Author Archives: johnhowrey

College Auditions: Kat Schober

Posted on by
Reply

For this series we have asked for­mer campers to share some­thing about their expe­ri­ences audi­tion­ing for schools. If you have a sto­ry you’d like to share, .

I audi­tioned in Chicago and the city was a per­fect atmos­phere for what was to come. Every moment was tak­en in and cher­ished, as it should have been. I wish I had done so with the actu­al audi­tions though, it all went by so fast. Another thing to keep in mind is focus­ing your ener­gy cor­rect­ly. I was in a new and excit­ing place, doing new and excit­ing things and that gave me a feel­ing like no oth­er; chan­nel­ing that feel­ing in to your audi­tions is some­thing I would strong­ly sug­gest.
I felt very good about my prepa­ra­tion for the actu­al audi­tions and my only mishaps stemmed from ner­vous­ness and lack of con­fi­dence. The one regret I have is not audi­tion­ing for more schools and no doing a sin­gle walk-in audi­tion.
Overall, audi­tion­ing at Unifieds was a great deci­sion and a great mark­er to have in my life and refer back to when nec­es­sary to remind myself why I do this in the first place.
–Kat Schober
(pho­to cour­tesy of Kat’s Facebook pro­file)

Why Should You Consider Doing a Musical Revue with your students?

Posted on by
4

by Ginger Morris
TAP Camp Director
Freelance Director/​Choreographer/​Educator/​Manager

A revue is a type of mul­ti-act the­atri­cal enter­tain­ment that uses any com­bi­na­tion of music, dance and sketch­es. When I cre­ate a revue, it is typ­i­cal­ly songs and dances from musi­cals strung togeth­er by a theme.

Are you strug­gling to pro­duce a big musi­cal every year or is there pres­sure to start doing musi­cals at your school? Here are a few rea­sons to con­sid­er pro­duc­ing a musi­cal revue.

1. Role Distribution
In a musi­cal, you have to cast peo­ple based not only on tal­ent, but on “fit­ting a role.” You have to have the right peo­ple placed in the right places and often you sac­ri­fice the tal­ents of cer­tain stu­dents for the per­son­al­i­ty or phys­i­cal­i­ty of anoth­er. When you do a revue, you can cast as many peo­ple as can fit on your stage and it doesn’t mat­ter if they fit a role. You can cre­ate a show around the stu­dents you have and you can show­case their indi­vid­ual tal­ents.

2. Cost Effective
You don’t need a set or intense cos­tumes. You can ask the stu­dents to wear some­thing that ties them all togeth­er and looks uni­form in nature but you don’t need to go through the trou­ble of rent­ing, beg­ging, bor­row­ing or mak­ing cos­tumes. As far as a set goes, you don’t need any scenery. If you want to get fan­cy, you can use a slideshow or just a back­drop, but if you have a cyclo­rama, just throw up a new col­or for each num­ber and you are good to go!

3. Great train­ing for future musi­cals (cho­rus and prin­ci­pals)
In a musi­cal, often the same kids get the leads each year and the same kids stay in the cho­rus. There are prob­a­bly some dia­monds in the rough hang­ing out in the cho­rus who just need a lit­tle encour­age­ment and need a lit­tle moment to shine before they are ready for a big role. So many times, I’ve giv­en a short solo or duet to some­one in a revue (who was not ready to play a lead­ing role), and after hav­ing that expe­ri­ence, were ready to play a lead the fol­low­ing year. Also, you are train­ing your cho­rus to be a bet­ter cho­rus and train­ing your musi­cal leads to be bet­ter cho­rus mem­bers. The more song and dance num­bers you put in your show, the bet­ter your stu­dents will be in future musi­cals.

4. Team build­ing
Unlike a full musi­cal, there are no leads in a revue. It is up to you to dis­trib­ute the solos how­ev­er you like, so you may allow for more equal dis­tri­b­u­tion and your stu­dents can feel like they are con­tribut­ing to the final prod­uct as a team and not as leads and a cho­rus. If you already do a musi­cal each year, this is a great way to get every­one on the same foot­ing and work­ing as a team before you work on the musi­cal and things feel more divid­ed.
5. Simple SchedulingYou can divide the stu­dents in so many ways based on dance abil­i­ty, or vocal abil­i­ty or age and you can sched­ule rehearsals in a way that is sim­ple, only rehears­ing one num­ber at a time. You can wait until the week of the show to put all the sep­a­rate groups togeth­er.

