Edoardo Ballerini

Before you get the wrong idea, no, I haven’t been fired from anything, nor am I firing anybody.  I was fired from a play once, but that was years ago.  To this day I have no idea why.  I’d been to rehearsal, all seemed fine, I get home, and there’s a message on my answering machine telling me not to come back.  It was bewildering, but it taught me an early lesson in they why’s and how’s of this business.  There are none.

The other day I was speaking with a well-known actor/writer/director I know.  He told me he’d been fired from his latest gig and that he, too, experienced a similar unceremonious handling of the affair.  He went to rehearsal, went back to his hotel, and found a message waiting for him.  Don’t come back.  Perhaps this is the way it’s done.  For an industry that craves pageantry, it’s a little discordant, but if we start in with the contradictions we’ll be here all day…

The impulse upon hearing you’ve been dumped, of course, is to believe that you somehow failed.  If you had done something differently, or had cozied up to the right people, maybe the axe would have been spared.  But there’s no explaining whimsy, and unless you’ve done something egregious, there is little logic at play.  Somebody, somehow, for whatever reason, didn’t think things were going well and decided to make a change, and you seemed like the best option.

I would like to see a study as to whether things improve after these firings.  It’s unquantifiable, I know, but still, somebody might be able to take an objective eye to the situation.  My guess is it’s a case of the more things change… But what do I know?

I’ll keep checking my messages.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.