The Road to 2017: Houston

We love Houston, and its auditions are always a game-changer for us. A bonus this week was dress rehearsal of the HGO Elixir of Love, which featured 4 Trappers in the cast! We loved seeing Dimitri Pittas, Nicole Heaston, Michael Sumuel and Alicia Gianni onstage at the Wortham.

Aria Talk

It’s hard to believe but it took until Day 13 of the audition tour before we heard Figaro’s “Non più andrai” and Cenerentola’s “Non più mesta.”  And I’m sure there are a few other relative standards that haven’t surfaced yet, but I haven’t had time to ferret them out. :)

The arias offered this week were amazingly diverse and included two pieces that haven’t even premiered yet. One of those singers brought her own pianist; the other took her chances and got extremely lucky with our own Joseph Li sight-reading the spots off the aria!

Did You Bring a Monologue?

Some background on why our Studio Artist auditions require monologues: We do this because with the younger auditionees, it’s sometimes more difficult for us to get a sense of the person behind the singing. Vocal concerns sometimes loom large during the arias, and often the personality behind the voice isn’t integrated enough with the technique to really shine through. The monologue briefly sidesteps technical concerns and helps us get to know the artist, just a little bit.

The Houston monologues did not disappoint. There was some Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a rollicking excerpt from The Producers, and a Ke$ha monologue followed immediately by Charlie Brown. Never a dull moment.

A couple of functional tips for those of you preparing monologues. First, pay careful attention to your transitions, just as you would (should!) with your sung material. Know your scene cold, and don’t disengage with it between sentences/paragraphs.  And second, if your monologue includes provocative language, you must commit to it and not apologize for it. And be aware that it will feel different testing it out for your friends/acting class than it will in an audition room. (Especially our room, where one of the women on the other side of the table may look suspiciously like your mother… Rest assured, she’s not. But the resemblance is enough to unnerve some otherwise bold actors.:))

We want to share our monologue fun with you; please enjoy the excerpt below, offered by a former Studio Artist. He’s several years past that part of his career, but he knows how much we enjoy his monologues. So he continues to offer them. And we continue to accept.

It’s Getting Real

A practical note for those of you who are beginning to get (or are soon to receive) competing offers for the summer: We finish our auditions on October 25 and will be formulating season plans and casting very quickly, over that next week. If you have a deadline looming, don’t hesitate to contact us. We may not be able to give you unequivocal information, but we may be able to share where we are in our process and help you make the best decision.

Back to The Barns

2 more days of auditions in Vienna, then the real work begins.