Patterns
Holy Goddamn Fucking Shit.
I was at an audition yesterday, and the girls I was in front of and behind had these gigantic binders full of sheet music. I mean, I can understand if you're a professional and you've played so many roles in your lifetime that it's okay to show people what you've been capable of within that time frame. But these kids are still in high school, and they don't even know where they're going in live. Their parents spend money for them to study voice and dance, and what they get in return are Ridiculously Oversized Binders and even so much as this prepared arsenal for when they start moving out of the family house...
And nearly every musical theatre person I know, regardless of age or professional cred, is "unhappy" with their "book."
I think I speak for myself when I say, "You what?!"
Full disclosure: I did not even know what a "book" was until I moved to New York City. I just figured, I'd sing my one (cruddily photocopied) song at every audition that required me to. What I pretty much came to realize is that the logical path my mom just assumed one should take on the audition circuit is as simple and concrete as it should be. I actually asked my mom last night about why I don't have one of these elusive...books. You know, I really don't like that terminology. Why is it a book? Did you write it? Does anyone read it? It doesn't make any sense. I'd prefer to call it a R.O.B.
Every time I see a R.O.B at an audition, I have to think, "Who are you people? Do you have lives?" Ninety percent of the time, I will have to follow some cranky elderly Equity woman who will go through hers, with yellowing sheet music that's poorly organized, who will then ask the monitor (the monitor!) which choice out of about fifteen songs, out of about sixty in the book, will be "appropriate" for the audition. It's always about what the casting director wants to hear, as opposed to what the auditioner thinks they should see, which should be the defining choice regardless of what the audition is for. My theory is, and this is just one person's opinion, if you're right for the part, you're right for the part: Don't try to be something that you are not. Or, you either have it or you don't. So, she will sing some obscure song from some obscure musical version of The Grass Harp. Not sixteen bars. The whole song. And, clearly, these women, being elderly, will have had their entire lives to work on the song, as opposed to the five days before I even heard about this open call and asked maybe two people if the same sixteen bars of the same one song I know and already have memorized is appropriate. Subsequently, no one will cut them off, and, because they're running short on time, when it's my turn, the people behind the table who have already put up with a Crazy Cat Lady in the last four minutes, will give me the axe before I even so much as utter one note of the same old song. And I feel like I have more of a reason to be in that room, because it is a non-Equity open call, and, um, I am non-Equity.
The proliferation of these R.O.B.s baffles me. It's unwarranted when professional actors complain about their existence, because, if you love what you do, if you are so good at what you do, and your repetoire is literally so thick and so complete, what is there to complain about? I should be the one complaining! It's not that I am any less talented or hardworking than these Unemployed Equity All-Stars, but I don't even know how to go about building a..."book." I didn't have the advantage of a musical theatre department or an agent showcase. I have never played one of these roles, and no one has really told me what would make a good comic contemporary uptempo or legit seriocomic ballad for me, because my parents were very smart and organized. Nevertheless, they don't understand the meticulous preparation and unnecessary categorization that warrants a career in the musical theatre.
I remember when we were looking at colleges. My mom and dad strictly forbade me to look at any school with a musical theatre department. Who needs it? You can't get a job with a major like that. Because we were in the area visiting family, we looked at NYU, and it was by far my favorite - me being a highly uninformed, hugely impressionable high school kid who really didn't know any better and really liked musical theatre. But my parents dropped the bomb before the tour finished - "You shouldn't have to audition to go to college." - and yanked me away from the campus to go straight to the Sturgeon King for lunch.
My mom, though, is justifiably stupefied as to why any sane person would bring a gigantic three-ring Staples snap binder to any open call (well, clearly not everyone who goes to an open call is sane...if you're in Equity, you have an agent, and you're a jerk to people, and you can't get work, I can't vouch for the former two bearing some hindrance), or even a comically huge wheeled suitcase or backpack with them unless they're going on a corporate retreat to Boca to walk on hot coals with some very important investors after the audition. I tried to explain it to her in the simplest terms possible. This is not 1962. Now, there are more skills wanted from and associated with today's musical theatre actors. Ergo, they have to master more styles: Pop, rock, contemporary, operatic tragedy. I mean, there has to be some pattern within this evil imposition. The only roles I can imagine myself playing have some pattern between them in that they are all wildly against my type. Honestly, my dream roles are all men: Nathan Detroit, Malcolm MacGregor, Max Bialystock...Paul ("Todayyy is for Amyyyy...").
