Sometimes I really don’t make the best choices.
Yesterday was filled with bad ones.

There was a random cattle call for Spider-man 4 yesterday here in Charlotte (yes…there will be a 4th). I was excited to be put on the list and given the opportunity to audition for the movie, set to start filming in February. I was not very excited about the fact that auditions didn’t start until 4pm and I had somewhere to be at 7pm a pretty hefty distance away.

I decided to show up early so I could get seen early and then not have to rush to my next fabulous thing (more on that later). There were no assigned times and a billion people showed up to this random Caribbean Restaurant (Really?) which could not hold us. They asked us to line up outside. It was 87 or more degrees. Yay.

I got a little nervous because I needed to stay pretty and I also needed to sing in a couple hours. The Casting Director was late and it was a very slow process. I finally got seen at 5:30 – the time I had decided I needed to leave. The CD was nice, I guess. But I read my monologue for him and was not asked to read it again on camera. Woohoo waste of time!

So, I run to my car, get my directions set and hit the road.

Crap. Traffic. ALL the traffic.

I mean, seriously, I’ve never seen so much red on the little traffic map before in my life! 3 crazy accidents all one the first highway I needed. My loving husband furiously searched for an alternate route for me. (He’s so sweet.)  The alternate route, while more helpful than the parking lot that was 85 south, was full of lights. 14 miles of lights. Needless to say, I was not making it on time to my next gig.

Let’s take a moment to take in what the next gig was:

A Master Class with Stephen Schwartz.
Stephen. F*ing. Schwartz.

You don’t know him? Here’s a link http://www.stephenschwartz.com/
You don’t feel like clicking? He wrote the music for such musicals and movies as Godspell, Pippin, The Prince of Egypt, Wicked and Enchanted. You’ve heard of him now.

Since I paid my first born to sing for this man, you can imagine how upset I was that I was going to be no less than 20 minutes late. Unless I could somehow alter the time-space continuum, those were the facts. I pretty much panicked the entire drive. The Clater Kaye Theatreworks people were very kind and said it was alright that I’d be late.  But still. Who wants to make that sort of impression?

The class was great. There was a Q&A at the beginning and I got to find out a lot about Stephen’s style, influences and pet peeves! At about 8:30, we finally started singing. 10 would go at a time and Stephen (as well as collaborators on a review they’re doing in Hickory) would critique us one by one.

At 10:00-ish it was finally time for me to sing! I picked the song I do the best – coincidentally Schwartz’s favorite song he’s ever written – “Stranger to the Rain.” I was exhausted, mentally, emotionally and physically. I almost switched to something else that was easier on my voice, but I came there to sing HIS song. So I did.

It wasn’t bad. It was pretty good for the state I was in, but it wasn’t great. It needed to BE great. I felt myself fall out of character. The accompanist wasn’t amazing (it’s not an easy piece). I pushed my high D. I knew it wasn’t there but I tried anyway. Again, it wasn’t bad. I got a lot of praise from the class because it was a good enough audition. But it wasn’t clear or easy. It needs to be both.

Stephen Schwartz is a doll. He is sooooo nice. I <3 him. His critique was fair and far kinder than I thought I deserved. He wants me to concentrate on making my break less obvious and told me to work on my high belt so it sounds less forced. (Yup. I know!!) He did say it started out really really well, though. (That was sweet) He did not, however, invite me to be in his next Broadway hit show

How did I “sabotage” myself?

1. I knew the Spider-man thing would make it too close.
2. Instead of breathing, I freaked out the entire drive.
3. I did not hydrate myself well-enough
4. Knowing my voice was tired, I should have switched songs.
5. I was never “in” my song. I know better than that!

Until I can walk into a room and rock the crap out of anything – no matter my mood or physical or emotional well-being – I’m not ready for the big time. How seriously to I take this? That is a very scary question that I have been avoiding answering for a long time. I need to get my priorities straight and figure out exactly what I want with my life. If it’s what I already have then I need to start appreciating that or I need to start being WAY more proactive.

Like for realz.

