering plays which
would win major literary prizes. Jory was the man behind the curtain,
orchestrating all that.
And, 1971 or ‘72, I was going to audition for him. For the life of me, I cannot
remember how the audition came about. It was nothing I arranged. Somebody--
no idea who--told me I had an audition appointment with Jory. I’m sure I asked
how this came to be, but I have no memory of ever knowing.
I was nervous. To me, Actors Theater was the bigtime, the real bigtime, second
only MAYBE to Broadway. And I was going to audition for Mr. Actors Theater
himself. So, yeah, nervous.
The day arrived, I entered the building and met Jon Jory. He led me into the
theater auditorium.
I stepped on stage. He sat, entirely by himself, in the house. He asked what I
was going to do. I told him I had a monologue from HENRY V. It wasn’t
really a monologue, at least Shakespeare wouldn’t recognize it as such. I’d
taken a large section of the proposal scene and edited it into a one-man thing.
It was a wonderful bunch of words, touching and romantic and quite funny.
My paste-job ran about nine minutes. But that, of course, is too much for most
situations, so I’d also figured out a couple of shorter versions, one about six
minutes, one about four. But no shorter than that. At four minutes, all that was
left was gold.
At whichever length, I did it. As I recall, I did hear Mr. Jory laugh. When I
finished he said, more or less, “very nice. What else do you have?” Ah. I was
not prepared for that. I figured it was just a fluke that I was auditioning for this
man. While I hoped that he’d take me seriously, I didn’t expect him to give me
a lot of time. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Another monologue?” I asked.
“Yes, if you have something.”
Did I have another monologue? Well…yes. And no. I had memorized Tom’s
opening speech from THE GLASS MENAGERIE, simply because I liked it.
But I’d never rehearsed it, never thought about actually using it. I had never
even spoken it aloud. So no way I should be premiering such an unknown,
unplanned quantity at any audition, certainly not a big one like this.
I said, “Yes, I have the opening speech from GLASS MENAGERIE.”
Yeah, I said that.
“Great,” he said, “perfect.”
This is not a practice I recommend to young actors. Or to old actors. Or dead
actors. It was a stupid, reckless thing to do. But…Jon Jory wanted to hear
more from me. I was flattered. So I did it.
And it was…I think…all right. Such a wonderful speech. “Yes, I have tricks
in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the very opposite of a
stage magician. He gives you illusion disguised as reality. I give you reality
in the pleasant guise of illusion…”
When I finished, Mr. Jory again said something nice, then stood and said,
“let’s go up to my office.” More unexpectedness. We traipsed upstairs to
his small office. He sat behind his desk and I sat in the “client’s chair”. He
asked if I’d like a cup of coffee. Uh..well, yeah. Sure.
So we sat sipping coffee and talking, just barely-over-voting-age me and
the director of a bigtime regional theater. At one point he had to take a
phone call. I started to leave but he said, “no, just sit, this won’t take
long.” He talked to someone for about four or five minutes as I sipped
coffee and pretended that this sort of thing happened to me every day.
Once off the phone Jon Jory offered me a job. Unbelievable. It wasn’t
a job on the main stage but rather a spot in their Adventure Theater
troupe. These guys toured around the state, performing at high schools
and colleges. On occasional Monday nights, the main Actors stage was
turned over to them for a performance of whatever they’d been doing.
Secondary company or not, I was bowled over. I said, “thank you. I’d
have to figure how it would fit in around my classes…”
He jumped in, “you’re still in school?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m….”
Jory said, “I withdraw the offer. I’m not taking anyone out of school.”
Then he talked about my future. Mine. He said I should consider
post-grad work at a school with a solid theater program. He named a
couple that he thought were good and said, “if you do that, come see me
and I’ll write you a recommendation.”
He went on, “if you don’t want to go to school, you should go to New
York. BUT…if you plan to take acting classes, call me and I’ll recommend
some people. You have to be careful. 95% of acting teachers are fakes and
scams.”
And that was it. Jon Jory had given me more than 45 minutes of his time.
And he’d offered kind assistance. I was never so happy after an audition
from which I got no work.
I never had another one-on-one with the man, but I’d occasionally see
him in the lobby when I’d attend shows at ATL. He’d always walk over,
shake my hand and ask how I was. He called me Mr. Pruitt, I called him
Mr. Jory.
I never worked at Actors Theater, and that’s too bad. But my meeting
with Jon Jory was a nice substitute.
