<p>A rising junior wrote to me recently and asked if I could give her any advice on what things she should be auditioning/practicing/participating in to help build her portfolio and skills. </p>
<p>I wrote back the following: </p>
<p>*My best advice to you is to listen carefully to your teachers, work hard at your music and your dancing, and keep your grades up in your academic subjects. While it may not seem that English and History and Math 
are that important to performers, believe me, they are. And how well you do in those courses will determine the size of the academic scholarships for which youre eligible.</p>
<p>If you arent taking private voice lessons, I recommend starting now, if you can afford it. If not, take choir, learn to sight-read, and ask your music teacher to listen to your singing. </p>
<p>Try out for everything. Be happy and work hard when you get cast. When you dont get cast, work hard and be happy. In this business, you have to get used to not getting cast.</p>
<p>Dont give up.*</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Thank you, Dr. John, for reiterating the exact advice I gave to my rising h.s. junior daughter. While she actively participates in summer MT programs and high school offerings, I have, to her disgruntlement, limited her from trying out for outside theater productions during the school year, as most of them rehearse very late into the evening hours, and the local children’s theaters require that she skip numerous school days for performances. She did participate in a citywide production of Les Miz a year ago that was cast entirely with students, where the producers/directors went out of their way not to interfere with school and homework schedules. I have told her that getting excellent grades in her numerous honors classes is far more important to universities than the outside productions she is in. I continue to support her in taking voice, dance and acting lessons after school.</p>
<p>Although a new poster, I have read your postings on CC over the past 2 years, and I want to thank you for the time and effort you put into guiding students and their families through the college choice and application process. At this time, we are planning a college visit to Otterbein in October! Perhaps we shall have the good fortune of meeting you.</p>
<p>Dr. john
Are you willing to give some best advice for a senior planning on doing the arts administration route? She knows she needs to get into the theatre degree, but how can she build or demonstrate work and interest in the management areas. D is a senior this fall and does have ample time in her schedule for out-of school internships (no classes T and Th until 12:30).
But she is already cast in the school’s fall musical, is required to do nutcracker at Christmas, and a spring ballet so she doesn’t have much time for production work for school productions.</p>
<p>Christie2: Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad to hear you’re planning a visit, and I too hope we’ll get to meet.</p>
<p>keepingcalm: If she writes well, she could do press releases for the school show. If the school does performances of the musical for younger kids, she could put together a teacher’s packet with background on the story, the creators, the original production, the music, the social and political issues in the play, etc. If she has artistic skills, she could design flyers, posters and/or the program. If she’s good with a camera, she can set up and take publicity shots, or even take photos of a dress rehearsal which could then be put in the lobby. (She would have to have a camera and film that’s fast enough; and some training from a professional photographer.) </p>
<p>Since she has mornings available on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she could approach a local theatre about helping out in the office in some way. </p>
<p>Make sure she documents everything she does (keeps copies of creative work, photos, etc.) so that she has a portfolio to show colleges.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Thank you that is quite helpful. She has done a lot of phot work for friends over tha last could of years, headshots and rehearsla photos. So may be she cna work with that. The school does a myriad of shows for a variety of levels so the idea of press releases and teacher materials should be doable.
She just finished her application to Otterbein this morning and is getting herself set up to schedule auditions and interview materials.</p>