<p>The joys and sorrows of high school theatre are all here in this thread, aren’t they! I feel for all of you. And to all those drama directors who think good roles are to be awarded as a good conduct medal or a political plum, bye bye, our kids are off to study with REAL teachers for a change.</p>
<p>My son is SO looking forward to college, where, he says, he can count on everyone connected with the shows to be “competent, for a change.”</p>
<p>Congratulations to you fortunate ones with supportive, dynamic, talented high school teachers. Make sure they know you appreciate them.</p>
<p>High school has enough pitfalls and issues, it is pathetic when the adults act like the “mean” kids. In my D’s senior year, for their final musical, daughter sat thru a 3 hour callback and did not even get cast. Thankfully she had figured out the system in her freshman year and remained very active (and successful) in community theatre. She is flourishing at college. </p>
<p>She went to the performing arts magnet program, my son is at a regular high school with a director who is immensely talented and has worked hard at installing the love of theatre into all his student, not just the kids like my son who came loving it.</p>
<p>I feel such a kinship with all of you…so much political drama in the high school drama departments…my D is 10 days away from her senior musical,which has been plagued with stress for the school, director and especially the actors…they are doing In the Heights and both shows are double cast(double casting falderal is for ANOTHER thread) my D is portraying Daniela, the sassy Puerto Rican hairdresser. A difficult show to cast…I wish them luck. my D has three summer auditions coming up in the month as well.</p>
<p>S is a freshman and just finished the farnsworth invention. Lots of funny smoking stories in that one. The girls would take the cig right out of their pocketbook and put it directly in their mouth. Haha</p>
<p>He is now in the chorus of hello dolly. He is working his tail off because of the big dancing numbers. This week focuses on the waiter scene and hopefully he willbe able to do the jumps by the end of the week.</p>
<p>MomofTheatregirl, my daughter was “Ado Annie” in Oklahoma at her HS last year! She would have loved to have been Eller or even Gertie, but was thrilled to play Annie. It was wonderful, the dancing was great and the energy of such a silly story was fantastic. Attendance wasn’t as good though, as it usually is. The community really comes out for these things and it was a bummer to not have the seats filled like they have for “Les Miserables school edition”, West Side Story, and Joesph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. I fear doing 7brides7brothers right after doing Oklahoma (that wasn’t super well attended) the year before is not a good plan. Ahhh well. </p>
<p>And to those dealing with the drama, yes, commitment to the music and theater programs is definitely a factor for casting. My daughter has always done tech, set building, orchestra pit, etc. etc. when she has not been cast in a show, and even participates in set construction when she IS cast. She has been involved in some way or another in every show they have done, even when she is cut. She is the president of their ITS chapter and on their state board. She has also been involved in all of the “elite”, auditioned choirs her school offers, and has participated in vocal solo and ensemble every year (except this year with auditions). She’s also a musician and sits concertmaster in her school’s symphony orchestra. So yeah, she is talented for sure, but also committed and has worked hard for the theater and choir programs. She has developed relationships with all of her teachers/directors, who all admire her work ethic. She is no “diva”. The assistant director for the theater program though, sounds an awful lot like the choir director “ActingDad” described above. She is someone who probably would have liked to have done what my daughter is doing (applying, auditioning and getting accepted into theater programs) but for whatever reason she is a HS librarian and an assistant director of the theater program instead. She has majorly copped an attitude towards my daughter in last year or so since she found out she was persuing her dream of working as an actor. It’s not just my daughter that has noticed the change attitude of this woman, but also her peer group and her choir director. Fortunately, my daughter is a tough cookie and can handle it. (although there were moments during a particularly busy audition week combined with juggling musical rehearsal that were pretty rough and stirred up the “mamma lion” in me. But I bit my lip and stayed out of it as I always do) Anyways, when I was doing theater in HS it was all about pecking order…the seniors got first priority and so on. Not fair either but you can see why they do it in a way? I think we will all be glad to be moving on from HS. It’s time!</p>
<p>This is awesome to read! We have had similar problems. Our show “Cabaret” opens this week and my D would have been the perfect Sally and instead is the lead KitKat girl. Everyone keeps saying “What great expression she has! I keep looking back at her!” No duh. She’s the only one with training. And I had to bite my tongue yesterday when I overheard notes to the cast and the director said “None of the principals are looking at each other in the scenes…” Again, no training! Maybe if you had selected the trained actor at least one of them would be looking at the others. Sigh.
