Audition Day Horror Stories?

College Majors Musical Theater Majors
1

<p>Anyone have any audition day horror (or funny) stories to tell? I’ll start with a couple …</p>

<p>My son’s high school show was smack dab in the middle of audition season. He couldn’t do Unifieds because of it and we had to get very creative with scheduling his on-campus auditions. One weekend, he had rehearsal all day Satuday and we flew to Boston Saturday night for his BoCo audition at 9 am the following morning. It was Sunday morning and my son was in the shower getting ready, when I suddenly discovered that I had forgotten to pack his jazz pants. Oh no! The only other clothes we had brought for him were his dress pants that he was going to change into after the dance call, the jeans he had worn the day before and his pj’s. We had no rental car, no idea where any nearby stores might be, and doubted anything would even be open on that early on a Sunday morning. I ran down to the hotel lobby to see if there was a gift shop to buy a pair of shorts or something, but of course they had nothing. I would have jumped in a cab and gone to the nearest Target, but there was no time. He suggested wearing his dress pants, but we had heard how kids had come out of the BoCo dance call drenched in sweat and didn’t want him to be all sweaty and gross when he did his monologues and songs after the dance call. In my desperation, I had my son try on a pair of my petite length, XL size black stretch pants. I thought they would never work - he is much taller than I am and, unlike me, he is very skinny. But, thanks to the wonders of stretchy material, they did fit him! They stretched to the perfect length and they were blessedly baggy in the places where he did not want them to be too tight. Fortunately for me, he is a really good natured kid and he was not bothered in the least by wearing them. He said they don’t care what I’m wearing, they just want to see if I can dance, and they’ll see pretty quickly that I’m not a dancer (not yet, anyway) - so who cares what I’m wearing? I sat in agony during BoCo’s extremely long dance call, frantically worrying that they were going to fall down on him, but they didn’t, thank goodness. He didn’t get accepted to BoCo, but as he repeatedly reassured me, it probably didn’t have anything to do with the pants. The moral of this story is PACK CAREFULLY!</p>

<p>Our second horror story was his Fredonia audition. We’re close enough to drive to Fredonia, but for some reason, we left later than we had planned then got a little lost trying to find the right building, and my son was almost late. He had to literally run in while I parked the car and just checked in seconds before he would have been considered late. This was at the one school that had included a short lecture in their audition materials about the importance of punctuality. (Great.) The audition slots were given first come, first served - so, of course, my son got the very last spot. On top of that, his ex-gf was also auditioning for MT the very same day, so there was a lot of awkwardness that day in the dance call and waiting rooms. So, probably due to worrying about being late, going last and being distracted with the ex-gf, he messed up in his audition. He was singing “Something’s Coming” from West Side Story and messed it up somehow - I forget if he forgot the lyrics or just wasn’t hitting the right notes - but that literally had NEVER happened to him before. Attacks of nerves are very, very rare for him. He must have sang that song a hundred times before and never had a single problem with it. He asked if he could start over and when they graciously allowed him, he messed up again! He apologized profusely (which we have read you should not do in auditions), and asked if he could do a different song. So he picked a different song from his book and when I heard what song it was, I nearly had a heart attack. Not only had he never performed it before, he had only gone over it with his voice teacher once, and it was on about every overdone list. I don’t even know why he had it in his book - I think he was were trying to make sure he had every MT period covered with one ballad and one uptempo, and we stuck this in the book in case someone asked for a classic ballad. He many other songs to choose from, and this was about the last song he should have picked, but the good news was that he really nailed it. Blew them away, he said. He could tell they were really impressed. He also nailed his next song and his monologues. Still, after having messed up not once but twice in the audition, and knowing only 10 kids get accepted to the program with ~200-300 auditioning, we were both shocked (and incredibly happy) when he got the acceptance letter three weeks later. The moral of this story is be on time for your audition, don’t audition the same day as your ex, and if somethiing goes wrong in the audition room … NEVER, EVER GIVE UP!</p>