6. Introduce var­i­ous styles and eras
When you choose a musi­cal, you are choos­ing one style to intro­duce the stu­dents to. If you do Oklahoma!, you are learn­ing the music of Rogers and Hammerstein and the dance style of clas­sic American the­atre. In a musi­cal revue, you can do songs from a vari­ety of shows. You can intro­duce songs from musi­cals that you couldn’t actu­al­ly do at your school. You can do songs from Cole Porter’s Anything Goes and songs from In The Heights all in the same hour-long revue.

I have been orga­niz­ing and direct­ing musi­cal revues for the last 15 years. It is a won­der­ful way to intro­duce a vari­ety of songs and dances to a large group of kids in a fun ensem­ble style envi­ron­ment. Check back in a few weeks and I will give exam­ples of revues I have pro­duced with some point­ers on pro­duc­ing your own.

Musical Theatre History Reading List, Part One: The Videos

Posted on by
Reply

I real­ly enjoy read­ing about musi­cal the­atre his­to­ry. At first I thought I was just a junkie for use­less triv­ia, but it has become abun­dant­ly clear how use­ful this infor­ma­tion actu­al­ly is. So, I’m start a lit­tle set of resources for MT junkies like me. Over the course of a cou­ple of posts I’m going to take you on a brief jour­ney of my library. Just a few notes on some of what I con­sid­er to be the best or most use­ful books on the sub­ject.

We’re going to start with videos. Mainly ‘cuz it’s a real­ly easy list to make. And I do think it’s impor­tant to “see” what we’re talk­ing about some­times. The first few a some sim­ple must-haves. You just got­ta own these videos and watch them at least once a year. Then, I thought it might be use­ful to have a list of what videos of pro­duc­tions are avail­able for “offi­cial” pur­chase. Obviously, a quick Amazon search will pull these up, but some may be a lit­tle hid­den in the list.

As always, leave a com­ment and let me know what you think. Have I made some major errors? Something left off? Let me know and I’ll cor­rect the mis­take!

Reading List: Part One
The Videos

Broadway: The American Musical
The PBS Documentary
 Obviously, this is an awe­some place to start. A text­book-like doc­u­men­tary tak­ing us from the very begin­nings of musi­cal the­atre to now. It’s enthralling to see some of the footage, but it always leaves me want­i­ng more. But, if you’re look­ing for a way to fill a long week­end, you couldn’t do much bet­ter than this. Amazon Link

Broadway: The Golden Age
 from the ama​zon​.com review: It’s not a com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey of the American musi­cal the­ater, but Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There is an invalu­able and mov­ing salute to the art form com­posed of inter­views with the peo­ple who were there in the 1940s through the 1960s. There are too many to list, but they include John Raitt, Angela Lansbury, Hume Cronyn, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Carol Channing, Jerry Orbach, Robert Goulet, Robert Morse (even he’s got­ten old!), Jerry Herman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim, and Harold Prince. There are also some rare per­for­mance clips, such as Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Patricia Morison in Kiss Me Kate, and Angela Lansbury in Mame, as well as more famil­iar tele­vi­sion per­for­mances, but very few film ver­sions (for either authen­tic­i­ty or rights rea­sons). Director Rick McKay’s focus, how­ev­er, is on evoca­tive stills, a few too many shots of the city, and most of all the words from the stars them­selves. Fact is, because Broadway shows are a live per­for­mance medi­um, there sim­ply isn’t a lot of footage avail­able, which is why it’s a treat – no, it’s an oblig­a­tion – that we hear the sto­ries from the peo­ple them­selves. It’s the best way the form will sur­vive. After a bit of a slow start, the inter­views cov­er the cul­ture of Broadway, hang­ing out at Walgreen’s and Sardi’s, tak­ing a show on the road, and thoughts about the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion. (Broadway in this case refers to the loca­tion in New York rather than the musi­cal-the­ater genre, so non-musi­cals are a major part of the dis­cus­sion.) Broadway: The Golden Age had a lim­it­ed the­atri­cal run in 2004, and there will be inevitable com­par­isons to Broadway: The American Musical, the six-hour series that played on PBS in the fall of that same year. The PBS series is much longer (espe­cial­ly count­ing the DVDs’ bonus inter­views) and unlike The Golden Age, it attempts to be a com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey of 100 years of American musi­cal the­ater. The ambi­tion is admirable, but often hard to live up to. The Golden Age offers more rare footage, and a more pow­er­ful sense of nos­tal­gia through­out the inter­views. On the down­side, there’s no real struc­ture to the film oth­er than group­ing the inter­views by ran­dom sub­ject, and direc­tor McKay relies too much on his own per­son­al expe­ri­ences as a jump­ing-off point. But it’s a worth­while, often pas­sion­ate film that cap­tures a price­less glimpse at a way of life as lived by so many mem­o­rable fig­ures whose like will nev­er be seen again. –David Horiuchi Amazon Link