She too is not in choir because it takes too much time and her voice teacher believes that choral singing is not good for music theatre voice. I don’t know if it has caused problems with casting.
The high school hasn’t been awful. She has had leads in the plays and featured parts in the musicals so it could be worse. We still have a year to go. We have had good luck with community theatre, although I have put thousands of miles on my car doing so!
I think good advice for anyone wondering about the talent their child may have is this - if your child has only auditioned at one place and done well, like their school, than you need to have more input than that. Maybe your child is very talented. But you must get that child in front of a variety of teachers and a variety of audition panels before you really know. The more the better. And it only helps them practice auditioning!</p>
<p>Dramamom0804, that is so true – you have to audition and perform in more than one place. Auditions have a variety of procedures, and you can’t let that throw you, so more experience is always good. Different directors have wildly varying styles. If you’ve only been in school productions with one director, you haven’t learned as much as you might have. So we should be GLAD when the high school turns out not to be the warm nest, frustrating as it seems at the time.</p>
<p>Dramamom0804, that is so true! Being involved with and auditioning for youth theater, and anything else you can get your hands on can is a great idea. Summer programs too, because they pull them out of their element and put them in an entirely different talent pool. We’ve done it all over here. And we live in “small town no-where”. I hear you about the thousands of miles…:)</p>
<p>Oh and it’s so interesting to hear about a voice teacher thinking that choir and classical training isn’t good for a musical theater voice. I’ve heard just the opposite, that the musical theater voice should only come after classical. So many different opinions and schools of thought out there. Everyone seems to have a different opinion!</p>
<p>To dramamom0804’s point about the importance of having multiple data points to assess present talent level, I couldn’t agree more with the point about not relying on one assessment particularly high school assessment. My limited sample size of viewing high school productions of musicals is that acting ability is rarely ever understood or taken into account in casting decisions. I had to laugh at the description of Cabaret as my daughter was also a KitKat girl in a production in which Sally and the Amercan writer (forget the name of the character) barely looked at each other and appeared completely bored when it wasn’t their turn to say a line. My daughter simply is not wired to be anything other than “on” when she’s on stage but I see so much of its my turn to sing so I’m on and the rest of time I can just roll my eyes as I look bored around the auditorium. </p>
<p>In our case, community theater productions helped. While they still have some politics, they tend to be less so. Frenchwoods was a nice testing ground as the caliber of competition was much better and my daughter did much better because Directors cared more about what the final product looked like and also seemed to have a much better understanding of what kids “got it” and what kids do not. But the best was pre-college programs – Stella Adler conservatory one year and CMU pre-college the next – to get a good read on where she stood. Stella Adler did less with formal feedback but my daughter solicited it directly on got great feedback from her Juilliard trained Shakespeare teacher who ended up being one of her recommenders. CMU gives you detailed feedback from all the faculty. My daughter also had some good feedback from casting directors at various NYC sponsered events. The entire collective group of feedback made us comfortable with an auditioned BFA only approach though I’m very glad we included 14 schools given how difficult this has turned out to be.</p>
<p>Interesting turn this thread has taken! My daughter also chose to look outside the high school bubble for more and better opportunities. Unless it’s one of the wonderful performing arts high schools the “work” is generally pretty iffy and a serious actor type can get real frustrated, real fast by the “drama kids”. Our high school director generally favored the students who thought he was amazing. Mine wasn’t one of those. But, to be fair, she did get her share of good parts. Onward and upward!</p>
<p>LOL ActingDad! “roll my eyes…”
Acting ability is not understood you are right! In many amateur places. We were just at a community theatre callback where the character was described as “a nineteen year old who is brash and insecure.” I saw the whole callback session and the only actress who seemed like a brash nineteen year old was my D. The director picked another young woman for the part telling my D she was very good but had “maturity issues.” WHAT? The role is for someone who is not mature! I so wanted to say “Excuse me Mr Director are you making a decision to change the playwrights intention of the character?” But I held my tongue. Maturity issues indeed… on a actress who has repeatedly been asked by directors to play much older than her age. If you wanted her to be older you should have said that, Mr. Director! Again though, it is the feedback I have from multiple places that makes me comfortable saying all this. It is so important and helpful throughtout this process.