<p>Anyone else have an audition day mishap they’d like to share?</p>

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<p>Hartt called my daughter to confirm if she was going to be at the audition at Unifieds. This is Thursday afternoon and Unified are in NYC on Saturday! She had never received the invitation letter even though they said it was mailed almost a month before. Talk about changing plans fast since she is in school 1 1/2hrs away from us in the opposite direction of NYC which is another 2 hours from our home. We managed to pick her up, get her home, prep for the audition then get up very early to make the bus to NYC. She hadn’t bothered to record her music since she didn’t think she was auditioning there. What a flurry of activity only to have a horrible audition. She was totally ready for the audition, nailed it but the staff never even gave her their attention, they just kept their eyes on their papers. During her interview they mumbled and were terribly rude to her since she would be a transfer student. She did like the dance portion and felt she did really well. After the info session neither one of us felt that this was a program she would want to attend. Guess who she got an acceptance letter from! We were so shocked and we turned them down. Oh, and we also never received any other communication other than the acceptance for MT from them either.</p>

3

<p>OK if you know me or figure out who I am you can never tell my daughter I told you this!:</p>

<p>My daughter has a front tooth that, once the baby tooth came out, never came in. Congenitally missing a second tooth. So she endured years of braces, etc. to eventually make room for an implant. For a few years now the braces have been off and she has been wearing a “flipper” until she was old enough to get the implant. The flipper looks just like a natural tooth.</p>

<p>A few days before her Wagner audition, she had some work done to prepare for the implant. They said that the flipper would fit just fine after that, but it didn’t (and believe me, if I had ANY idea there would be a problem I NEVER would have scheduled the dental appointment before auditions were over!!). Still, we thought it wasn’t a big deal until, more than halfway to NJ (where we were staying during our “Wagner weekend”), my daughter said, “OMG! My tooth just broke!!” Yes, the tooth had broken off the flipper, and she had a big giant missing space right where her front tooth should be. Frantic, we called the dentist who said it was ok to try to super-glue it. We got to NJ and did just that. Let it dry all night. The next day we were scheduled to go see “Rent” at Wagner. She put the flipper with glued-tooth in and all was well, until we pulled into the Wagner parking lot, and the tooth broke off again!! She declared she was not going in. Afte much back and forth she did agree to go in and see the show but wouldn’t talk to or look at anyone or open her mouth. After the show we high-tailed it out of there and, back in the car, she said she couldn’t do the audition, which was the next day. Absolutely refused to do it with a missing front tooth. Meanwhile, my sister was home calling dentists (on a Saturday) to try to figure out a better way to secure the tooth. She got some good instructions about sanding both sides and using nail glue, which we tried. Again let it dry all night. The next day, audition day, she agreed to go to the audition but said if the tooth broke we were leaving. I think she thought she could sit by herself and talk to no one and just try to just get through it. She did NOT realize that the auditions are in a class, in front of everyone, so if the tooth broke off, it would be in front of the whole group!!! No amount of telling her that it didn’t matter worked. She is a teenager, remember? They get embarrassed about things that don’t bother adults so much. Anyway, the tooth held through the question/answer period, and off she went with the group to the audition. She was under strict instructions not to close her mouth, lick her lips, or move her tongue too much. My stomach was in my throat. I had my phone on thinking any minute I would get a frantic text that we had to leave. But, magically, the tooth held! She made it through the day!! </p>

<p>The stress was awful and I figured it had probably affected her audition. But believe it or not she not only got in, she was offered a Presidential scholarship! So you just never know!! But oy, we’ve had better days. :/</p>

4

<p>Calliene, what a stressful couple of days you and your D endured! I am so sorry, but so glad that she got through it with such success. It has to be a huge boost to her to know that she can audition extremely well even in the most trying of circumstances. I have often worried about a similar thing happening with my S - he managed to chip both of his adult front teeth in separate incidents when he was about 9 years old. He got both repaired and they have held up well, but I always worry that one day one or both will just break off right before a big audition. I guess the moral is - always travel with Super Glue! Congrats to your D, and best of luck to her.</p>