The Best of Broadway Musical: Original Cast Performances from The Ed Sullivan Show
 There aren’t many oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tions of West Side Story, Hello Dolly or My Fair Lady. (There weren’t YouTube bootlegs at the time…) This DVD is just spec­tac­u­lar. Amazon Link

Broadway’s Lost Treasures
 from the ama​zon​.com review of Volume 1
 Broadway’s Lost Treasures deliv­ers what the title promis­es: 21 his­toric per­for­mances of great moments in American musi­cal the­ater tele­vised on the Tony Awards between 1967 and 1986. (Five were not includ­ed when the pro­gram was broad­cast on PBS in 2003.) Unlike some oth­er arts, the­ater has rarely been well-doc­u­ment­ed, so it’s a treat to see these num­bers per­formed by the orig­i­nal artists rather than expe­ri­ence them through audio record­ings or tepid movie adap­ta­tions. Sure, sound and pic­ture qual­i­ty are only ade­quate, some of the num­bers are min­i­mal­ly staged and some appear to be lip-synched, and some of the per­for­mances that do have excel­lent film coun­ter­parts (Yul Brynner in The King and I, Robert Preston in The Music Man, Joel Grey in Cabaret) seem rather lack­lus­ter here. But those are minor draw­backs com­pared to the chance to see Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera per­form “All That Jazz” and “Nowadays” from Chicago, or John Raitt, a stage leg­end who’s woe­ful­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed on film, singing The Pajama Game’s “Hey There.” The most elec­tri­fy­ing excerpt is from Evita, anchored by the pow­er­house trio of Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, and Bob Gunton, the most sur­pris­ing is Julie Andrews singing “Send in the Clowns” (she wasn’t in the cast of A Little Night Music), and the most touch­ing is a 12-year-old Andrea McArdle break­ing hearts in Annie’s “Tomorrow.” An indis­pens­able record of a quin­tes­sen­tial American art form. –David Horiuchi

Amazon Link: Part One

Amazon Link: Part Two

Amazon Link: Part Three

Amazon Link: The Plays

Full Productions on Official Video

Sweeney Todd (Lansbury and Hearn)

Into the Woods

Sunday in the Park With George

Passion

Sweeney Todd (in Concert)

Follies in Concert

Company (John Doyle pro­duc­tion)

Putting It Together

Candide (with Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone)

Les Mis 25th Anniversary Concert

Pippin

Oklahoma!

Chess in Concert

Victor/​Victoria

Cats

Peter Pan (Rigby)

Fosse

Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall

Kiss Me Kate

Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical

Camelot with Richard Harris

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Rent

Sondheim: The Birthday Concert

What's up with Christian Fleming?

Posted on by
Reply

One of TAP’s bright stars has been Christian Fleming. We were so lucky to have this guy join us for TAP and am thrilled to have news of his jour­neys in col­lege. Here’s a note from him:

After my time at TAP camp, I con­tin­ued doing as much as I could, soak­ing up every­thing, hap­py to be doing some­thing I love. My focus has always been Directing and Musical Theatre. It came time for me to audi­tion for col­lege. I audi­tioned at sev­er­al schools and had to make the deci­sion between my top two choic­es: Carnegie Mellon and NYU. I decid­ed that Carnegie Mellon was the place for me. It is incred­i­ble.
Last sum­mer, I was hired by the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera as the assis­tant direc­tor for their sum­mer sea­son, where I assist­ed the direc­tors on Oliver!, Miss Saigon (which then went on to tour Canada), Curtains, The Producers, Hairspray, and The Student Prince. It was a busy and thrilling sum­mer.
Currently, as a junior in the under­grad­u­ate direct­ing pro­gram at CMU, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty and was select­ed to spend the sec­ond semes­ter “abroad” in New York City. I was hired by the Vineyard Theatre as part of their lit­er­ary staff and I am work­ing at Michael Wilson’s assis­tant on Christopher Shinn’s new play, Picked. I am very excit­ed to be a senior next year. I can­not believe that I will grad­u­ate soon and begin the next step of my career as a direc­tor. I will be direct­ing a re-imag­in­ing of Hair in CMU’s sea­son next year.
I think that my expe­ri­ence at TAP camp was real­ly ben­e­fi­cial for me. Coming to Austin to do what I love with a group of like-mind­ed kids my age guid­ed by expe­ri­enced teach­ers allowed for a sum­mer what was both fun and edu­ca­tion­al. I knew after TAP camp that I was going to do the­atre for the rest of my life and I am so hap­py with that deci­sion!

