(Don’t put off sending in your prescreens for this school like I did! WAY too stressful!)
My final audition during my weekend at the Chicago Unifieds was for Pace University. They also aren’t an official Unifieds school, but they were in the Palmer House Hilton, next to several other schools, which made for a VERY cramped hallway to wait in.
We were given a rundown of the audition process after we had all checked in: Part One consisted of one monologue for the one faculty member that was there (the second one was late because of the weather–that blizzard was insane), and then scene work. After the scene work, there would be a callback, and those called back would do Part Two, which involved some movement and voice work with the faculty. The callback worked similarly to DePaul’s audition in that if you weren’t called back, it was a no from the acting program.
PART ONE
When it was my turn to do my monologue, I went in and introduced myself to the faculty guy inside (he remembered me from the North Texas Drama Auditions…yay!). I did my piece, and he thanked me and asked me to send the next person in (Don’t. Read. Into. It.).
We were then all put into pairs and given an open scene to work on, similar to the vague one I was given at DePaul. Except we worked on this one on our own in whatever quiet corner we could find, and it was MUCH more explicit than the DePaul one. My scene partner was great–totally up for anything, had a lot of really ballsy suggestions, and was just fun to work with. When it was our turn, we went in and performed our scene for the two faculty (second man had arrived by that point), got some laughs, and then sent the next people in.
Afterwards, we waited for forever for them to put out the list of callbacks. At long last, they put out the sheet of called back names–oh my god, my name was on it. I didn’t realize how nervous I was until I was able to exhale.
PART TWO
After about ten minutes, all of us that were called back went into the room and did movement and voice exercises–things like passing around sounds and motions, passing around imaginary balls and trying to focus on all of them, developing crazy character walks, things like that. It was actually the most outright fun I’d had at an audition so far. It just felt like playing, and the faculty were hilarious and eager to work with us. It was just a fun environment and I enjoyed every second of it.
After that, we just sat down and asked whatever questions we still had about Pace and the program, and then we said thank you and left! I don’t know why, but this ended up being the audition I was most nervous during. There was just something about the atmosphere that really sort of set me on edge, but the movement callback made me feel ten times better about the audition and about the school itself.