The other day, a friend of mine stopped me to tell me that I would be perfect as April in Company or Dot in Sunday in the Park with George. Thus leading me to believe that the "asshole" monologue should heretofore replace my old standby from Hurrah at Last by Richard Greenberg, and "Everybody Loves Louis" should go after my "Sondheim" divider and I should just give up on my three-weeks-long-and-counting quest to master "The Miller's Son" from A Little Night Music and just forget everything I've worked so hard on in my many years of training and hands-on experience for no apparent reason. Still, how weird is it that Sondheim represents his own R.O.B. divider category? Shouldn't he be an added incentive if you can at least memorize sixteen bars of an uptempo and a ballad? Shouldn't who you are be a much bigger and more important factor than what you can do? Aren't these things best representative of yourself because you already have them memorized? Doesn't that old song from Chorus Line say, "Who am I, anyway, am I my resume? That is a picture of a person I don't know..." Do you really want to sacrifice your own individual substance in the name of a gigantic book?
I mean, why would a R.O.B. exist if you're just going to constantly be worried about refining it? Obviously, you're smart enough to know what you shouldn't sing at an audition ("I Hate Men," "Your Daddy's Son," "Lion Tamer," or anything from The Last Five Years), but even the good people should be smart enough to realize how stupid this is. And, again, I'm underestimating just how stupid musical theatre people are even though it has nothing to do with education. Even though I'm not in Equity, I have a college degree that isn't from Carnegie Mellon, and I seriously think this is bullshit. Again, one woman's opinion.
Maybe I feel like musical theatre people are more sensitive than most, because they tend to obsess over and analyze the dumbest factors and details of the process. They cry a lot more than normal people. They complain even more than they cry. I feel like, if anything, that should make them more endearing and less scary to be around. The books, the size and scope and ridiculous width of them, actually make them more scary.
Meanwhile, I'm writing a freaking blog entry about a post on a message board that features such presumptuous threads as "It hurts to belt!" "Who Else Is Feeling Withdrawals?" and "A prof. I was supposed to have is in the paper..."
Anyway, my mom asked me, "Shouldn't you just have a classical monologue, a contemporary monologue, a happy song, and a sad song?" And, my mom, who does not have a degree in musical theatre, and who is violently against the thought, even though she's supporting this love because she supposes it to be a quarter-life-crisis in my life, actually accepted and understood how actors should truly approach auditions. By logic and common sense. Actually, she pretty much hit the nail on the head: Shouldn't this be a lot easier than it really is? The real talent will rise to the top regardless of how many styles and personae they can probably do. Really, I told a casting director about this new game plan, and she agreed: Every actor should just keep the simplest perspective possible. Showing the people behind the table that you can handled Latina rock and go-go operetta is for the callback, not the preliminary rounds.
Or maybe I'm just upset because my new dividers didn't come in the mail yet.
And my binder is only an inch wide. An inch. That's barely even enough to hold five whole songs.
::Sniff::
Discuss.
I was at an audition yesterday, and the girls I was in front of and behind had these gigantic binders full of sheet music. I mean, I can understand if you're a professional and you've played so many roles in your lifetime that it's okay to show people what you've been capable of within that time frame. But these kids are still in high school, and they don't even know where they're going in live. Their parents spend money for them to study voice and dance, and what they get in return are Ridiculously Oversized Binders and even so much as this prepared arsenal for when they start moving out of the family house...
And nearly every musical theatre person I know, regardless of age or professional cred, is "unhappy" with their "book."
I think I speak for myself when I say, "You what?!"
Full disclosure: I did not even know what a "book" was until I moved to New York City. I just figured, I'd sing my one (cruddily photocopied) song at every audition that required me to. What I pretty much came to realize is that the logical path my mom just assumed one should take on the audition circuit is as simple and concrete as it should be. I actually asked my mom last night about why I don't have one of these elusive...books. You know, I really don't like that terminology. Why is it a book? Did you write it? Does anyone read it? It doesn't make any sense. I'd prefer to call it a R.O.B.
Every time I see a R.O.B at an audition, I have to think, "Who are you people? Do you have lives?" Ninety percent of the time, I will have to follow some cranky elderly Equity woman who will go through hers, with yellowing sheet music that's poorly organized, who will then ask the monitor (the monitor!) which choice out of about fifteen songs, out of about sixty in the book, will be "appropriate" for the audition. It's always about what the casting director wants to hear, as opposed to what the auditioner thinks they should see, which should be the defining choice regardless of what the audition is for. My theory is, and this is just one person's opinion, if you're right for the part, you're right for the part: Don't try to be something that you are not. Or, you either have it or you don't. So, she will sing some obscure song from some obscure musical version of The Grass Harp. Not sixteen bars. The whole song. And, clearly, these women, being elderly, will have had their entire lives to work on the song, as opposed to the five days before I even heard about this open call and asked maybe two people if the same sixteen bars of the same one song I know and already have memorized is appropriate. Subsequently, no one will cut them off, and, because they're running short on time, when it's my turn, the people behind the table who have already put up with a Crazy Cat Lady in the last four minutes, will give me the axe before I even so much as utter one note of the same old song. And I feel like I have more of a reason to be in that room, because it is a non-Equity open call, and, um, I am non-Equity.
