<p>OMU… Let me take a crack at your real question. Because I’ve heard it countless times before. I’ll start (because I do theatre for a living) with a story.</p>
<p>Young man walks into a college audition and tells us his name and slates his pieces… “one will be from Shakespeare’s Macbeth…” and then launches into the pieces. Now before I go on, let me just say that in that room were three people who had done dozens of Shakespeare pieces over their career. One who had played every major female role in a Shakespeare play during her career. Suffice to say, they were experts. So the young man begins…</p>
<p>“He has almost supped. Why have you left the chamber?
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?”</p>
<p>All of us knew by the third line he was playing Lady Macbeth. What goes through your mind at that moment as an adjudicator? “This person has never read the play and has no idea they are playing a woman.” As an actor in an audition you have 120-180 seconds to make me interested in you. That’s it. For that young man, at least 30 of those seconds were “why is he doing this piece? Why doesn’t he know better?” </p>
<p>Nobody in that room is BEING BROUGHT INTO THE MOMENT OF THE PLAY. That’s the goal isn’t it? Bring us to you? Make us want to be with the you/the character. Bring us on a journey. That’s great acting. </p>
<p>That story told, let me continue for a moment. Let’s say I’ve seen approximately 500 auditions over the course of the recruitment period. For us, that’s normal, for the larger schools that’s about 25% of the people they see. Of those we’ve seen, 65% are young women. Many are talented, many are lovely, many can dance and sing, are smart, are interested in training, are passionate artists. </p>
<p>Should you walk into that group, and begin with “Being Alive” we would immediately question whether or not you read the play. We would question whether or not you’ve read ANY play. After all, you are an 18 year old woman trying to play a middle aged man. We all have done this musical, in fact it is likely we have all done it more than once. (I’ve done it three times.) Since my goal is to see if you can take me into the character and on a journey, you would have lost me. I would have spent the first 8 bars wondering what you are doing, and the last 8 bars trying to get into the moment. </p>
<p>Can you play some of the intentions of that song? I don’t know. But I do know you cannot play all of that song. And since I (and everyone else who auditions you) will know the show, we aren’t going to ask if you can just sing the song, we are going to ask if you can ACT the character. And that answer is “no.” You cannot. You aren’t male, 40 and coming to the end of a mid life journey. And you never will be. </p>
<p>In the same way that young man I started with can understand some of the thought processes/intentions of Lady Macbeth, we cannot believe him AS Lady Macbeth. Now, you can fault the adjudicators for this. You can say, “well, if I can get to some feeling and act the song, then who cares if I can be Bobby?” True. And maybe there are a few out there who will love your chutzpah and applaud the risk. In fact, it may get you into a school. But I can tell you this much, there are many who will write you off immediately (see above the number of people we all audition). </p>
<p>The young man I started this post about finished his piece. After that, as we normally do, we sat and chatted with him. First question was “did you know that was Lady Macbeth?” </p>
<p>“Yes. But I felt that taking the risk was good and you would remember me.” Did we? Yes. We remembered him. I still do. And I even remember his name. We did not invite him to join our company. Not because he took a risk (that’s good) but because the goal wasn’t the risk, but was to shock us with his choice instead of treat us to his talent. We never saw enough talent. And part of that reason is because we were trying to figure out why he would make that choice. And in this process WHY you are doing things is very important. Actors are intelligent people. We need to see some of that intelligence. </p>
<p>Can you show us the talent AND do Bobby? Do you want to risk the adjudicators writing you off because you’ve chosen an entirely inappropriate song for so many reasons? (See “never do Sondheim above!”)</p>
<p>I wish you luck. This is your journey and there are many paths to a successful end. Sometimes pure audacity will work. But wouldn’t it be better to make an informed choice that shows them a strong choice in a way that they say “yeah, I can see her doing that. Wow, she really took me somewhere!”</p>