College Auditions: Zach Teague

Posted on by
Reply

For this series we have asked for­mer campers to share some­thing about their expe­ri­ences audi­tion­ing for schools. If you have a sto­ry you’d like to share, .

AHHH YES. The “dread­ed” col­lege audi­tions.

But, com­ing to TAP strips you of this fear. Going into the process I was com­plete­ly naïve! At TAP you will become so com­fort­able with the audi­tion process even if it was actu­al­ly quite scary before. Of course, you are ner­vous, but you are sooooo pre­pared.

At TAP we were told how to sched­ule audi­tions, how to impress the audi­tion pan­el, what to say…what NOT to say.…so on and so forth. It’s actu­al­ly freak­ing me out a bit…“Where would I be if I hadn’t went to TAP camp?” I would not be sure of myself. That’s what TAP does, instills con­fi­dence into you, that you did not have before. What’s also amaz­ing is that the fac­ul­ty won’t give up on you. THEY WILL LITERALLY DIG INTO YOUR SOUL TO HELP YOU FIND THAT CHARACTER.…that love for the song.…the hip move­ment for the dance! I’ve now been accept­ed to Elon, Otterbein, NYU, Roosevelt and Emerson for Music Theatre. (Waitlisted to Carnegie Mellon and CCM. OH WELL)

Thanks to this amaz­ing camp…I wouldn’t have sur­vived with­out Ginger, David, Michael, Travis, Alan, Aaron or any of the oth­er fac­ul­ty.

Oh and they let you know.…denies are not the end of the world. It just means you’re meant to be some­where else. TAP Camp Summer of 2010 will live on for­ev­er in my mem­o­ry ! 🙂

–Zach Teague
(pho­to cour­tesy of Zach’s Facebook pro­file)

135 Questions with... Claire Augustine

Posted on by
Reply

Every so often we will bom­bard for­mer camper, fac­ul­ty or staff mem­bers with our pile of 135 ques­tions. We’ll edit down their respons­es and post them here, pick­ing the best answers. We like to check in with each oth­er every so often and thought you’d enjoy it as well. (btw, wan­na make it 136? Let us know if you wan­na add some ques­tions and we’ll see what we can do…)


What is your full name?
Claire Elizabeth Augustine

What was the open­ing num­ber of your first TAP show­case?
Heart and Music

What is one place you would love to vis­it right now?
Paris, France

Which cof­fee fla­vor are you?
Cinnamon Dolce

Recommend a book/​play/​musical/​poem/​movie that has changed your life.
Book: The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron
Play: Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl
Poem: “Us” by Anne Sexton
Movie: Harold and Maude

Do you know any­one famous?
I feel I know peo­ple who grew up to be kind of famous, like Nathan Parsons who’s now on General Hospital. Devyn Ray just starred in an inde­pen­dent movie, Blacktino, that just pre­miered at the SXSW Film Festival. That kind of thing keeps hap­pen­ing. They were right when we were train­ing at places like TAP Camp. So many of my teach­ers told me that we would be the future gen­er­a­tion of the art com­mu­ni­ty. You don’t real­ly believe that as a kid, but as you get old­er, that real­ly comes true.

What’s your favorite col­or?
Grey

If you could meet any liv­ing per­son, who would it be?
Probably Twyla Tharp, because she’s so seri­ous about her art.

What’s the last piece of live per­for­mance you attend­ed as an audi­ence mem­ber?
The Merce Cunningham Company when it stopped in Austin. I was going to school in Columbus, Ohio, where the Legacy Tour start­ed. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that they were stop­ping in Austin. Now I’m deter­mined to see the last per­for­mance in New York at New Years. Tickets are only $10!

