<p>I highly recommend that you learn to read music well, and take any theory classes available. Piano lessons are helpful even if you play another instrument. Being good at sight-singing may help you down the road. I have read on these threads in the past that many singers do not read music, and I would think that would make it difficult for the student AFTER he/she is accepted into a BFA and especially BM. Music theory kicks some kids' butts at college.</p>
<p>There's not a set "way" to get into programs. There are people who don't do any theatre/vocal/dancing at all, then in there Senior year decide to go for it, and get in. On the other hand, there's people who have been singing since they were 5 and are rejected everywhere.</p>
<p>It's totally dependant on YOU. Work on what you NEED to. Don't over practice. Mix theory with performance and try to balance -both-.</p>
<p>mrdutt, My d is the same age as yours so you may want to discount my advice, since D has not been accepted into college. But one thing we have tried to increase for her lately is the number of auditions she gets. We live in a theatre intense area so there are many and many varied opportunities for her to audition. This is has forced her learn about different shows- musicals and straight theatre- which has made her expand the type of material she is looking at and practicing. I guess it is the same advice as looking for songs and monologues but with a show in mind the search isn't completely open- ended. </p>
<p>The other way this is helping her - we hope- is she is learning about her own audition anxieties. When she was little she never gave auditions a thought and was rarely nervous, but as she has become older and the competition is different she has had to deal with serious nerve issues. She now knows the sleepless nights and stomach pains the week before auditions is her nerves and will pass when the audition is done.</p>
<p>The one caveat with this is that I don't think it is fair to audition for things she would never consider a part or can't do because of other commitments just for practice, so we do have to pick and choose. But as i said we live in a theatre intense area where there is no shortage of reasonable opportunities.</p>
<p>I'm probably not the one to give good advice since my D is in the midst of auditioning and waiting to get into a college program. But -- my two cents would be to make sure your child has FUN along the way. I don't have enough experience to know what the magic formula is but if they don't have fun doing it and it becomes a job, it's not going to work no matter how hard they try. Whatever "it" is, it has to come from the heart and the passion the child has for this. I figure that no matter what happens in the end, I will know that my D had a tremendous experience and warm memories doing it all ... the high school productions, church singing, forensics, choral events, summer camps and the like. I think it's pretty darned important in the end.</p>
<p>Here are some thoughts:
1. Making a commitment to applying to an audition based MT program is a major lifestyle commitment not only for students but parents as well. Voice lessons, dance classes, school and community theater, transportation logistics for these things all become the focus of how you spend your time and organize your life in many respects.</p>
<ol>
<li>It is a macro as well as micro kind of process. There are different stages to the process of getting from 10th grade to freshman year at a MT program and within each stage there is a lot of preparation to do. In our experience, each phase also serves as the building blocks for the next. Put together a long term game plan early. Identify what you think the different phases will be for your kid and when they will kick in.</li>
</ol>
<p>For example, my daughter concluded in the fall of 10th grade that MT was what she wanted in college. That kicked off a 2 1/2 year process. For us, it started with changing the nature of the voice and dance training she was receiving. In addition, as parents, we felt it critically important that our daughter have the opportunity to really test her commitment to this path. What a kid passionately believes to be their life's dream at 15 is, of course, most often not what it is at 18 or 19. </p>
<p>So we found a voice teacher that we thought was more suited to college preparation. Our daughter changed her dance classes to focus more on ballet and jazz. She also attended a 4 week summer intensive MT program at a nearby college with a BFA program, the summer after 10th grade, not only for the training, but more importantly as a litmus test of whether this was what she wanted to do in college. She came back from that more committed than ever.</p>
<p>That brought us into the next phase. In addition to continuing her training, we started looking at schools the fall of 11th grade. Our goal was to have the final list of schools to which our daughter would apply by the end of 11th grade. We visited schools during the spring, poured over their websites. We also, one again, felt it important that our daughter have the opportunity to test her commitment to MT at a college level. So we sent her to another summer program at a college with a BFA in MT. This one was a 6 week program where she lived on campus away from home and lived and breathed MT nonstop. Again, in addition to the training, we viewed it as a litmus test of whether she would thrive in the intensity of a college BFA program.</p>
<p>When our daughter returned from the summer program, she moved into the phase of preparing her applications and finalizing the selection of her audition pieces. Her goal was to have this completed by mid- September. Once applications were submitted, she moved into the phase of scheduling and preparing for her auditions. And then attending the auditions. She scheduled all of her auditions by mid-October so that she could control the dates and sequencing. </p>