5

<p>I think I mentioned this one on another thread, but it has a moral which is worth repeating. We went to my D’s UMich on-campus audition on a Friday, and things just felt…off. It wasn’t at all what we had expected, for a number of reasons. But my D put her game face on and did the best she could. After the dance audition, she changed, and we headed up to the monologue audition. As we were waiting for her name to be called, her phone buzzed…a text from her best friend back home. She opened the text, and discovered that a classmate of hers in their relatively small senior class had dropped dead of a brain aneurysm. She burst into tears, choked out the news to me, and…her name was called to go into the monologue audition. Literally within 60 seconds. She wiped her face, put on a smile, and had to go deliver her COMIC monologue (had we had any time at all, we would have switched to her dramatic monologue, but she was working on autopilot at that point). Moral of the story: do NOT let your child get texts or calls from home during their audition. </p>

<p>Another cautionary tale…when flying in the winter, get to auditions the day before. We flew out to my D’s OCU audition during the first east coast blizzard…got out JUST as the storm was getting bad. All flights after ours were cancelled. Nevertheless, we got stuck in the Detroit airport for 6.5 hours when we missed our connecting flight due to weather (we couldn’t land at Detroit due to slippery tarmac conditions, circled for 45 minutes, ran out of fuel and had to make an emergency landing at Fort Wayne, Indiana…refueled, went back to Detroit, but our connecting flight had left an hour ago. This is where a travel agent comes in handy…I called her from the tarmac in Fort Wayne and had her put us on the only other flight to Oklahoma City that day, and we got the last two seats), and arrived in Oklahoma City after midnight. If we hadn’t left so early, we would have missed the audition entirely.</p>

6

<p>D had her last performance of their winter musical on a Saturday night, flew out with her dad to LA unifieds on Sunday for Emerson audition 9am on Monday morning. Southwest lost her luggage (has NEVER happened to us with SW in decades!). DH and D wait till 8:45pm that night assuming luggage will show up but it doesn’t. They get at cab (they are at the airport Marriott) and go the the nearest Target. (I wasn’t with them and they didn’t tell me what was going on or I would have had them at that Target immediately!) As the loudspeaker is saying “Store closing in 15 minutes” they are running around grabbing dress, shoes, leggings (no dance clothes in this target). Don’t have time to get make-up etc…</p>

<p>She goes to her audition next morning wearning t-shirt from plane ride over leggings and does dance call barefoot (after telling sad story to the man in charge of Emerson’s auditions). Has a cute new dress and shoes but no make-up (except eyeliner from her purse), no hair straightener, no contacts (so wearing her hipster glasses). AND Emerson is the only school that takes a NEW head shot at the audition to be used by the school when choosing their students! (of course she is 17 so she probably looked adorable anyway…)</p>

<p>Fortunately her notebook (sheet music, resume, CD etc) was in her backpack.
Obvious moral to this story: everything you need for your audition should be in your carry-on luggage NO EXCEPTIONS. DUH!</p>

<p>We hoped being ‘the barefoot hipster from Texas’ would make her memorable but alas she did not get in to Emerson… ;-)</p>

7

<p>Wow, these are some interesting, funny, and even sad stories! Nothing too major, but two little mishaps that we learned from…</p>

<p>We were at CCM auditions, and had some time to kill between the morning dance call and his actual audition time. Since my S was starving we walked around and found a nice little pizza place to grab some lunch. Sitting there eating lunch, I look over and realize he got a big drop of pizza grease right on the front of his french blue dress shirt. He said he had never seen such a look on my face as I had at that moment - as I gasped and looked at him in absolute horror. He blotted with a napkin, but it did nothing. We do always travel with a spare, but this was day two of a double audition weekend, so his first shirt was wadded up in our laundry bag, with no hope of having time or location to iron it. I knew that water wouldn’t get the stain out, and might leave a watermark (as would a Tide stain stick)…but I had alcohol-based hand sanitizer in my purse, and put a blob of that right on the stain and blotted. It worked!! The alcohol broke down the grease and all that remained was the very faintest of shadow from the reddish hue that it had…you would never have known it was there! Whew!</p>