So, Disney is in search of the new Ariel for their Broadway show. They are going to several cities across the country. The closest one for me, unfortunately, is Philadelphia. Now, Philly isn’t inconvenient since both of our parents live outside the city in NJ, however getting there costs money we don’t really have.

What to do? It’s hard to explain how very badly I want to be the Little Mermaid. My closest friends and family know. I’m 2-3 inches too tall for the show in Disney World, so I had ultimately given up on my dream. Broadway, though is different. They can hire anyone, right?

Maybe I’ll start a fund. It’s only about $225 round trip.

UPDATE: a friend has donated miles!  Now it’ll only be $80!!

UPDATE: I’m going!!!

It’s been way too long since I’ve updated!  I did stuff that pertains to this blog but never told you all about it.  That’s not nice of me.  People who actually read this might want to know!

Oh.  I chose not to audition for “Sound of Music.”  The theatre is so far away and my friend wasn’t going to be going out for it after all.  Plus, I kinda don’t like the show.  Sorry to all you die hards.

I did, however, audition for the Fantasticks.  That theatre was way closer and a friend of mine is directing it.  I dressed super cute and young and decided to go and rock it.  I got lost on the way.  Then I messed up a song I’m usally pretty awesome at.  Oops.  Thankfully, those involved know I’m  better than that and I got asked to return for callbacks.

I dressed even cuter for callbacks.  It was basically between 3 of us for the only girl role.  2 of us were “old” and married and 1 was super adorable and the actual age of Louisa.  We all gave our best performances and put our own spins on the character.  It was just a matter of who the lead boy would be.

As usual, my height and age doomed me.  The Matt that was chosen was shorter and way younger.  There’s no way I could have looked 16 next to him.  My friend went with the youngest girl for the role, as suspected.  Oh well!

I’m really freakin’ excited for my next audition:
Evil Dead the Musical.
There seriously could not be anything more awesome than that.

Auditions January 10th.
Details later!

…How to get to Sesame Street?

OK!  If I had updated with as many calls I’ve received from Sesame Street then I would have had lots of posts.  I mean lots.  Let’s get on with it already!

On Saturday they called me late in the evening and left a message (I was taking a wonderful bubble bath and missed the call).  It was the lady I had been talking to letting me know that they were ready to offer me the job that “we talked about.”  I tried to call her back but to no avail.  Left a message to tell her I wanted all the details!

Sunday came and went.  We hung some lights!

On Monday morning I got a call from someone ELSE from the company.  A lovely lady.  She proceeded to tell me that they jumped the gun in offering me the Jenny-only job and then explained to me why this was so freakin’ hard.  2 people were previously cast in 50/5o splits for the two roles.  It would be a little mean to come in and make the other girl do both while I get to hang out and let the understudy be Rosita.  If they had originally cast the show that way, this wouldn’t be a problem.

I let her know how uncomfortable I am working in a costume and how I suck at dancing.  She concurred and told me she’d keep figuring it out.  I apologized for making her job so hard and said I’d gladly wait for the final update.

Mrs. Sesame rung me on Tuesday with a final decision.  She let me know that the 50/50 split was the only way.  They wanted be so badly though, that they were willing to make the choreography easier for my abilities.  (Haha…kick ball changes and pas de bourree?) She also talked about helping me adapt to the costume in stages and blah blah blah.  I just let her know that I had an appointment with a foot doctor and that I’d let her know for sure right after.

***BTW, my feet had been hurting for a while but never thought about it until I started waking up in the night in excruciating pain.  I wasn’t expecting her to call me until Thursay, so I felt guilty not disclosing that info from the start.  I honestly thought it was nothing***

By Wednesday afternoon I made my decision to stay in Charlotte, but she wasn’t expecting my call until 5:00 so I waited to call her after the appointment.  In my lovely Doctor’s visit I found out that I had plantar fascititis and thus was given a physical reason on top of my emotional reasons to not do the tour.  I felt badly saying “no,” but as one of the women at my agency said, “It’s a fine art; but really easy once you start…”

I hope so.