The proliferation of these R.O.B.s baffles me. It's unwarranted when professional actors complain about their existence, because, if you love what you do, if you are so good at what you do, and your repetoire is literally so thick and so complete, what is there to complain about? I should be the one complaining! It's not that I am any less talented or hardworking than these Unemployed Equity All-Stars, but I don't even know how to go about building a..."book." I didn't have the advantage of a musical theatre department or an agent showcase. I have never played one of these roles, and no one has really told me what would make a good comic contemporary uptempo or legit seriocomic ballad for me, because my parents were very smart and organized. Nevertheless, they don't understand the meticulous preparation and unnecessary categorization that warrants a career in the musical theatre.
I remember when we were looking at colleges. My mom and dad strictly forbade me to look at any school with a musical theatre department. Who needs it? You can't get a job with a major like that. Because we were in the area visiting family, we looked at NYU, and it was by far my favorite - me being a highly uninformed, hugely impressionable high school kid who really didn't know any better and really liked musical theatre. But my parents dropped the bomb before the tour finished - "You shouldn't have to audition to go to college." - and yanked me away from the campus to go straight to the Sturgeon King for lunch.
My mom, though, is justifiably stupefied as to why any sane person would bring a gigantic three-ring Staples snap binder to any open call (well, clearly not everyone who goes to an open call is sane...if you're in Equity, you have an agent, and you're a jerk to people, and you can't get work, I can't vouch for the former two bearing some hindrance), or even a comically huge wheeled suitcase or backpack with them unless they're going on a corporate retreat to Boca to walk on hot coals with some very important investors after the audition. I tried to explain it to her in the simplest terms possible. This is not 1962. Now, there are more skills wanted from and associated with today's musical theatre actors. Ergo, they have to master more styles: Pop, rock, contemporary, operatic tragedy. I mean, there has to be some pattern within this evil imposition. The only roles I can imagine myself playing have some pattern between them in that they are all wildly against my type. Honestly, my dream roles are all men: Nathan Detroit, Malcolm MacGregor, Max Bialystock...Paul ("Todayyy is for Amyyyy...").
The other day, a friend of mine stopped me to tell me that I would be perfect as April in Company or Dot in Sunday in the Park with George. Thus leading me to believe that the "asshole" monologue should heretofore replace my old standby from Hurrah at Last by Richard Greenberg, and "Everybody Loves Louis" should go after my "Sondheim" divider and I should just give up on my three-weeks-long-and-counting quest to master "The Miller's Son" from A Little Night Music and just forget everything I've worked so hard on in my many years of training and hands-on experience for no apparent reason. Still, how weird is it that Sondheim represents his own R.O.B. divider category? Shouldn't he be an added incentive if you can at least memorize sixteen bars of an uptempo and a ballad? Shouldn't who you are be a much bigger and more important factor than what you can do? Aren't these things best representative of yourself because you already have them memorized? Doesn't that old song from Chorus Line say, "Who am I, anyway, am I my resume? That is a picture of a person I don't know..." Do you really want to sacrifice your own individual substance in the name of a gigantic book?
I mean, why would a R.O.B. exist if you're just going to constantly be worried about refining it? Obviously, you're smart enough to know what you shouldn't sing at an audition ("I Hate Men," "Your Daddy's Son," "Lion Tamer," or anything from The Last Five Years), but even the good people should be smart enough to realize how stupid this is. And, again, I'm underestimating just how stupid musical theatre people are even though it has nothing to do with education. Even though I'm not in Equity, I have a college degree that isn't from Carnegie Mellon, and I seriously think this is bullshit. Again, one woman's opinion.
Maybe I feel like musical theatre people are more sensitive than most, because they tend to obsess over and analyze the dumbest factors and details of the process. They cry a lot more than normal people. They complain even more than they cry. I feel like, if anything, that should make them more endearing and less scary to be around. The books, the size and scope and ridiculous width of them, actually make them more scary.
Meanwhile, I'm writing a freaking blog entry about a post on a message board that features such presumptuous threads as "It hurts to belt!" "Who Else Is Feeling Withdrawals?" and "A prof. I was supposed to have is in the paper..."
Anyway, my mom asked me, "Shouldn't you just have a classical monologue, a contemporary monologue, a happy song, and a sad song?" And, my mom, who does not have a degree in musical theatre, and who is violently against the thought, even though she's supporting this love because she supposes it to be a quarter-life-crisis in my life, actually accepted and understood how actors should truly approach auditions. By logic and common sense. Actually, she pretty much hit the nail on the head: Shouldn't this be a lot easier than it really is? The real talent will rise to the top regardless of how many styles and personae they can probably do. Really, I told a casting director about this new game plan, and she agreed: Every actor should just keep the simplest perspective possible. Showing the people behind the table that you can handled Latina rock and go-go operetta is for the callback, not the preliminary rounds.
Or maybe I'm just upset because my new dividers didn't come in the mail yet.
And my binder is only an inch wide. An inch. That's barely even enough to hold five whole songs.
::Sniff::
Discuss.
posted by Gypsy at 5:24 PM
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