What was your favorite TAP activ­i­ty?
This may sound weird, but the one after­noon we had all the staff sit and answer ques­tions from the campers. I love hear­ing people’s back­sto­ries and I was so incred­i­bly curi­ous how artists became artists as a kid. Back then I thought there was a set path to suc­cess, but now I know that’s real­ly not true. But I real­ly tried hard to get it out of peo­ple when I was younger.

What’s the fur­thest you’ve ever trav­eled?
Scotland.

Are you stub­born?
Oh yes.

What project are you work­ing on cur­rent­ly?
About to per­form Transitional Spaces III for Ellen Bartel at the New Works Festival at UT, and in May will be in Ariel Dance Theatre’s The Grand Theory of Everything Between. Very excit­ed about both of these shows!

Where did you go to col­lege?
Otterbein College (now named Otterbein University) in Westerville, Ohio. I got two BAs, English (Creative Writing) and Choreography.

135 Questions with... Coy Branscum

Posted on by
Reply

Every so often we will bom­bard for­mer camper, fac­ul­ty or staff mem­bers with our pile of 135 ques­tions. We’ll edit down their respons­es and post them here, pick­ing the best answers. We like to check in with each oth­er every so often and thought you’d enjoy it as well. (btw, wan­na make it 136? Let us know if you wan­na add some ques­tions and we’ll see what we can do…)

What is your full name?
 Coy Gee Branscum II

Where were you born?
 Dallas, Texas

What’s the first thing you remem­ber about TAP?
 Calling Ginger (I got lost..) and hear­ing her answer the phone with “You can’t call me here…hahaha….but real­ly. Kidding!”

What was the open­ing num­ber of your first TAP show­case?
 Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof

When was the last time you laughed real­ly hard?
 Today with Ginger, Travis and Koske at One Act rehearsal…

What are you excit­ed for?
 TAP CAMP 2011 😀

What’s your mood right now?
 Exhausted..

Do you wish you were some­where else right now?
 Yes. My bed. 🙂

What is one place you would love to vis­it right now?
 NYC (good luck try­ing not to sing.)

Do you know any­one named Dan?
 Why yes I do. He was in a cou­ple shows with me in Wimberley.

Are you tired?
 As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, yes… Exhausted.

What are you about to do?
 Slink onto the couch and watch a new episode of Castle, the best TV show ever.

Which cof­fee fla­vor are you?
 Mocha. Is that a cof­fee..? That’s what I pur­chase at cof­fee shops…

Which pop­u­lar sit­com char­ac­ter are you clos­est to?
 All of them, I see a bit of myself in all the char­ac­ters I watch. Which I guess is why I watch the shows in the first place.

Where’s the beef?
 In the stew.

What do you con­sid­er to be the great­est inven­tion?
 Sliced bread. Kidding, but my real answer would have to be the inter­net.

Recommend a book/​play/​musical/​poem/​movie that has changed your life.
 Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. Read the play and the book for the musi­cal pro­duc­tion and buy the CD. Envelop your­self in the essence of this incred­i­ble show.

Do you know any­one famous?
 Yes, I’m relat­ed to LeAnn Womack (but we’ve nev­er met).

Red Sox or Yankees?
 Yankees… because of Damn Yankees. That’s my con­nec­tion. Haha, I know noth­ing of sports land..

What’s your favorite col­or?
 Green.

Tenors or bari­tones?
 TENORS ALL THE WAY! HEY-OHHH!

Do you do any impres­sions?
 Yes. I’m totes good at Barbara Streisand and Judy Garland.. I’m work­ing on Liza…

If you could meet any liv­ing per­son, who would it be?
 I have a list, but let’s go with Julie Andrews. She taught me to sing. “Do, a dear…”

If you could meet a char­ac­ter from fic­tion, who would it be?
 Harry Potter. That’s like… not even a ques­tion.

What’s the last piece of live per­for­mance you attend­ed as an audi­ence mem­ber?
 Liza’s con­cert in Austin.

What was your favorite TAP activ­i­ty?
 Hmm.. if we’re talk­ing Iron Tap – spam cook off. Tap camp in gen­er­al would be going to see shows with every­one. Dressing up and a night of the­atre? Yes, please.

How many 1st cousins do you have?
 I don’t know… I don’t want to think that hard…

Which has been your hap­pi­est moment in life?
 Getting into col­lege.