Well, I guess you don’t need to tell me how to get to Sesame Street after all.  I might be blacklisted

You certainly can’t just wait around for things to happen in this industry.  Since I have a few weeks before I find out anything on Sesame Street, I plan for my next theatre auditions locally.  I keep getting email after email for shows in and around the Charlotte area.  Many of them audition around the same time so how do I decide which ones to go for?

The frustrating thing about community theatre is that you can’t audition for everything and just see what offers you get.  Not like in New York.  You have to choose carefully so as not to offend anyone.  I have done that here and totally not on purpose.  I hate disappointing people.

I’ve chosen 2 shows (for now) that I’ll definitely audition for; The Fantasticks and Sound of Music.  Honestly, I don’t really love either show but I have good reasons to go out for them:

• I’m in musical withdrawal
• My friend is directing one of the shows
• That same show is close to home
• My friends have worked with the other director before and loved it
• The same friends are going out for that show and it would be fun to work with them
• I need to sing and act.  Now.

Oftentimes theatre is more about the relationships and bonds you form than anything else.  I crave those friendships.  I love working with good directors even if I don’t like the show because the process is fascinating when you get to see their brilliance come to life.

Hopefully I get notice from SS before I go to these auditions.  Last thing I want to do is piss anyone off!

P.S. I need to get some film/tv/commerical auditions!  I’m getting bored.

I got another phone call yesterday from the Sesame Street people.  I was pretty happy since I had to tell them I had no availability last week.   They must like me since they were now asking me about my availability for after December 29th!  I let the lady know I was free now and she was excited.  She called to give me details about how this particular tour works.  I will now use bullet points!

• The show is a truck and bus tour (travel on mondays, off on tuesdays and practice/shows for the rest of the week).
• Mostly up and down the east coast.  East of the Mississippi.
• $361 per week and a $336 per diem (per week) to pay for hotels
• I would double 2 roles:  The lead singer, Jenny who is the music teacher and wears no costume and Rosita, a blue monster who dances.
• I would get $40 more per week to play Rosita
• I would have December 22-28th off and they would help pay me to get home and back to the next leg of the tour.

There you go.  6 years ago this would be way more intriguing.  I told the lady that I’m not a strong dancer.  All they have to do is watch the tape of the audition and they would know.  I really have no desire to dress as a monster.  I have claustrophobia in those types of costumes.  When I auditioned, I checked off the box that said “production singer only.”  If this was for Jenny only, I would have told her I was available tomorrow.

The actual contracts start going out tomorrow.  We’ll see what/if I get offered!

UPDATE: They called me again.  They are no longer making one person do both roles.  Only casting for Jenny!  Yippee!  BUT now I won’t know for a few weeks.

So begins the wait…

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…

This is my first post.  Sweet.

Ahh!  What do I even write?

This will be a blog about my singing and acting stuff.  It may or not be interesting to you.  I may start with my recent trip to NYC.  Or about the show I was in for 2 seconds but got cancelled because of the economy.  Yay!  I guess we’ll see.

For now, I’m gonna try and figure out how to format this thing.

I’ll add a clip of me singing a song from “Children of Eden.”

Stranger to the Rain

So, I used to live in NJ.  You think I’d go to New York all the time for auditions, right?  Sadly, that was not the case.  I think I went to 4 auditions total in the city.  I went so seldom that when I would go, I’d psych myself out and usually have an awful audition.  Seriously awful.

Well…you always want what you can’t have.  After moving to Hawaii, New Hampshire and North Carolina, I greatly regretted not going as often as I could when I lived closer.  In September, I decided to spend a month or so up there.  My Husband was incredibly supportive and all these pieces seemed to fall together as if the Universe was screaming, “it’s your time! Go now!” (So much back story…I can tell I have a lot of blogs to write).

My husband and I went up to NJ for our 10-year HS reunion.  (Am I that old?!)  I took the car and headed north to my Grandparents-in-law’s house.  The plan was to visit for a few hours, keep my car in their driveway and then stay for a while with a friend who lived on Long Island.  Well, that fell through and I was left commuting from NJ to NY EVERY day (thanks to my Husband’s Aunt and her Husband for letting me sleep in their son’s room!!!)! The trip was now more expensive than planned, but I had these crazy high hopes that I was going to land a job, so it was ok.

