My D is likely to be going through this process in a couple years, and I’m trying to get a sense of what the audition experience is like for a young performer.
I’m hearing about multiple instances of MT programs asking for a full day or half day time commitments for auditions, but even in these scenarios it’s still a couple minutes of singing, a minute to share a monologue and maybe an hour dance call. I realize the school may throw in an information session, a brief interview, time is needed to warm-up and perhaps change outfits / shoes, and the inevitable required “wait for your number to be called” time. Is there much more going on that I’m not capturing? If not, what are the kids doing with their sizeable downtime… homework, reading, etc.? If there is actually very little downtime, how is that time used up?
Thanks in advance for your help in understanding where the time goes and what the young performers do in what appears to be long gaps in the day for schools that ask for half-day or full-day time commitments.
Most of the time, they are sitting in rooms with current students and other auditionees - talking - laughing, etc. My D had some very long days last year where they started with a dance call, then went on to individual auditions, or started with individual auditions and ended with a dance call. If your student ends up at one extreme or another, they are sitting around quite a bit. They can read but it’s best to engage with the current students in the program. You can get some terrific information during those down periods. It is also good to remember once your student is on campus, your student is in the audition process. There are countless stories of kids trashing other programs and other kids during their “down time” (both of my older 2 have worked auditions). Not a great idea since the monitors are part of the process.
We only attended Unifieds so the “wait time” for auditions was minimized but there’s still lots of time to wait. The challenge with the waiting process is that once you get your “two minutes” you have to be ON - this is your chance. So the student needs to balance killing time with staying focused. My D’s first audition she spend her wait time talking with other students… and she blew her audition because when her name was called she wasn’t mentally ready. Probably easier for experienced auditioners, which my D was not. After that point she stayed focused and avoided chit-chat in order to be 100% prepared when her turn came. The audition is “everything” for many of these programs so it’s probably not the time to multi-task for chores like homework.
Sometimes they listen to headphones to zone out the noise of other people. My daughter reviewed the requirements for next audition to make sure she had the right music queued up and didn’t select the wrong cut, as each school can have slightly different requirements. If they had an accompanist, she made sure she had the right music in her “skinny binder” that she handed the person. She also reviewed a “key features and pros/cons” list she had for each school in case they asked questions or got into a discussion. She stretched to keep herself ready for dance calls. Or, we went and got lunch.