In the meantime

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.

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Sesame Street Live Tour?

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…

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…

My first post

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

Auditioning in New York City

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 🙂