To give you a little bit of background: I work as an usher at my university's Box Office and get to see all their theater performances several times during their run. Since before I even started school last year in the fall, I was pretty sure that I'd want to try out for a theatrical performance at some point during my time in the university setting, and I this last month I decided that sooner is better than later.
Outside the realm of academia, I'd already cut my teeth on the entire acting thing years previously under the watchful eye of the Great Duchess Olivia. Being a lowly, socially awkward homeschooler, I never had the opportunity to participate in school plays but the Duchess Olivia was kind enough to rally the troops of my church's homeschooling families together to give us all an opportunity we were missing out on. The Duchess exposed us to the world of theater, albeit informally so, and I discovered a whole world of interest for me.
All the way, way back in 2010 I played Peter in the Duchess's own rendition of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." That show was, to be quite honest, pretty silly and cheesy in many, many ways, but it was a new experience and opened the doors to a new realm of potential entertainment and learning for me and my peers. The roles in that show were pretty small, the lines undemanding, and the talent fairly minimal, but it was the first step toward going much, much farther.
The following year (2011) we took a huge leap and quit playing around with simple C. S. Lewis level stuff and moved into the big leagues. The Duchess believed that we were ready to take on the works of the master bard himself: William Shakespeare, and I got the role of Demetrius in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The difference in difficulty between Midsummer and LWW was night and day. The language was totally new, the lines much longer, and the roles much more intense/involved. Heck, even the swords Erik the Red blacksmithed for us were more legit. LWW was my first exposure to acting, but Midsummer was my first exposure to Shakespeare and I loved it. Whether it was because I had the opportunity to swing real swords around at good friend Lysander, or because I got to openly fawn over lovely young ladies, Midsummer was a spectacular experience. It most certainly had its downsides, and the skill level of our performers was still... pretty mediocre, but it was a vast improvement and the door was opened even wider. Mostly, it was amazing because we had pretty little kids (like 10 and 11) performing huge Shakespeare roles in almost their entirety.
Then we heard through the Grapevine that the 2012 homeschooler's acting extravaganza would likely be reserved for the younger kids. The Duchess wanted to work more with the smaller crowd and seemed to be thinking that some us older folks, while free to assist with the shows, should probably take a step back. Saddened, but not deterred, the Lovely Lena (Helena of Midsummer and the Witch of LWW) decided that us older outcasts would put on a smaller show of our own. She was only thirteen at the time if I remember correctly, but Lena made an exceptional director as she led a small rag tag group of teens through a shortened production of "The Taming of the Shrew." Wielding my cape, decorative marine sword, and fedora as Petruchio, I worked to tame the vicious Kate with my incredible charm and decency... Ahem, Taming was yet again an entirely new experience. Our director was half the age of the Duchess and was actually participating in the show with us. We had a small enough cast that a few people doubled up roles... and would play both characters on stage at the same time through method of a bit of funky costume work (you just wish you could have seen it). We did, however, maintain true to the original Shakespeare even if we cut a fair amount, and we did a pretty spectacular job (I think) for the goofballs we all were/are.
However, surprise surprise, the Duchess decided that she needed more cast members for the 2012 production of "Peter Pan" than she had originally realized and a bunch of us older folks got roped back into the "big" performance. I was cast as Hook and apparently reduced a child or two to tears during our actual performances. (Sorry kids... didn't mean to) Peter Pan's language was a step down from the difficulty in Taming and Midsummer, and I had a lot of personal stuff going on outside of the play at the time, but it was fun, it was silly, and it was yet another great acting experience. The distraction of the play actually turned out to be immensely helpful with all the other stuff going on, and it was our last play with some of our dearest and most talented actors. One of our homeschooling families ended up moving away that summer, and we were all quite saddened by the fact that we would be losing them. So, we made it the best play that we possibly could.
When this spring rolled around, I was pretty sure I wouldn't actually be taking up an acting role again. I had become an adult and the Duchess's life was getting busy enough she was going to need an assistant director in order to get the show off the ground. It looked like I would be working on the other end of the stage for a while, but at the last minute on audition day my brother revealed that he didn't actually want to act and so I swapped with him and became an actor while he became assistant director. This show was to be the last with the Duchess before she completed her doctorate and moved out yonder to teach at some distant university, and so we wanted to make it the best show ever. So, naturally, we chose to do another Shakespeare. In both Midsummer and Taming we cut a fair number of lines, but for Twelfth Night we cut next to nothing. I took up the role of the infamous and totally ridiculous butler Mavolio and dove into my role like never before.
