light the lights...
So I'm back in the land of community theater. Went to auditions Friday night with no real expectations.
This particular group has a mass audition in the spring and casts it's whole summer's worth of theater in one fell swoop. So depending on whether you are going for a play or a musical, you have different hurdles to get past. Since I only ever audition for plays I don't have to do the dance and singing auditions, which makes it one stop shopping for me. But you still have to sit in a room and have four directors looking at you as you read for 45 seconds and they move on to the next person in your group.
And there's the usual flurry of paperwork and picture taking when you arrive. Then you stand around clutching script pages in damp hands (it was VERY warm in the waiting room) until they come around and call your name. I happened to get there the same night as my BFF. I hadn't seen him since January, so it was nice to get a chance to catch up.
We were there the second weekend of auditions, and we were only auditioners 40 and 41. This rather explains the personal Facebook note from the prez of the organization to me asking if I would be attending, I think. Over and above the fact that we did a show together year before last and had a great time.
Anyway, you do you thing, with the usual standard speech about "just because we don't read you for a particular role doesn't mean we're not considering you for that show. We can tell a lot from your audition, from whatever reading we give you." Which is true and all, but it does rather mean that your chances of getting cast come down to a reading of maybe a minute or two in length. It's a distinctly unfair process to newcomers. If you've already worked with a director, they know what you can do ... if you're an unknown quantity, you've got to sell yourself IMMEDIATELY. And if you happen to get a reading that's not a good fit -- or as has happened to me, you're reading with someone really inexperienced -- it can be hard to break through. But that's the way the cookie crumbles in this kind of a set up.
In years past, the directors have gone right from the Saturday morning auditions into the casting room where they all sit around and fight over the talent pool. This year they waited a day, so we didn't get our calls until Sunday afternoon. So right after I got to my parents house for Sunday dinner, my phone rang, and lo and behold it was the director who's cast me in 4 out of the 5 shows I've been in with this group! Not having done any prep work for auditions I had no idea what the part was that I was agreeing to. She just said "I want you to be Eva, one of the sisters" and I said yes.
The play is Mrs McThing ... and I haven't read a really good synopsis yet. It was written by Mary Chase of Harvey fame. Something about witches and gangsters and a boy turned into a Stepford-y version of himself. I found an excerpt on Google books which had a bit of some of my lines, from which I can see that I am the bossy sister (of three), and that "Radcliffe taught us how to dress." Over-dressed and bossy. Hmmm... Okay, make with the wise-cracks. LOL. Hey ... Helen Hayes was the lead in the show when it was on Broadway in the 50s. Also Ernest Borgnine and Fred Gwynne -- who went on to be in a little show called The Munsters. I sort of hate hokeyness.... but it's summer theater in a BARN for goodness sakes...
Also good is that the BFF is also in the show as the mobster man. Of course he's also in Streetcar as Mitch, so he gets to be busier than I this summer. They did a lot of double casting, especially among the men, but that could be partially because the first show the season is Twelve Angry Men. Which needs at least 13 men. That's a LOT for a smallish community theater to put together, especially when there are three other plays and two other musicals to cast. And I about fell over when I saw the chorus of 30 in Hello, Dolly. Where they're going to put them all I just don't know. The "stage" (it's theater in the round, so it's more like "the open bit in the middle of the seats") is like 20 by 30 feet. It's TINY. But the way these things go, the more actors, the more audience, especially when there are kids in the chorus, so you have to factor that into the formula.
I get to go and pick up my script tomorrow, so I'll be able to tell more then what I'm in for. But it's going to be one wacky May/June!!
This particular group has a mass audition in the spring and casts it's whole summer's worth of theater in one fell swoop. So depending on whether you are going for a play or a musical, you have different hurdles to get past. Since I only ever audition for plays I don't have to do the dance and singing auditions, which makes it one stop shopping for me. But you still have to sit in a room and have four directors looking at you as you read for 45 seconds and they move on to the next person in your group.
And there's the usual flurry of paperwork and picture taking when you arrive. Then you stand around clutching script pages in damp hands (it was VERY warm in the waiting room) until they come around and call your name. I happened to get there the same night as my BFF. I hadn't seen him since January, so it was nice to get a chance to catch up.
We were there the second weekend of auditions, and we were only auditioners 40 and 41. This rather explains the personal Facebook note from the prez of the organization to me asking if I would be attending, I think. Over and above the fact that we did a show together year before last and had a great time.
Anyway, you do you thing, with the usual standard speech about "just because we don't read you for a particular role doesn't mean we're not considering you for that show. We can tell a lot from your audition, from whatever reading we give you." Which is true and all, but it does rather mean that your chances of getting cast come down to a reading of maybe a minute or two in length. It's a distinctly unfair process to newcomers. If you've already worked with a director, they know what you can do ... if you're an unknown quantity, you've got to sell yourself IMMEDIATELY. And if you happen to get a reading that's not a good fit -- or as has happened to me, you're reading with someone really inexperienced -- it can be hard to break through. But that's the way the cookie crumbles in this kind of a set up.
In years past, the directors have gone right from the Saturday morning auditions into the casting room where they all sit around and fight over the talent pool. This year they waited a day, so we didn't get our calls until Sunday afternoon. So right after I got to my parents house for Sunday dinner, my phone rang, and lo and behold it was the director who's cast me in 4 out of the 5 shows I've been in with this group! Not having done any prep work for auditions I had no idea what the part was that I was agreeing to. She just said "I want you to be Eva, one of the sisters" and I said yes.
The play is Mrs McThing ... and I haven't read a really good synopsis yet. It was written by Mary Chase of Harvey fame. Something about witches and gangsters and a boy turned into a Stepford-y version of himself. I found an excerpt on Google books which had a bit of some of my lines, from which I can see that I am the bossy sister (of three), and that "Radcliffe taught us how to dress." Over-dressed and bossy. Hmmm... Okay, make with the wise-cracks. LOL. Hey ... Helen Hayes was the lead in the show when it was on Broadway in the 50s. Also Ernest Borgnine and Fred Gwynne -- who went on to be in a little show called The Munsters. I sort of hate hokeyness.... but it's summer theater in a BARN for goodness sakes...
Also good is that the BFF is also in the show as the mobster man. Of course he's also in Streetcar as Mitch, so he gets to be busier than I this summer. They did a lot of double casting, especially among the men, but that could be partially because the first show the season is Twelve Angry Men. Which needs at least 13 men. That's a LOT for a smallish community theater to put together, especially when there are three other plays and two other musicals to cast. And I about fell over when I saw the chorus of 30 in Hello, Dolly. Where they're going to put them all I just don't know. The "stage" (it's theater in the round, so it's more like "the open bit in the middle of the seats") is like 20 by 30 feet. It's TINY. But the way these things go, the more actors, the more audience, especially when there are kids in the chorus, so you have to factor that into the formula.
I get to go and pick up my script tomorrow, so I'll be able to tell more then what I'm in for. But it's going to be one wacky May/June!!