<p>Her final phase, after auditions were completed in February of 12th grade, was the "I'm so done with high school phase". But that's a whole other story of how to balance the needs of your kid to decompress from the tremendous stresses of this process with the truancy policies of your school district :) .</p>
<ol>
<li>As is obvious from the above, this is an incredibly time consuming process. Have a well organized timeline of all the tasks that must be done and spread things out. The amount of time and effort needed to find audition materials, prepare for auditions and go to them makes the application process exponentially more time consuming than "regular" college applications. Remember that the senior year of h.s. will be fraught with "overload". Applications, auditions, normal school work, shows, other extracurriculars etc. </li>
</ol>
<p>Start the college process early. As noted, we started looking at schools in 11th grade and had the list to which to apply by the end of that year. Our daughter lined up teacher recommendations by the end of 11th grade and put the recommendation forms in their hands by the end of August. All of her applications were out by September 15th. That enabled her to focus on audition prep September - November without any other college related distractions. Schedule the auditions early so that you can control the dates and sequence. </p>
<p>As others have stated, start looking for audition materials early on. Second half of 11th grade is not too early. It takes hours of sitting on the floor reading through plays to find monologues that are a good fit. Talk to english teachers, drama teachers, voice teachers, artistic directors of shows your kid is in for suggestions on materials that are a good fit.</p>
<ol>
<li>The most important thing you can do, perhaps, is to remember how stressful this process will be on your kid. The work, the intensity, the subjective judgmental nature of auditioning, your child's own self criticism, all make this an incredible pressure cooker. Be a safe harbor for your child, a place to come to escape the pressures. Make sure to find time to do things together that are totally unrelated to any of this. Don't get so caught up in the process yourself that you lose perspective. More than ever, kids need their parents for emotional support and to help maintain balance in their life.</li>
</ol>
<p>In addition to the excellent advice about getting the best possible training available, concentrating on the academics so that grades are good (this can only help, even if your kid is applying to schools which do not put a huge focus on academics), learning to read music if they haven't already, in addition to playing an instrument or two, starting the search for appropriate audition material by reading as many plays as you can find, I would add one more bit of advice that I believe is just as important as any already listed. Go and see as many shows on stage as is humanly possible. My guess is that a lot of kids, probably most, who are auditioning for college admissions, already do this, and probably have done so since they were very young. For those of you whose kids haven't done so, please make an effort for these kids to go to shows, from high school to community theatre to regional theatre to national tours to sit-down productions in large cities. All are important and all are part of your child's theatre education. </p>
<p>If you don't live in a metropolitan area, find out what cities the national tours are visiting that are near you. Go for an evening or a weekend. Take a spring break in NYC, or Chicago, or Toronto, and see as many shows as you can. Visit the Stratford Shakespeare Festival this summer. It's important that students see professional actors performing in various types of shows. Don't just go see Wicked or Phantom or Les Mis or Hairspray or Mamma Mia, go see Sweeney Todd or The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee or Twelve Angry Men or The Color Purple or My Fair Lady or The Drowsy Chaperone on tour. Give them the opportunity to see excellent plays like August: Osage County or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Equus or The Homecoming on Broadway, or one of the ~50 off-Broadway shows. </p>
<p>Seeing theatre, whether locally or in the large theatre cities, should be a part of each and every student's preparation for a career onstage.</p>
<p>alwaysamom makes several good points. Let me just reiterate a bit about academics. Many of the high quality BFA programs are at universities or colleges where you must be accepted academically in addition to audition based admission to the MT program. In addition, much of the scholarship money that is available at such schools comes from the academic side of the admissions process. My observation is that even at schools where academics historically were not emphasized, the applicant pool contains an increasing number of high academic achievers as students deal with the increasing competitiveness of admissions to BFA programs. So my advise would be to take the most challenging high school curriculum that you can handle while maintaining a strong GPA. This will give you a broader spectrum of schools to consider and will also help with scholarships.</p>
<p>See as much theater -- musicals and straight plays -- as you can.</p>
<p>READ PLAYS
again
READ PLAYS</p>
<p>It seems getting a monologue that fits the age, type of person,etc is the most frustrating thing.</p>