On the voice issue… her voice teacher said that choral singing requires the singer to blend. Music theatre singing is working to showcase your own individual voice to its best sound. No blending. The blending is a strain he said. My D actually started choir at our high school and we have an outstanding choir teacher. She is a good student and picked up on the choral technique right away. At her next voice lesson her voice teacher said “What is going on with your voice?” He could hear the difference right away. I think some students are OK doing both choral and music theatre singing, but he did not recommend it for her. Also choir was at 9 am and he said it was way too early to sing! It’s a strain on the voice. I’m not sure guidance counselors care about that when scheduling the classes…
My D warms up with a series of exercises that take a half hour before singing. For the school musical? No warm up. Sigh again.</p>
<p>Kind of the opposite experience than you guys, but the drama goes on! S has always gotten a good role in our high school productions - and he has always auditioned for the part he feels he is suited best for. In our latest competition play, other kids and their parents stated that it wasn’t fair if he got the “lead” because he had just played Sweeney in our musical. S wanted to play the crazy older character (small part) in the play anyway, because it was a lot of fun and he knew he could really be goofy, etc. At the awards ceremony, our play got one acting award - you guessed it, my S. A few of his younger classmates actually rolled their eyes and did a slow, bored clapping for him. He knows they are all sick of him - lol - but he understands! He’s ready to move ahead, too.</p>
<p>The subject is a little off-topic in this forum, perhaps, but there is a whole long thread on the MT forum about choral voices vs MT voices, with lots of knowledgeable people weighing in.</p>
<p>dramamom, same experience with choir in our high school. I agree, some students can do both choir and solo, but some can’t. It was difficult for my kid, too, so he dropped choir this year and planned to take a college level language course in that time slot. but the courses ended up being canceled, frustrating. Honestly, with this whole audition process, it was probably for the best. And we kept it to a minimum — unifieds and two campus auditions — it is a lot.</p>
<p>One good day in a very tense weekend…my son may have talked his way into playing Edna in Hairspray at his theater yesterday. (He’s 6’, 170 and pretty buff, so it’ll be a challenge for the costumers, to say the least.) He thought he was auditioning for Link, but the Edna part opened up suddenly and he jumped. Anyway, good luck to all waiting by the phone today.</p>
<p>D is doing music man right now. I am so glad for this thread because I was feeling very bitter. She was cast in the quartet because they needed her voice there. In her 4 years it has been clear that she is not the leading lady “type”. The same kids or the same look gets the lead for every single show. Meanwhile, no one has the voice this kid has and she always has to pull back to accommodate. (She did get one non lead role that called for a big voice.) Unfortunately , my kid is very loyal so she’s spent the years in bit parts and sassy roles. The only time she ever spoke up is when they made her the maid… Again. She jokedly asked why the black kid was always the servant. They stopped doing that. She only did one community theatre show because her loyalty to her “school” group was too strong which is funny because we homeschooled. In choosing a college I unfortunately had to look at race to make sure he schools did they had a history of doing shows she would have a tiny chance at getting a lead in at some point.</p>
Ahhh well. </p>