Hello everyone! I know I don’t post much here but I thought that it’s been long enough (approximately four months) that I’ve had the time to digest my little adventure and am ready to share my experience auditioning in San Francisco for the Juilliard School.
A little background about myself: I’m a high school senior (well was… Graduated!!) attending a public school in metro Phoenix. Four year theatre student (was part of a state theatre festival mainstage selection, national honor thespian, state thespian officer, yada yada yada). Currently in the third year of a summer conservatory here in my state. Private coached for about two months before my audition date (but have been preparing for this since about the summer before senior year).
My audition was on a particularly rainy, Sunday morning (what morning in San Fran isn’t, though??) so I woke up extra early making sure I had everything I needed to be prepared for the day. My mom and I arrived at the location (San Francisco Symphony Hall) and we were greeted in the Security Office which lead down into the audition space. A wonderfully kind lady and gentleman were checking people in (I know for a fact the gentleman was a recent alumni of the program within the past five years of so), taking their headshots and resumes, and showing us were to go. My mother left at this point, and I went down these stairs into the lower floor of the symphony hall which felt like a basement. It was all concrete with fluorescent lighting. The stairs lead to a hall way which after a couple of turns lead to a sort of medium sized waiting area with chairs all along of the wall. Before I could even get to the waiting room I was greeted with fellow auditioners sitting on the ground in the hallway preceding this open area (there weren’t enough chairs for everyone). The open area had an entrance to a small canteen area with a few tables and vending machines. The intensity of the room was very palpable and almost intimidating (I personally think they set it up this way since no matter what chair you were sitting in you couldn’t avoid meeting the eyes of someone else in the room. It was very strange indeed). I think it’s also interesting to note that the majority of the auditioners seemed to be in there early to mid twenty’s with few people seeming to be in high school.
Finally the two people who checked us in took us into one of the two rehearsal rooms that we would be auditioning in. The room was LARGE. The 50 or so auditioners who were cramped in the waiting space had enough space to spread out for our group warm-up in HALF of this large rehearsal room (I mean a whole symphony could fit in there for rehearsal if that puts it into perspective). We did a group warm-up, and got a motivation speech from one of of the three adjudicators (Richard Feldman was his name. He’s the associate director of the program. I don’t remember what the name of one of the adjudicators was, but the third one was Rebecca Guy) about pretty much don’t be discouraged by the likelyhood of not getting into the program and that we were brave for just even auditioning. After the moving speech they lead us back into the waiting room and began calling people in to audition (unfortunately there was no time to ourselves to do our own warm-up but even if there was time there definitely wasn’t any space to do any types of physical ones).
It wasn’t any mystery of who was going to audition because they posted the order of who would be called in on the walls of the hallway leading into the waiting room. I was third to go in Room One so I got a little drink of water and a quick bite to eat and then waited about five minutes outside my audition room before I was called in. I walked in and in the center of this vast rehearsal space was one folded table set up and Richard sitting there by himself (the other two adjudicators were in the other room) and a piece of yellow tape about ten feet in front of the table which they told us they did not want us cross during our pieces. He greeted me, and said something along of the lines of “Hello, -insert my name-. So, your doing -insert title of contemporary piece- and -insert title of classical piece-? Alright time is yours” and so I did my two pieces. He thanked me for sharing and then I left. That was it!
It took about twenty minutes for them to post the callbacks and out of the fifty people who auditioned in my group they called back two people (one man and one woman) and I wasn’t one of them. I got picked up by my mother and we went for a celebratory McDonald’s run (I think it’s important to reward yourself for even having the courage to go audition for something!).
Overall it was a very interesting experience to say the least. It was’t my favorite audition I went on in this audition cycle, but even though I didn’t make it into the program or even get a callback I’m grateful for the opportunity and experience!
Hopefully I covered every aspect of my audition but if anyone has any question feel free to ask me!