Free Sounds Like Crazy by Shana Mahaffey Page B

actually succeed in the end.
    “Auditioning for plays is good practice as well. It’s free and will help you get the hang of speaking out loud as different characters. You can do that in your spare time.”
    “What spare time?” said Ruffles inside my head.
    “You be quiet,” snapped Betty Jane. She was in control, so the words came out of my mouth.
    “Excuse me?” said Brenda.
    “Nothing, nothing,” said Betty Jane. She pressed my hand shyly to my mouth.
    “Okay.” Brenda shook her head. “In a month the studio will do a preliminary audition. If all goes well, they’ll fund your second month of training.”
    “She said two months. Betty Jane, give me back control.”
    “And what if I exceed their expectations in that preliminary audition?” said Betty Jane.
    What have I done? This thought started looping in continuous motion inside my head.
    “You have confidence,” said Brenda. “I’ll definitely give you that.” Betty Jane nodded demurely.“All right, say you do—and as much as I’d love that, because I’d start getting paid, you probably won’t—but if you do, then in a month’s time we’ll get a standard SAG contract. This will cover the particulars: rates, how many
roles, and so forth. Usually for the basic session fee, an actor can do two roles, plus a third for a small increase. If you do four roles, the ‘count’ starts over and you get paid the basic session fee again.” Brenda rattled this off like she said it twenty times a day.
    “Does anyone do only cartoon work?” asked Betty Jane.
    What is she up to? Ruffles read my thought and shook her head.
    “Holly,” said Brenda. Her hands were on the glass again. I would come to recognize this as her pay-attention stance.“No one limits themselves exclusively to animated voice work. This must come as a shock to someone who idolizes Nancy Cartwright.”
    “Who?”
    “ The Simpsons ?”
    My head shook slightly.
    “Famous animated show? I understand you promised Walter you’d make sure The Neighborhood was more popular.”
    Oh, my God, she didn’t.
    My head shook slightly again. “I do not fill my time with TV,” said Betty Jane, brushing invisible lint off my pants.Well, the rest of us did. How could she make a declaration like, “My TV show will be more famous than The Simpsons ”?
    “I thought Mike said ...” muttered Brenda. She inhaled. “At any rate, anyone who dreams of making it big in the field has to do other things. Besides, it’s the other work that’s more plentiful and often more lucrative.”
    “What other work?” said Betty Jane.
    “Announcing, film dubbing, radio commercials, voice-overs for TV commercials, et cetera. One show, one cannot a living make.” Okay, Yoda. Ruffles and I giggled and Brenda yammered on, “... you need to have a cell phone, pager, voice mail—every possible form of communication available—so I can reach you.”
    “I don’t want to be that busy,” I said to Ruffles inside my head.

    “We can start as soon as you have the work,” said Betty Jane. We let out a collective groan. None of us had expected that we would do more than this one job. Obviously, Betty Jane had other ideas.
    Brenda’s face appeared perplexed for a moment. She shook it off and a perfunctory smile crossed her lips. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Holly. I need to see if you can even do the work, and after that what your range is.”
    “Oh, my,” said Betty Jane breathlessly. “Range?”
    “For most actors the range is about fifteen voices,” Brenda said with the resignation one feels when they realize the virtual unknown in front of them knows virtually nothing.
    “Oh, is that all? I can do four. Only four. But I do them well. That is a promise,” said Betty Jane.
    “Okay, then.We’ll talk.” And with that, I was dismissed.
     
    Betty Jane ceded control as I shut the door to Brenda’s office and headed down the hall.“How dare you take over like that,” I said.
    “You broke