It’s a Wonderful Life
When I got back to Charlotte, I was excited to have a musical to audition for within my first week. My agency director was putting on It’s a Wonderfil Life the Musical along with a few others. I figured nepitism was on my side. Oh! And it paid. That’s hard to get here down here.
I arrived at the audition ready to sing 2 contrasting songs; “If I were and Bell” and “Til There was You.” Well, they’re not terribly different but I don’t have much repertoire in the “classical” section of my book. I was able to sing pretty soon after I got there. For some reason the accompanist didn’t play the music, so I did most of it a cappella. Thankfully, I already saw him do the same thing to the girl ahead of me, so I was prepared and just sung the hell out of my pieces.
After singing, I had to do a few scenes. They gave me 4 separate roles to read for all in a row. I felt rather schizophrenic. I thought I had pretty much rocked it. Thanks to the month of practice in the Big Apple! I was asked to stay for the callbacks which were only an hour later.
Dressed to dance, I was ready to give them more! The callbacks went really well. I saw lots of people I know; some of whom I’d worked with before and others that I had been looking forward to working with. We were basically told we’d all be cast so I was excited.
A week later, people start getting the calls. All the roles I wanted were taken by the end of the day Wednesday. I finally got my call on Thursday and I was offered Ensemble as well as understudying Mrs. Martini (hilarious opera role). I accepted knowing I’d get paid a good amount of money and I’d be working with some great actors. I was upset, admittedly. I thought I would get a good role. I got over it in a few days 
Fast forward to last week. First week of rehearsals! We spent all night Monday dancing and staging the beginning of Act 2. I had a solo in the song; which was a fun medley of Christmas music. We left that night looking forward to finishing the choreography for the song on Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon, I received a call from Sesame Street Live! inquiring about my availability for December. I respectfully declined because I was already contracted for the local show.
So…we got to our rehearsal space later that evening. Only about half the cast was there, but I didn’t think much of it. Mark, our lead, the guy who got the whole show into motioned sits us down. The mood immediately turned somber. Mark explained for about 20 minutes how one makes a show happen; mentioning financial backers and promisary notes. He then let us know that people had backed out and how hard it was to find anyone else because of the economy. He seemed broken.
The show has to be postponed until next year when, we hope, the economy is on our side. They just didn’t have enough money to put on the show, advertise and pay us. Most of us would have probably done it for free, but the big guys just didn’t want to do that to us. I get it. It’s sad. There went a good chunk of change that we budgeted into the next 2 months.
Now I’m subsititute teaching like a mo-fo and trying to do anything extra.
Next auditions are December 8th and 9th…
