<p>Wow, Snapdragonfly it’s almost over, hang tight girl =]
My S is a MT freshman this year, so I know what you’re going through. Drink a glass of wine and chill =]
It’s all good.</p>
<p>I look forward every day to reading your posts SDF! You keep it all in balance with your great sense of humor-keep it coming!</p>
<p>I think this is why I so love the documentary “Every Little Step” because the behind the scenes look at the audition process showed how very much the casting directors cared about the actors. They just want to hire the ones that fit what they need in order to make the show the very best it can be. The very success of the show may hinge in large part on these choices (absent that the book and the music are also good!). It was clear that with some of the auditioners they knew them from prior experience and that may have given them a leg up, but at the same time the casting directors also wanted the best talent for the part. I presume this is similar to the college audition process–maybe they know your coach or they know you from a prior pre-college program or even saw you perform in a local show, so it may be a factor, but it’s certainly not all–at the end of the day they want the best students that fit the criteria of their program, gleaned from a very imperfect process given how short auditions are! Every career in every field has an element of networking. I am already bracing for the post-graduation fact that so many kids of famous actors seem to get a big boost and “foot in the door” because of their famous parents and really, that sure doesn’t seem fair either, but that’s the way it is! Our no-name kid will just have to work that much harder!</p>
<p>Not saying that casting directors don’t care about actors, but I also think there is a reason that this little video made the rounds of actors (and their parents) recently. It illustrates (with some humor and exaggeration, yes), what it is like to be one of many female actors all competing for parts, and how dehumanizing it can be:</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - Head Shot](<a href=“Head Shot - YouTube”>Head Shot - YouTube)</p>
<p>I know I sure couldn’t do this! (And does the middle guy have to have his shirt unbuttoned to the navel?) Yep, all the stars from high school theatre funnel into the college BFA/BA theatre programs and then every year thousands upon thousands of them graduate with those degrees and set out to make their mark. You’ve got to REALLY want it! I’ve known some girls over the years at our high school, very much on the shy side of the personality spectrum, who, after being in a production or two suddenly decide they want to major in theatre in college and I just think, wow, do they have any idea what it’s really like out there? This is not something you do on a whim.</p>
<p>I was accepted to all (4 out of 7) of my schools except for Michigan, Cincinnati, and Texas State, and I did not use a professional coach. However, I did get an acting coach, have been in dance classes for many years, and have taken voice lessons with some rather high level teachers over the last few years. Sometimes I do wonder if I might have gotten into the others if I had gotten an audition coach, but I am more than pleased with the offers I got. Private message me if you want to know which schools I got accepted to.</p>
<p>Now that all the acceptances and rejections are in, I’ve said about 100 times that if i knew then what i know now… One of those things i now know is that an audition coach would have been worth the money – we were naive and although I read up on the process through this site and did lots of “research”, a coach would have been very helpful – there were clearly some tied in people at auditions – particularly Unifieds. I also would have broadened the list of second tier schools and eliminated many of the top tier schools. I also would never have someone go to the NYC unifieds – they were dreadful. Good luck to all for next year.</p>
<p>We used a Coach for my D and it was the best. However, we did NYC Unifieds but kept them to a minimum and it was great for my D. She got in to a great BFA program because of it. We just did 1 audition a day (CMU took half a day). I think if we had done a ton my D would have been stressed out by all the craziness of it all.</p>