Twelfth Night ended up being incredible. Like all four of the other plays, it had plenty of drama offstage and backstage as well as onstage, and there were some tense moments, but it ended up beautifully. My role was a little bit... no, a lot of bit crazy, but I went with it and I got into it, and I went all the way. I loved the entire experience, and was very truly sorry to see our Duchess leave this summer.
Duchess Olivia (named so because she ended up playing Olivia in Twelfth Night for one of the performances), taught me how to act, to love to act, and to love Shakespeare. She gave me a talent and interest that will probably never really come into play in my professional life, but that has become a significant part of past and personality all the same. The Duchess is the reason I chose to go ahead and audition for my university's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
(Now we're caught up to the present)
This year, my school's theme is all Shakespeare. This semester the theater department just finished doing King Lear and in December they will be doing a three person play that is a compilation of all Shakespeare's works into one play (dunno how that will go yet), and next semester the Children's Show (a show for children not by children) will be a shortened version of Midsummer while the musical will be "Kiss Me Kate."
Knowing that I would never survive a musical, I went into auditions planning only to audition for A Midsummer, but discovered that regardless of what show you were interested in you had to do the same stuff for both.
On Saturday at noon there was an audition workshop for anyone interested in getting some extra help and advice before the actual auditions and despite the fact that it turned out to be three times as long as I was expecting, I'm really glad I went. For our first round of auditions we were all supposed to prepare two one minutes monologs and a 32 bar song. My understanding had been that the song would be sung without any accompanying music or anything. Well, I find out at the workshop that we would actually be having an accompanist playing the piano and that we would need sheet music.
Now, I've been told I have a decent voice, but if there is one thing I am terrible at (and I mean terrible) it is music. I cannot keep a tempo or stay in the right key to save me life. I can play some piano and flute, but I have no real understanding of music theory or... well, anything music related. So while I was pretty confident in my ability to just sing a song for the director, I was totally thrown off by singing along with a pianist.
Anyway, finding that out was... interesting, but at the workshop the twelve or so people that showed up would, one at a time, get onto the stage and deliver the stuff they had prepared for the Acting and Musical Directors. I was one of the people to go in the middle, and as soon as I got up on the stage I was totally thrown.
As I've already said, I've done acting before. I've done stuff in front of a live audience many of times and I'm even taking a speech class this semester, but when I got on the stage I experienced what I am pretty sure people typically call stage freight. Maybe it was because I felt unprepared with my song, or maybe it was because I didn't actually know the people watching me, but I felt instantly awkward, uncomfortable, and intensely nervous. The Music Director ask that I sing my song for him even though I didn't have the sheet music with me, and he told me I had an amazing voice, but in the nicest way possible he informed me I don't know how to sing. (No surprises there.) He had me try several times and he said I sung in a different key each time (personally I didn't even notice), and I could tell I wasn't even singing as well as I usually do because nerves were making it hard to focus.
Really, I think it sounded quite awful.
Anyway, from the terrible singing I switched to my prepared monologs and those went neither amazingly or terribly. I only actually had time to go through one, and the director just told me to focus on involving the audience more when I spoke. After I was done with that I climbed off the stage, shuffled back to my seat, and watched the rest of the people there sing far... far better than I ever could.
After the individual work we all gathered together to learn part of the dance routine for the show that we would be doing in the auditions today (Tuesday). I've also done some dancing before, but that was all country/contra dancing and the new stuff was not coming to me very well. It was kind of intimidating working along side theater/dance majors who knew the kinds of steps were doing already, but I was doing my best and kind of flip flopping my way through it.
Once the workshop was done, I went through the rest of my day feeling pretty pessimistic about my chances in the actual auditions. I figured I'd perform my song even worse when I sung along with someone playing, and the dancing really had not gone over well for me either.
Then yesterday (Monday) night I showed up for my actual audition. It lasted about five minutes and was... awkward. First off, the pianist playing for me was my coworker from last year in the Box Office, and secondly I was spot on about singing terribly with the pianist. My timing and my tune was off and it... wasn't great. My monologs I felt went pretty smoothly, but I was kicking myself all the way home for my vocal performance.
I kept telling myself that at least I had given it a shot, and it was worth it for the experience, but I was pretty disappointed in myself overall and was highly, highly skeptical of having any chance at all of actually getting cast with a part.
