Wobbling on High Notes in Auditions
Leaving an audition one day, another actor and I were making small talk on the elevator ride to the street. She was frustrated at not having done as well as she had liked. “I can hit that last note at home, no problem, but in the room, well, you know, it just gets wobbly.”
Oh, how I know that problem. I used to struggle with the same thing. But here’s the deal: if you cannot reliably hit that high note squarely, choose a different song. Or a different cutting. Or have it transposed into a different key. Having a song with an amazing high note at the end is awesome – if you can hit it reliably. It will impress exactly no one if you can’t produce in the room.
Sure, we all have bad days; we’re human, after all. But, if you have selected a song for your audition that you are constantly worrying about whether you’ll wobble on your high note, choose a different song. Choose a song that shows off your voice. Choose a song that you can take into an audition room with confidence. Choose a song you can hit every note, every time. Better yet, choose a few. How many times have you auditioned when you had sinus issues, the beginnings (or remnants) of an upper respiratory infection, or just not enough sleep? You need to have a piece you can pull out and sound amazing, no matter what the weather or your body is doing.
A Little British History
Seeing as this is an American blog I thought I would introduce you to the amazing theatre establishments in England that I have been lucky enough to visit over the past couple of weeks.
Last week I was fortunate enough to see Macbeth at the Shakespeare’s Globe by the River Thames. As I’m sure you know it is a reconstruction of the original Globe that was built by Shakespeare’s playing company, the Chamberlain’s Men. The Shakespeare’s Globe Trust continue putting on traditional Shakespeare plays, 5 each year, as well as new plays or musicals and invites in travelling companies as well. It is a magnificent building with so much detail and history behind it. There is a ‘yard’ area that holds 700 people standing and then holds 857 people sitting, split onto 3 balcony levels. The stage has a gorgeous ornate backdrop with 3 entrances and 2 fake marbled pillars; unfortunately all this beautiful detail was hidden by the set design for Macbeth. None the less it is still a gorgeous venue, which I look forward to visiting again, even in the cold and rain.
Okay, so to give you a bit of a backstory on this post:
On Saturday night, I was contacted out of the blue by the owner of a nonprofit organization interested in using my band for an upcoming fundraiser. They loved the sound of our music, however they were hoping we could create 3 original songs in a specific genre. They wanted to use the 3 originals as a fundraiser perk for an upcoming all-night fundraiser they would be conducting. The money was to be donated to a wonderful cause, so my band and I were instantly on board! The only problem is, we had to get the tracks to the organization by the end of this week. Considering we already have a few gigs scheduled for the end of the week, we knew we wouldn’t have a lot of time. I am the lyricist for the band, and my lead guitarist composes the music. So we worked together during the 72 hours to form our 3 originals.
09:30:00 AM:
My work began on Sunday morning as I hopped on the subway to meet with a friend. I sat down, pulled out my notebook, and began writing lyrics. I used my phone to look up specific words and topics for the genre I had to capture in the songs.
13:54:00 PM:
After I met with my friend, I continued to work on my lyrics. By early afternoon, I was able to send my first lyric draft to my guitarist.
17:18:00 PM:
I continued on with my day, having to run some errands and take care of some e-mails. I soon took a break to grab a cup of tea at a local coffee shop. Again, I took out my notebook and began writing. Four hours after I had sent my first song, I was able to send my second song draft.
The Branding Badge (part 2)
Apologies for the long delay between Part 1 and Part 2! But, this is a long process as I am figuring out how to professionally market myself for the ever-closing-growing “real world”. My senior class has been talking a lot about how our post-graduate, real world resume should look and what other tools we will need to apply for work (FYI: google voice phone is genius. If you don’t want to put your real number out there where anyone can see it, use a google voice number. Also, put your resume in PDF format).
It seems pretty basic that everyone should have a resume, headshot…maybe a website. That’s where I use my brand to make my resume go from ‘basic’ to “Hi, I’m the College Theatre Dork and you are going to hire me!”