If told that this is your last day on earth, how would you spend it?
 Doing what­ev­er my sweet, lil heart desired…

Name one qual­i­ty that you absolute­ly adore in your friends.
 Their abil­i­ty to make me smile when I don’t want to.

What makes you laugh?
 Sarcasm. Funny stuff.

Where do you feel most at home?
 In rehearsals.

Hamburger or hot dog?
 Hamburger. When you eat a hot dog, you eat just about every body part imag­in­able. Repulsing.

Who was/​were your roommate/​s at TAP?
 Dylan, Manny and Ryan. We had the best room… No ques­tion.

Who has been the biggest influ­ence in your career/​studies?
 Ginger Morris! 😀 No joke, changed my life…

Have you talked to a com­plete jerk today?
 Not a com­plete jerk…

What did you do last night?
 Rehearsed, made a video project where I baked stuff then watched the DVD of the Footloose pro­duc­tion I was in.

If you could pack up and move would you?
 Yes. I am actu­al­ly… I have to with col­lege and what not.

What’s the fur­thest you’ve ever trav­eled?
 I went to Chicago! Amazing city.

Did you enjoy your week­end?
 Yes, it was a beau­ti­ful week­end… Filled with hope­less­ness, hope­ful­ness, joy and depres­sion all at the same time.

Are you stub­born?
 No! (Haha, get it? I real­ly am stub­born.. It’s a joke.)

Who else is in the room with you?
 My mom and dad.

In win­ter, would you rather wear jack­ets or hood­ies?
 Hoodies. 🙂 They’re so com­fort­able.. and they have HOODS.

What’s the longest you’ve ever spent in a car?
 I drove to Florida one time.

What project are you work­ing on cur­rent­ly?
 I’m assis­tant direct­ing Picnic for the high school’s One Act Play and I’m also assis­tant direct­ing Once on This Island at the mid­dle school. I’ve also got to work on my Senior Portfolio and my Senior Project… There is a lot.

With whom have you had the most suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion?
 Hmm.. I don’t know. I work with Ginger real­ly well?

Where did you go to col­lege?
 I will be attend­ing Millikin University in the fall. 🙂

If you could add one ques­tion to this list of ques­tions, what would it be?
 If you could be any ani­mal, what would you be?

College Auditions: Coy Branscum

Posted on by
Reply

This is the first of a series of posts where TAP campers share their expe­ri­ence with the col­lege audi­tion process. If you have a sto­ry you’d like to share,

Coy is one of the TAP campers, prep­ping for his last year with us and his first year at col­lege. He will going to Millikin University this fall as a BFA Musical Theatre Major. Congrats, Coy! Fabulous pho­to cour­tesy of Coy’s Facebook pro­file.

Auditioning for col­leges can feel ter­ri­fy­ing. It’s easy, as I found out, to become over­whelmed and feel like you won’t suc­ceed. But the actu­al process is incred­i­bly fun. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives from each col­lege want you to do well, they’re look­ing for poten­tial stu­dents for their pro­gram!

While I feel you shouldn’t see col­lege audi­tions as daunt­ing, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to try. You real­ly have to focus on your mono­logue and song selec­tion. It’s a bit dif­fi­cult because you need to watch each program’s audi­tion require­ments (although they’re all pret­ty stan­dard). The feel­ing you get from a suc­cess­ful audi­tion is worth all the effort you put in to make it hap­pen.

The biggest part is push­ing through your fears. I’m not a dancer nec­es­sar­i­ly and it’s easy for me to feel dis­cour­aged in dance calls, but col­leges aren’t look­ing for Broadway stars. They’re look­ing for young tal­ent to nur­ture and grow. Rather than show­ing sim­ply how tal­ent­ed you are, show your will­ing­ness to try and to learn. In my audi­tion for CCM, we had a dance call to a song from Thoroughly Modern Millie. I walked in lit­er­al­ly shak­ing, feel­ing incom­pe­tent to the oth­ers sur­round­ing me (in my mind they radi­at­ed a dancer vibe) but I told myself to shut up and just. Do. It. It end­ed up being my best audi­tion. Although I wasn’t accept­ed to the pro­gram, I left with­out regrets and still have none.

College audi­tions are great — it makes the idea of col­lege even more appeal­ing. After my expe­ri­ence, I can’t wait to make the tran­si­tion and start build­ing the base for my future.