Then tonight we had the "call backs" where everyone who had auditioned came to participate in learning the dance, singing a song from the actual musical, and then worked in groups on cold readings from the scripts for both "Kiss Me Kate" and "A Midsummer."
Well, tonight was a complete different side of the coin in so many ways. Maybe it was because I'd already convinced myself it was fine if I didn't get a part as long as I had fun enjoying the new experience of auditioning, but I was so much more relaxed and into the stuff we did tonight than I was last night. We started off learning the dance as a group (there were somewhere between thirty and forty of us) and somehow I'd gained the ability to actually dance between Saturday and today, because while I wasn't anywhere near the best, I wasn't doing half bad. Several of the people from the workshop told me I improved vastly in the dancing, and I was able to concentrate less on the moves and more on simply enjoying the experience. We did the same intense footwork (we were moving fast and hard) for about an hour and a half as we danced in a large group, and then split into smaller groups and it was a millions of fun.
After the dancing we split into odd and even numbered groups, and the actors with odd numbered tags went to go work on cold readings for Midsummer while the evens began working on Kate. We learned the opening piece from the musical and, once again, singing was my weakest part of the night, but it went well enough and from there we got into cold readings. The girl I was working with is one of the better actresses in the theater department and we really got into playing Kate and Petruchio. In the few short scenes we were given to do we screamed at each other, stomped around, mocked each other, and she even slapped me in the face (with permission). It was a ton of fun, and brought me back to the good ol' days of when the Squirrel was playing Kate and I was playing Petruchio in Lena's version of Taming of the Shrew.
Eventually we switched with the even numbered actors, and started working on Midsummer stuff. We had some time before we actually were called upon for auditioning so I started working with a few of the others on practicing the slates we were given for the cold readings. I got to try out being both Puck and Oberon, and it was really interesting getting to know some of the people I'd been watching on stage for the last year. Some of them were pretty cool, and all of them were quite different from the characters I'd seen them play on stage. (Also, Martyr, the guy that looks like you looks less like you close up.)
When I left school a little after 10:00 pm, I felt much more optimistic about the entire auditioning experience. I still have no idea if I'll get a part or not, but I believe my chances are better now, and even if I don't I'm very glad I took the time to go through this whole thing. It was yet another new experience and step in the world of theater, and I'd never would have had the opportunity to try in my homeschooling acting.
Mostly I am happy with myself for trying, and for sticking to it even though I was feeling pretty pessimistic last night. It was something new and exciting, and it added yet another fun bit of history to my life that I will be able to call upon in years to come. I got to meet some interesting new people, and I learned some fun new things, and that's part of what college is all about right?
Now longer it is no longer even Tuesday, but I haven't gone to sleep yet so I am going to pretend it is. I should probably go through and edit this, but I'm afraid "ain't nobody got time fo' dat" right now. As I wrap up this latest addition to "The Opinion Section," I just want to thank the wonderful Duchess again for all the time, effort, and attention she put into planting the interest in theater that got me to even go out and try this.
Thanks Olivia, it was great.
Pax
P.S. Here's a picture of me being Mavolio in Twelfth Night for your enjoyment... or terror. Whichever.
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Guess who finally got around to reading this... :P
ReplyDeleteAuditioning is definitely a skill in itself. It takes an entirely different kind of bravado than performing. In the last four years I've gone from so-nervous-I-think-I'll-be-sick to... very slightly less. :P I know how I react to certain parts of auditions, and how to anticipate certain mistakes. For example, picking songs that sit in a certain part of my range. Or running up and down the stairs before I practice, because I know I'll be out of breath in front of the directors.
Some things just take practice, and I've gotten that from the shows (and show choir) I've been in. My dancing used to be terrible, and now it's okay. Not near professional, but good enough that the choreographer of Sound of Music wanted to make sure I had a dancing role.
And some things are still terrible. I have yet to perform a monologue because I always get so nervous I back out of auditioning, and I'm fairly convinced that I will never, ever get a part if the audition involves improv.
I also kind of really love auditions now, even if they make me way more nervous than most performances. For Sound of Music we had three nights in a row, auditions and callbacks. For the third night I had to do seven songs and two dances, more than anyone else. One of the dances I only got to run through once before doing it in front of the directors. I was exhausted by the end of the night. But it was still awesome. (Well, I suppose that depends on the place and the people... it was a really encouraging environment. There were four other women called back for Maria, and they all rejoiced with me when I was called back too, becoming more competition for them.)
TL;DR: Yeah, what you said. Keep auditioning. It'll get easier.