I went to a few auditions in the beginning of the week (Cinderella Asia Tour, Disney Cruise Line, Jean Ann Ryan cruise and Drowsy Chaperone). I experienced my first “typing out.” The casting director, music director and director line you up in a room, look at your headshots and resumes for 2 seconds and decide right then and there if you even look the part before you sing.  It’s nice because it saves everyone time, but it can still be a little disappointing.  On Wednesday, I got to meet with a New York Agent who represents those for musical and film/TV.  He was very nice and said kind things about me and my talent, however he couldn’t represent me because I didn’t live in NY *and* I wasn’t in any union (SAG, AFTRA or Equity).  Understandable.  I was just excited to have an appointment!

The rest of my week was spent back in South Jersey with my parents and in-laws. I even auditioned for a show down there.  Why not?  I was up north to get a job!  What I learned at that audition is that I sing pretty but maybe I should not audition for dance heavy shows (42nd Street).  Amazingly, they did call me back, but I couldn’t make it.

Damn.  This is gonna be long.  Sorry!

Ok…back to the city!  Stayed with an actor friend from a million years earlier in my life. Nice of him to let me stay but never got more than 5 1/2 hours of sleep each night…bad for a singer!  That week I got to see another agent (told me the same things as the last), auditioned for Oliver in PA and a Christmas Carol (my first equity audition)!  I waited around the Equity building to try and audition for Fiddler on the Roof.  Didn’t get seen.

Got sick.  Not good at not sleeping.  Spent the weekend recovering.  Oh and wasting my LIFE trying to audition for Grease.  If you put that you’re gonna cast the WHOLE show on your breakdown, 500 people *will* show up.  And they did.  After they finally realized that it was time to Type out, they kept  like 10 girls.  They were looking for 2 girls for the cast.  Neither of which looks like me.  I would have stayed home and slept!  Lots of angry people that day.

Next week: Auditioned for Bye Bye Birdie (they had us dance first. Epic Fail), Babes in Toyland, some country show, South Pacific and the Sesame Street Live tour.  Typed out of the Palace Theatre season auditions (They were just casting Wedding Singer. I was the only one there who was even alive in the 80’s!!) and lots of waiting around for no reason to try and audition for thing called Encores!  A crazy week, but ending with Sesame Street was awesome.  I nailed that audition.  No, I would not be a muppet.  The same week, I signed up with Central Casting to do some extra work and got to see my best friend sing and play at the Bitter End.

Ok final week!  Yay!  I thought about auditioning for the Addam’s Family musical.  It’s new.  It’s by Andrew Lippa (love).  I put my name down on the list but had a feeling it was going to happen.  I seriously hate equity.  Finally got to try and audition for the Fiddler on the Roof tour (I thought I had a Debra Messing thing going on…). Got typed out.  Oh well.  Auditioned for a fun cruise ship company, Stiletto Entertainment.  What an amazing tour that would have been.  I kinda sucked.  They were nice, though and complimented me on my hair.  Um…ok.  The same week, I auditioned for Prather Family Entertainment.  They have a few theatres all over the country and tend to have the same seasons at each.  Had a great audition singing “Something to Talk About” by Bonnie Raitt.  They called me back in and wanted me to sing something country (I thought I just did?) but I didn’t have any more sheet music.  Wound up singing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” in a country twang.  Hilarious.  They seemed to like it and my ability to play guitar.  Apparently they were casting the Ring of Fire musical.  I felt pretty certain I had nailed the role.  Never got a call.  Oh well.

So I went home to Charlotte, NC.  No roles. No grand jobs.  I came home with much more, though.  I learned how to rock an audition.  I learned how to shrug off a crappy audition.  I learned how not to take not being cast personally.  I don’t feel like I suck and I have no regrets.  I made new friends and reconnected with friends from the past.  I even received new familial relationships and bonded broken ones.  All-in-all it was a wonderful trip.  I can’t wait to go back and audition more.  As taxing and tiring daily auditioning can be, I miss every second of it.  BUT I am very happy to be home with my husband, my kitty cat in my pretty house.

Next blog: the show that almost was