<p>Then, we had another “whoops” at one of our last campus auditions (well, it did actually end up being our last as we didn’t go to the last one). We were at Carnegie Mellon, which is a driveable distance for us. We had traveled out the day before to tour Point Park, and as this was our umpteenth trip, we probably took our packing for granted more than in our earlier trips. We packed, and hit the road for a few days, no big deal. All was fine until my S went to change for his dance audition and came back with two visibly different sized feet. In our haste to leave, he had grabbed one of his own jazz shoes along with one of his little brother’s (who is 5 years younger, and at least 2 - 3 shoe sizes smaller). They were all together in our mudroom, and they look almost the same, and he just didn’t check. It was impressive that he even got it on his foot, but he knew there was no way he could dance in that shoe. Fortunately, at this point we shrugged it off, and he said “Whatever - I will just dance barefoot” and that’s what he did. So, no matter how good you’ve gotten at packing and hitting the road, it is always worth double checking everything you’ve packed (though honestly, unless we had had that happen before, I doubt that checking the size on his shoes would have even crossed his mind when he was packing more carefully…)</p>

8

<p>OK – making a list now of things to remember: super glue, hand sanitizer, put clothes in carryon bag, arrive the night before, take away phone before auditions…
Thank you all for sharing these!</p>

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<p>Well at unifieds I auditioned for CCU and they said they had an accompanist and I did not think to bring my speakers down I was one of the first of auditions of the last day and the accompanist left the night before and the kid came out saying there was no accompanist (he had left the night before to beat a storm or something) so I was freaked out and the elevators were running super slow so I basically ran down flights of stairs and took the elevator from the lobby and grabbed my speakers, but it was super stressful.</p>

<p>Also at unifieds I put in all my times to the calendar in my phone and it adjusted the time to switch to Chicago so I got everywhere an hour early for the first day, so just be aware keep a paper of all your times too.</p>

<p>I auditioned for a school at unifieds where I walked in and they were talking about the girl before me and they obviously did not like her. Then I went to put my book down and started to set my tempos and the guy said “I am the head of this program I will pick your tempo.” He played my ballad at the speed of light and the uptempo even faster. It was horrible. </p>

<p>I mean also sorta not a horror but I auditioned for a school as a walk in at unifieds and I got a letter saying I did not audition and they had no more scheduled, I did audition and I called and they had no record of me and I filled out forms and paperwork, but they still did not know who I was, or that I had auditioned.</p>

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<p>LOL, we should write a book! “Audition Horror Stories and Cautionary Tales.” </p>

<p>Merlehay, go buy Secret of Thieves spray…another mom (who is a nurse) from the 2012 audition round told me about it (and I thank her in my head every day…). We sprayed it on the vents when we got on the airplane, in our mouths every time someone sneezed near us…everywhere. My D had pneumonia for her early January BoCo audition…they were nice enough to let us come a week later, but she still was not 100% (she did get in, surprisingly!), and after that disaster we used Secret of Thieves and Purell wipes on EVERYTHING and have been healthy ever since. (Use Purell on the arm rests and trays of trains and planes…everywhere. DO NOT use the antibacterial ones…they create Super Bugs…use the alcohol or herb based ones!) So another item for your check list. :)</p>

11

<p>This isn’t audition related, but interview related.</p>

<p>D had an interview with the director of admissions of an upstate private school. We checked into the hotel the night before and my husband left D and I in the room to watch tv before dinner as he got a quick beer in the lobby bar.</p>

<p>D was chilly, so we decided to go under the covers. In an attempt to pull the blanket out–it was tightly tucked in at the foot of the bed–D gave a yank. Well the blanket didn’t budge, so instead of untucking her closed fist rebounded back and she gave herself a bloody, cut lip. Her mouth swelled up and there was a piece of skin hanging from her lip–not bad enough for stitches, but not a pretty sight.</p>

<p>So H comes back to the room about 20 minutes later to find my D hysterical crying with this injury. Because not only was there this important interview, but the day after there were call backs for the female lead in the senior show.</p>

<p>Miraculously, after icing it and applying pressure, the piece of skin re-attached itself to her lip and looked fine by the following day. It held on until after her Monday audition and then peeled off later in the week. It was incredible. And D got the lead!</p>

