#134: They’re The Most Important People
Thursday 1/9/25
Sorry for the late night post BUT I had an audition to film and wanted to recap it for you since having better auditions is part of my 2025 goals! Honestly, it went pretty well!
The audition is for a new musical. And honestly, you may not know this about me, but for many years when I lived in New York… And in the years since… I primarily have worked in new musicals. My first job out of college was on a brand new musical called “Show Choir! The Musical“ and I did that in New York for many years… Probably five on and off. We did the whole underground theater scene in New York… We did every festival and every cabaret… We recorded two or three cast albums. And I was the only one who ever played my part. Other people got replaced and I never did! I saw it through from the very first industry reading all the way through the cast recordings. The show is a very, very important part of my life.
That job gave me skills that I certainly never got in college. Luckily, I could always read music and was pretty skilled at picking things up quickly, but this was a different pace. Somehow people who never heard this music before were coming in off book on the first day of rehearsal lol it was a completely different world. The work that was required of me outside of rehearsal was huge. Doing the show for so long made me a better rehearser, it made me more flexible, and made me adaptable. That was the name of the game… I learned very early, not to get attached to anything that my character did or said.
I also learned a lot about collaboration as an actor and also observing the creative team. I watched them each have to sacrifice something they loved because ultimately it benefited the show and the story more to cut it. I watched people get songs replaced… I watched the excitement over new things taking over… I watched people literally build the vocabulary of movement of the show… and I even got to watch myself do things in a rehearsal that ended up in the final script.
Since then, I’ve done a ton of new musicals. I love getting to work on and develop a piece. I think part of my ego in terms of being an actor is that I feel pretty confident that I’m going to always find a way to make something interesting or funny. And if I can do that and people like it… There’s a very high likelihood that I won’t be replaced lol I’m always willing to take a risk or interpret the text in my own personal and unique way.
So when I got the audition for a new music by a pretty prominent writing team in New York… I was excited. It’s actually the most excited for an audition I’ve been in probably in a few years… Though I did have a few exciting auditions last year. I just know that I belong in that space. And the role? Oh my God, it was for one of my favorite kinds of characters… A kind-of villain who doesn’t really know their kind-of a villain. The lines were funny… The text was interesting… And I just had to sing a song of my choosing that was comedic.
I committed to prepping better for self tapes this year… So I’m very proud to report that I did put in more work this time around. I got the tape on Monday and it was due Friday. Tuesday I highlighted and printed my copy and spent some time getting to know the text. On Wednesday, I decided what I was going to sing and wear, and I recorded the other lines. Today I rehearsed my lines against my own voice reading the other parts… I adjusted the timing in iMovie so that I could take as much time as I wanted to save my lines. And I also decided that because the show seemed pretty funny… There was a moment where there’s a thunderclap and we react to it… So I went ahead and found a thunderclap effect I liked on epidemic sound and threw it into the edit. I wasn’t completely off book… But honestly, that’s not really ever my goal. However, I knew the text well enough to be able to experiment and explore and have a good time in the tape. I also think, looking back, I had a lot of really strong eye lines, which I was really proud of. AND, I got the tape edited and uploaded a full day before the due date!
Again… “We’ll see what happens”. The story of my life! It would be nice to get this and I think I would do a really good job but if not, it’s OK and I know I got to flex my muscles on my first self tape of 2025.
Dreams Don’t Die
Julie