Info about the the freshmen year musical

First Round Auditions

Tonight I will be performing; Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forhead, The Trolley Song, and Still Life

Let me start by saying that I have been totally freaking out about this for the last two weeks. This freaking was made greater when Professor Bell said how a lot of the auditions weren't where he thought they should be. It means a lot to me to make a good impression on the musical theater instructors, so I was panicking. I read about 200 monologues trying to find pieces that really work. Ironically I ended up doing pieces I have done before. I also had some difficulty with the song; originally I planed to do "Hey Look Me Over" from Wild Cat. But I went with an old standard "The Trolley Song" from Meet me in St. Louis. I of course went with the male lyrics. Oh I forgot to mention that you are only allotted three minutes for the audition and they time you very strictly. So it is quite difficult to fit three pieces in and be fabulous.

So cut to today, the day of the audition, I wake up with a really bad sinus head ach and I lack of a voice. So I was freaking out I spent most of the morning trying to resurrect my performance skills. Finally after drugs and home remedies I was somewhat back to my normal self, although I can feel it coming back now. But I have to say that the godsend of the day was Ashley. She came over and helped me with my pieces and gave me the confidence I was lacking. She was great, she even brought me dinner.

Finally the audition it self. So I get there and I am almost immediately swept in. It turns out that a lot of people didn't show up so I had to go early. When I walked in Mark, one of the directors, said hi to me. I said hi back but I didn't want to depart from the professionalism of the audition. So I left it at that and walked over to the girl running the tape. I introduced my self my pieces and then performed. I chose to do my song second to break up the two monologues. Accept the tape took a bit to long to come in; this kind of ate into my time. So I felt rushed and fudged the transitions in my final monologue. It still felt pretty good. Tomorrow I find out if I got any callbacks for the five shows.

Callbacks and Casting

Well the last few days have been quite an experience. I must say these were the longest and most physically and mentally demanding callbacks I have ever survived. Ok so here is how it all came about. After the auditions I got called back for Vernon and Van Buren. I was super excited because they were both great singing parts. So I prepared my song excerpts and also worked out the accompaniment to the other songs. In addition to auditioning I also had to play the piano for callbacks. So long story short I get another callback for dance the next morning. The dance audition started easy but quickly became exceedingly difficult. We ended up having to do all this athletic guy stuff. Most of what we were made to do consisted of rotating jumps. I didn't do badly but I didn't rock or anything. After about three hours of dancing I found out that I got a reading callback for different characters; Van Buren and Welch. So then we read for another three hours. By the time the end came around I could barely see straight from the nervous exhaustion. It isn't over yet, then we had more callbacks for music. This time I only had to play the piano or keyboard to be precise. Bottom line I was so tired I was amazed I made it out of there alive.

I got cast as Welch! He is the owner of the washington senators. It should be alot of fun. I am one of only four freshmen to be cast. HEY!!