Let me tell you, I had no idea we would end up where we ended up, but what a journey it has been! For
the late-starters in the theatre/MT world, I submit my entry for a prize! I think other themes for our
experience could be, “trust the process” and “that escalated quickly.”
Programs Applied to:
BOCO, Elon, Michigan, TXST, CCM, CMU, Ithaca, Shenandoah MT, Pt Park MT/Acting, BW MT, UofA
MT/Acting, Cap21/Molloy MT, Ball State MT, Montclair State MT/Acting, Missouri State MT/Acting, Marymount MT, Pace MT/Acting (all 3), Northern CO MT, UNC Greensboro, Minnesota Guthrie, UNCSA, CSUF, SDST
Prescreens passed: Pt Park, Shenandoah, UNCG, Marymount (required for regional audition)
Walk-Ins: Ohio U Acting, Ohio Northern MT, Oklahoma City Acting, SCAD, Viterbo,
Withdrew: didn’t submit an app for SCAD, didn’t audition for CSUF Acting, didn’t submit Viterbo after
audition
Wait-listed at: Northern CO MT, Pace FTVC
Artistically Accepted to:
Montclair State MT, Missouri State Acting, Ohio U Acting, Ohio Northern MT, UNC Greensboro MT
emphasis, Oklahoma City Acting, UNCSA, Cap 21/Molloy MT, Pt Park Theatre Arts, SDST Acting (BA
Emphasis in Performance, Acting)
Coach: MTCA, we LOVE our coaches and the support we got at Unifieds and beyond was invaluable.
Summer Programs: TPAP Panorama
Background:
My D started dancing at age 2, competing at age 4. There’s a highly competitive dance studio every 5 miles around here. Somehow, she has danced for 15 years of her young life! We just kind of got sucked in. She showed early interest in theatre, having fun doing her annual class play (elementary school lol). I tried finding some community theatre, vocal or choir opportunities, but they were hard to find, and what we did find was just ok quality-wise and difficult to balance with her already heavy dance schedule. My D is a fantastic performer. People often stop us and say they were drawn to watching her because she’s very expressive. She feels deeply, and it comes through in all of her art. She also sprouted a love for drawing in middle school, and emotions/ expressions are very clear in her drawings as well. We were sure she was destined for some sort of creative career - she wasn’t going to be a desk job type of person.
She has always loved musicals, but she became obsessed in high school. She wanted vocal lessons but we didn’t have any free time or money leftover from all her dance (she was on the high school varsity dance team and studio team) and hadn’t auditioned for the school musical due to schedule conflicts, so she found tutorials on vocal tech via YouTube and practiced on her own, starting Sophomore year. After some time, I realized she was really serious, so I started looking for opportunities for her summer before Junior year. She did a local five-day summer MT program and loved every minute of it, and she said she didn’t want it to end. We both saw it as an excellent test to see what this all meant. It was one of the first times she had to sing alone, in front of others (besides family karaoke or performances in elementary school), first time doing improv or any acting training. It was scary but she loved it all. For her junior year, she shifted her priorities. Instead of going back to the school dance team, she auditioned for show choir. I started trying to figure out what she might do for college and started reading CC - you know the saga post and a year’s worth (or two) of final decisions and said OMG, no way. That is too intense. She can do a BA at a LAC, do theatre on the side and keep growing in undergrad and find her way through that path if that is what she wants.
Towards the middle of junior year she auditioned for the spring school musical and was cast in a
role where she was onstage most of the show, sang with the leads, had a line or two, and she was over the moon. She still competed in dance with her studio, so her days were full between the musical, show choir, and studio dance comp. The best thing I did that winter was to have her apply for summer programs. It gave us a taste for the application process, finding monologues and songs, submitting auditions, and using Get Accepted. We did an iphone portrait mode head shot, found monologues online and used a Thoroughly Modern Millie song (what did we know – nothing!). She was accepted to the BOCO MTDI and TPAP. She chose TPAP. Her old high school is a very competitive, suburban district, very focused on academics. It was clear she would not get what she needed there, so she auditioned for a performing arts high school to transfer her senior year. Somewhere amid all this (about April), we pulled the trigger and started working with MTCA. That summer, TPAP was just what she needed to grow as an artist and help her feel confident in her path. I can’t say enough good things about that program, the staff/teachers and students are wonderful.
When she got home from TPAP we dove into apps. We work well as a team. We broke everything
down into reasonable chunks to work each weekend. No complaining was allowed (from either of us). I gave up anything extra, especially on weekends, until after auditions. She worked on her pieces. She was literally starting from scratch. She had no song book and had never done Shakespeare, but had to learn that well enough for prescreens, in addition to her songs and other monologues. The “what else do you have” part would have to wait for after prescreens! We got applications and prescreens in early (first week of October.) The responses came pretty quickly; it was a lot of no’s. It was expected but still very hard. She was going to a new school, was just starting to make friends there, wasn’t competing in dance (for the first time in 12 years!) – almost everything had changed. It was very emotional. When we decided to go this path, we knew it was a big gamble and were prepared to take a gap year as a very likely scenario, or figure out her own way forward (go to school locally, find training, do local theatre etc). We knew she was a wild card applicant. With every no or other setback, she gained some insight
and motivated herself to work harder; her ability to see beyond the immediate disappointments helped me feel confident she would make it through this tough process and ultimately this career path. With the passes from Pt Park and Shenandoah, we breathed a sigh of relief, it was just the validation we needed that we weren’t completely delusional. But I did have those late-night “panic buying” moments and started looking around for more schools to add. I had seen a post from Moo re 15 auditions statistically amounts to 2 offers, and after the prescreen “No-pocalypse,” she had less than 15. She had made her original list wanting only MT programs. But when she got the passes for Pace Acting prescreens, we talked about wanting to expand her list. We looked for programs where they offer voice along with acting and allowed everyone to audition for musicals. Through her work with her monologue coach and conservatory classes, she was growing her love for acting. We added more schools to the list:
Guthrie, UNCSA, UNCG and most of the Acting programs where we already applied for MT were added
where we could (mostly added at Unifieds) – basically a full MT track and Acting track. Her MTCA mock
audition in November was invaluable. It helped her feel like she could do it. While she was still very nervous, she got the sense that she fit in the room and that she had strengths that helped her. She had two early auditions in January, BW and Marymount. These were super helpful for getting our system down – what to bring, her audition outfits, how early she needed to get up before audition times, etc.
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