- Resume: On the advice of my professor, I took my resume and turned it into 4 resumes – performance, combat-related performance, house/stage manager and publicity and the civilian non-theatre resume. I also realized just how much I’ve done when I could pick and choose what credits I wanted to include. Your resume isn’t a biography of what you have done; I’m showing you what I want to do. When I hand you my pretty resume with these text-heavy shows I’ve done and all the combat training I have listed, you are going to remember me the next time you are doing a monologue-laden, sword-fighting show. Read more…
The Balancing Act
I’m crazy, I think that’s been established (my name probably helps confirmed this). I’ve done some pretty insane workaholic things in my years of doing theatre, but I’ve now topped my own level of craziness. In one week’s time (Sunday to Saturday), I had four premiere’s of mine happened. Four different shows, literally opening in less than a week (three of those four being back-to-back-to-back)!
So one just might wonder: how can anyone balance all those things? Well even after it all, I have to say that it takes a serious amount of planning and a lot of work all at once. Especially since asides from 4 shows, I still have my job (I now get to do theatre with kids in an after school program), interviews, reading plays and preparing for shows to work on for the rest of this year and for 2014. On top of that full plate of work, I have that happy nearly 2 year relationship with one of my favorite theatre artists to keep going with (which I’d consider to be my dessert plate 😉 ). So it takes hours of planning literally every move. I needed to plan when am I going to be at what place at what time. After one rehearsal, show, etc. ended, I had to quickly move on to the next. Taking my time wasn’t an option.
Stage Management Day
Matthew Hemley reported in The Stage that the Stage Management Association is organising a Stage Management day on October the 10th; a day all about recognising and celebrating the work that Stage Managers do. Theatres are planning their own events; some are putting slips into the programmes recognising the crew members, inviting them into the curtain call or allowing them to take over the social media sites. He said;
“We have felt for a while that there ought to be some way of recognising the work backstage people do, and particularly what stage managers do.”
I thought this was amazing news as it gives a chance to show the general public what we do and how hard we work. There’s hope that it may come an annual event which would hopefully spread it further afield, and I would love to plan something myself if this happened.
However what about all the rest of the technical team; lighting, sound, set, costume, you get the general idea. Will they ever get recognition from the general public? They deserve it just as much as we do, after all theatre is about working together, and most people skip past the production credits in the programme without even a second glance.
I want to know your views; Do the technical team get enough credit for their role in a show? And expanding on that do majority of the cast get another credit? Will events like these help? I’m still undecided.
What I Did For Love
In my last dance class, I re-created the iconic scene from A Chorus Line. Not the opening number with a “5, 6, 7, 8!” but the “5, 6, 7, —OW!”
I ended up on the floor with a dislocated kneecap. Well, I am not the first dancer to have a joint twist out of place. Within minutes, I had full first aid action going on—popped back into place, elevated, iced, rested and compressed into a brace.
Since then, I’ve learned what it is like to sit in an Emergency Room for three hours to get x-rays, what it is like to live without health insurance for two days, filled out accident reports, proved that my insurance does exist, figured out how to use crutches (okay…crutch. I haven’t mastered two crutches yet) and currently, how to gimp my way around the campus with my leg immobilized.
Art and One Reckless Traveller’s Journey to Grasp it
Art, by definition, is subjective and thrives on originality and creativity. It’s not formulaically manufactured, then mass-produced and scrutinized until all manner of individuality has been extracted from it.
In my short and jaded Los Angeles life, I’ve ventured out of the Southern California bubble to generate art and spread it around the world. The contrasting ways that art was produced in these foreign lands I visited, and the even more opposing ways it was received by local audiences, was a lesson in itself about what art is, what it’s purpose in the world is, and how it can affect different people. I’ve grown up working, studying, and watching art produced in major U.S. cities like Los Angeles and New York. I’m used to the way performance art is used to make controversy, used to make money, used to make a name for an industry professional. What I was not used to, was what art could be to the rest of the world.
There is no denying that Los Angeles fabricates successful work at an unstoppable rate. But the competitive nature, the oppressive media-driven atmosphere, and the procedural predictability of it all can make you forget why you wanted to produce art in the first place. Then I met Europe. I spent the first several weeks in my University level, European theatre classes, baffled at why we were not killing ourselves to have more turns or higher leaps than the dancer next to us, why we were not memorizing countless monologues for acting juries that would determine whether or not we could be profitable in the industry. Instead, we were discussing things like the theoretical purposes of art in the world. We were focusing on how we were going to generate art that made a difference, art that spoke to people…art for the sake of art.
The Green Room 