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<p>Another cautionary tale: we heard if TWO occasions where someone came out if an audition and gave MISinformation to those waiting to go in about what the judges wanted, to the point of really screwing the waiting kids up. So PLEASE, warn your child that if someone does that, check with the school when they get into the audition room. Do NOT automatically believe the competing kid! :/</p>

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<p>^^^ YES! I second what Calliene says. Do NOT listen to what others tell you. If you have done your research, and you know that they want 16 bars of an uptempo and 16 bars of a ballad, DO NOT go in doing 32 bars b/c someone who went into the room earlier tells you that you can. I hate to say this, but…TRUST NO ONE. There are kids who will deliberately try to mess you up. They are few and far between, but they are there. Don’t risk it!</p>

14

<p>^^^Wow, the thought of a 17 year old kid deliberately doing that to another child makes me sad. Sad for that kid and the way he/she was raised! (Isn’t it always the parents’ fault? ;-))</p>

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<p>Love all these stories! Except the ones involving kids deliberately trying to screw with the other auditioners, that is just appalling. </p>

<p>I remember for my audition, for whatever reason, I didn’t bring dance clothes. I ended up tying my dress up and going out in my leggings - not that the clothes mattered, since I clearly wasn’t a dancer to begin with!</p>

<p>Horror stories…I worked behind the scenes at auditions this year and I remember one girl was auditioning with “On My Own”. That is pretty horrific to me! </p>

<p>And MomofaMTson, sorry to hear Fredonia was one of your horror stories but congrats on his acceptance! I can’t wait to see your son around the theatre dept. next year.</p>

16

<p>Bump. Bumping this so this year’s auditioners can learn from our mistakes/horror stories of last year! Worth reading. Some good tips, and maybe some comic relief…?</p>

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<p>Going on the road starting Tuesday with another audition on Saturday, I’ll be sure to let you all know if anything funny/sad happens if you promise not to tell my daughter…</p>

<p>She went to an college audition workshop today and was surprised how unprepared/far behind kids were. Some were just thinking about which songs/monologues they were going to choose, some parents asked questions about prescreens as if they had no clue what went into them, D and I just looked at each other and smiled. Then she told me to get off her back about finishing up her last 5 applications, LOL!</p>

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<p>This isn’t a story about something that necessarily happened to me let say, but I was still there. A couple of weeks ago I went to VTAs and did the college auditions there. My school had 3 of us auditioning and our director brought us to wait outside the audition room a good twenty minutes early like we were supposed to. Us 3 were waiting by going over our material, encouraging each other to do our bests, and talking to 2 other kids who were going in with our group as they brought us into the auditions in groups of 10. </p>

<p>The three from my school and our 2 new friends in line before us were being completely respectable, but the same couldn’t be said for the 5 behind us in line. They all were from the same school, and I’m not going to name names since some people may know them, and I was embarrassed for them. True we were in a crowded area with tons of other people who were there for the conference, but these kids were shouting right outside the audition room!</p>

<p>When the time came for us to be placed in a line in the order we would be auditioning these kids continued to be rude. A college student volunteering kept asking them to get in line but the students blatantly talked over her and scoffed at the school she went to (a non-auditioned BA) claiming they didn’t need to listen to her. Eventually she told them it didn’t matter to her if they auditioned or not and they just wouldn’t get to audition if they didn’t line up and shut up. </p>

<p>They all promptly got in line, but still continued to talk loudly (and about how much of a female dog she was too). None of those kids got a callback for the school she went to and they complained about it. Apparently it was a safety for many of them, oh well that’s what they get for being rude. </p>

<p>We told our director about it and he said at least it made us look even better! Remember to be nice to every single person at your auditions cause you never know who has pull over anything!</p>

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<p>Wow, FutureMillie6, that’s quite a story. Some kids have been so spoiled and enabled they think they’re entitled no matter what they do. THey have a rude awakening. I’m glad you guys knew the etiquette and were well prepared!</p>

20

<p>This is a great thread!</p>