<p>I asked my son what helped him the most during his auditions over the past few months. (Note: He does not yet know the outcome of these auditions, but he felt as though he gave his best performance at all and that his performance was well-received by most. He is an actor, not MT major.) He replied unconditionally: the summer programs and auditioning/performing IN THE COMMUNITY. </p>
<p>Those community theater auditions before directors he did not know, and who might ask him to read anything or change the way he presented something, were nerve-racking at first, but taught him to be comfortable in these types of unanticipated situations. Most college auditions were actually much easier, with the faculty much more appreciative and supportive. Also, he learned to perform before small groups in large auditoriums, in packed large auditoriums, and in small auditoriums--with a wide range of audience response. You can't beat that!</p>
<p>One major thing to remember is not to over-rehearse...especially in terms of monologues. A mistake a lot of kids make is that they get an acting coach and overly block and plan and rehearse their monologues to the point that they get stale or lose the spontaneity of truthful acting that is so important. When you over rehearse or let a coach make your character choices for you, the most important part of yourself as a performer (which you want to show the auditors) can get lost. In my experience, the monologues I worked on least--on which I did not work with a coach at all--had the best responses. I felt good about the auditions with those fresh monologues because I knew I was staying true to myself and my instincts as an actor, and I think this is what the auditors are looking to see you be able to do in an audition.</p>
<p>Interesting. As I have posted before, only one of the programs to which my son applied specifically stated that kids should NOT get coaching on their monologues (CMU). However. from reading CC, it is clear that MOST kids get MUCH coaching for their college auditions. A couple of programs asked my son whether he had been coached on his monologues. . .</p>
<p>I think coaching is definitely a good thing to have...it helped me tremendously in certain areas of performance and in preparing me for the whole process of auditioning (coming into the room, the process of interviewing, getting general feedback and making sure you are on the right track) but it seems that some kids feel they need to have everything totally planned and blocked and they let a coach do the preparation for them. I guess this can be a help to some and a hurt to others depending on each person's technique and approach to the monologue. It totally depends on the person. I know for me, less was more, so I figured I'd share that.</p>
<p>My D was also coached and I think it helped her tremendously. The first few times they met was all research. This coach had a large library of play/shows (which we don't ) and they went thru them together and after a few meetings my D came home with about 15 books to read. Then they met again to go over my D's choices from those 15. Her coach asked her questions about her choices and then helped her along. This really helped her think everything thru and then she was able to answer the auditiors clearly and confidently when they asked her why she made her choices. I guess it depends on the coach.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I guess it depends on the coach.
[/quote]
Exactly. The audition should reflect the student, and not the coach. It sounds like your d had a good one. A coach should NOT be making the acting decisions, micromanaging blocking, gestures, etc.</p>
<p>Would you say that athletes competing for individual Olympic events should do it on their own, without a coach, because it should be about their native talents? The coach is part of the training process, making sure the athlete (or auditioner) understands and is prepared for the process, to allow their unique talents to shine through.</p>
<p>Blueroses -- although it is possible to over-rehearse, I will say that in my lifetime of seeing thousands of auditions (although not for college admissions), I have upon a few occasions seen the signs of it, but it is much more common to see actors and materials underprepared. Part of the life of an actor is to figure out how to keep material fresh and spontaneous, even though you've done the role hundreds of times -- same for audition material.</p>
<p>Coaches seem to be ubiquitous, even to the point that I have heard of parents hiring coaches to coach kids auditioning for their school musicals and plays! (That seems taking things to far to me, but that's just me!)
My own kid worked with several different and wonderful coaches before audition season, and it was invaluable. However, it has made me feel bad thinking about the kids whose parents just cannot afford this. They are at a big disadvantage and it just seems so unfair. In fact, while my D was auditioning at BoCo, several moms and I were talking about how this MT thing is very expensive ....</p>
<p>While my S did have regular voice lessons for several years. He only had one course of acting out side of his regular class at HS. He had no coaching for college auditions. So for those who haven't gone this route things can certainly work out fine.</p>
<p>My D only had monologue lessons about 7 or 8 times so it wasn't that much. My D never had acting in school and the only other acting was in camps or in shows and they are usually just helping you with your part. So I think it was good for her just to have some one on one. I know of many kids that do it for years but frankly we couldn't afford it. I was really just was glad to have someone do the research with her since I am totally out of my area. I am much more comfortable being the Ice Hockey mom.</p>