Monday, September 14

AUDITIONS

The weekend has been filled with audition whatnot, so I thought I'd share.

Saturday, the 1st-years and 2nd-years did our standard "2 contrasting monologues in 3 minutes" auditions. We did them in the theatre that the Conservatory usually uses. Watching from the audience were:
- Head of Program (aka Analysis Professor)
- Movement Professor
- Voice Professor
- 1st-Year Acting Professor
- 2nd-Year Acting Professoressa
- Artistic Director
- Guest Director (for Machinal)
- Literary Manager (aka Artistic Director's right-hand woman)
- a 3rd-year who introduced you and timed the pieces (mine was 3rd-Year NP, who happens to be my roommate)

My audition wasn't as awesomely brilliant as I had hoped and planned, but I think it was pretty solid. But when you're faced with a group of people like that, no matter how cool, calm, and confident you are before you go onto the stage, it's hard to stay in that mindset once you're on the actual stage. At least, it was for me. I think I was too loud for the space. I think I pushed too much in my second monologue. I don't think my first monologue was intimate enough. I just hope that from my audition, they can see how much I've grown in the last year.

On Sunday, we had a workshop/audition for Guest Director. I'm not really sure which to call it, because it was sort of both. I think it was mostly a workshop, but we were all treating it like an audition.

In the beginning, Guest Director started us out with a lot of warm-up, ensemble-building (or perhaps ensemble-proving) exercises. But I think that most of us were, at least in some part, in the mindset of "I'm auditioning right now and I want to prove myself", which put us all a little off in the ensemble work. This is unfortunate, because we really have come a long way on the journey to becoming more of an ensemble, but I don't think Guest Director got a good representation of that.

In the second part of the workshop, we went into the studio two-at-a-time (or, in one group's case, three) to work on the scenes that we had memorized from The Proposal by Anton Chekhov. Here's the scene that Killer and I cut together:



NATÁSHA: This is all a big joke, isn’t it? We’ve owned that land for going on three hundred years, and all of a sudden you say it doesn’t belong to us. Believe me, I don’t care one bit about that old meadow: it’s only twelve acres, it’s not worth three hundred rubles, even, but that’s not the point. It’s the injustice of it that hurts. And I don’t care what anybody says – injustice is something I just can’t put up with.
LOMÓV: Natalya Stepanovna, I don’t care about that field either; I don’t need that field; I’m talking about the principle of the thing. If you want the field, you can have it. I’ll give it to you.
NATÁSHA: Up till now I’ve always thought of you as a good neighbor, a real friend, and now all of a sudden you start treating us like Gypsies. You’ll give me my own field? Excuse me, but that’s a pretty unneighborly thing to do. In fact, in my opinion, it’s downright insulting!
LOMÓV: So in your opinion I’m some kind of claim jumper, you mean? Look, lady, I have never tried to take anybody else’s land, and I’m not going to let anybody tell me I did, not even you. (he takes a drink of water) Meadowland is mine!
NATÁSHA: You lie! It’s ours!
LOMÓV: It’s mine!
NATÁSHA: You lie! I’ll show you! I’ll send my mowers out there today!
LOMÓV: You’ll what?
NATÁSHA: I said I’ll have my mowers out there today, and they’ll hay that field flat!
LOMÓV: You do, and I’ll break their necks!
NATÁSHA: You wouldn’t dare!
LOMÓV: (clutches his chest and shouts) Meadowland is mine! You understand? Mine!
NATÁSHA: Please don’t shout. You can scream and carry on all you want in your own house, but as long as you’re in mine, try to behave like a gentleman.
LOMÓV: I tell you, if I didn’t have these murmurs, these awful pains, these veins throbbing in my temples, I wouldn’t be talking like this. (Shouts) Meadowland is mine!
NATÁSHA: Ours!
LOMÓV: Mine!
NATÁSHA: Ours!
LOMÓV: Mine!


I was really proud of the way we cobbled it together from the text, as I thought that it had a good flow to it, and it was an appropriate length (we were told to aim for 1.5 minutes, with a 1 minute min. and 2 minute max.).

The problem? We rehearsed the scene as though it were an etude from 1st-Year Acting class. Which meant that we let it play out however it seemed best to play out in the moment, without any regard to context. It turned out that wasn't what Guest Director wanted at all. He wanted it to be more like we were putting on a full production of The Proposal, and this was just one minute of that production that we were rehearsing. Whoops.

I think it still worked out okay. Killer and I did our best at taking direction and turning the scene into more of the farce that it was intended to be.

After it was over, I realized that it's not the end of the world if my audition wasn't perfect. My whole class will be in Machinal (it's our ensemble show). And I love the play so much that I will truly be thrilled to work on it in any capacity. I just really want to be able to help tell that story. It may have been written in the 1930s (and at least one of my classmates called it "dated"), but it's still incredibly powerful. It shows how mechanical society becomes as we introduce more technology. It shows how you can have a "successful" life by giving in, but it won't necessarily make you happy. It's a great play, and I'm grateful to be in it in any capacity.

Callbacks for The Game of Love and Chance and Blue/Orange should be posted this week and will be held next weekend. Blue/Orange is all men. I'd love to be in Game, so I'm crossing my fingers for those callbacks. We'll see what happens.


CASTING
We got our casting for The Mystery Plays. The show is written as two plays (each taking up one act) that are meant to be performed together, tied together with a common narrator, and there's one character who appears in both. I will be playing Amanda Urbane (an agent) in the first play and Lucy Brem (an assistant federal defender) in the second. I'm really excited about it. We'll be starting rehearsals a week from Friday.


SCHEDULE
This week is going to be the first week on the hectic train. It's not THAT bad, in comparison to some of the weeks I had last year and some weeks that I know are coming, but I thought I'd give you a glimpse of what the year looks like once things get rolling:

Tuesday
9:00-10:25 - Voice (update: canceled)
10:35-12:00 - Movement
1:00-2:00 - Private rehearsal of Andromache monologue (just me and Acting Professoressa)
2:00-5:00 - Acting, working on Andromache

Wednesday
9:00-10:25 - Voice (exam day!)
10:35-12:00 - Movement
1:00-2:00 - Costume fitting for Mystery Plays
2:00-5:00 - Acting, probably working on Helen
5:30 -6:00 - Lesson with Music Director to prepare for Musical Theatre workshop
7:00-10:00 - Andromache rehearsal

Thursday
9:00-10:25 - Voice
10:35 - 12:00 - Movement
12:45 - 1:15 - Movement Tutorial on Alexander Technique
2:00 - 5:00 - Acting, probably working on Electra
7:00 - 10:00 - Electra rehearsal

Friday
9:00 - 10:25 - Voice
10:35 - 12:00 Movement
12:00 - 2:00 Lunch with 1st-year SDW, who I am mentor to this year
2:00 - 5:00 Acting, rehearsing The Greeks


See? It's not horrendous, by any means. It'll be significantly crazier once we have rehearsals for season shows in addition to classes But in order to have time to prepare for callbacks (or for rehearsals of Mystery Plays, which will sneak up on us), we have to do really well with time management and keeping our energy levels high.