Yesterday Roger and I drove up to Salt Lake City to audition for The Old Lyric Repertory Company. This charming theater company located in Logan, UT does four summer shows in "rolling rep" (basically that means they open all four shows gradually and then run them all at the same time. An audience member can see a show on Tuesday and then come back Wednesday to see the same company of actors perform in a different show and so on.) In the past it has been affiliated with Utah State University and when I attended school there I did a few summers at the Lyric and have very fond memories. I have always wanted to return one day and perform there again. Roger and I were a young dating couple and newlyweds when I did those shows in the past at Lyric but he never had the opportunity to be a part of the season and so we have talked through the years of BOTH of us doing a summer there. Maybe this summer will be the one... Regardless, I have had the best time preparing for this audition. As soon as I learned of it a couple months ago I started working. The main show I have my eyes on is called Always, Patsy Cline. There are two characters in the show, Louise (a fan) & Patsy Cline and a live band. I would love to play Patsy. BUT in order to do that I have to embody her in appearance, demeanor and vocal style. I went to work learned all I could about her and got the 18 songs in the show downloaded and have watched numerous clips of her on You Tube. She is amazing. Her talent is brilliant and on top of that she was a woman of the 1950's who paved the way for other women to stand as equals to the men in the music business. That means a great deal to me personally and I admire her very much. Roger and I both had to prepare contrasting monologues. I had fun working on my pieces and having Roger coach me. He is so good at that. I love the fact that I have my own acting coach at my beck and call. Even the kids weighed in on my monologues and gave me feedback. I wanted to see if they understood who I was talking to and what I was talking about. It was a fun process. By the time the audition rolled around yesterday I felt very prepared but still very nervous. It is funny how I have done theater since the age of 9 and I still get nervous. The great thing about this audition is that Roger and I saw so many people we knew! We even ended taking a dear friend home to St. George. She had taken the shuttle up and we thought it would be fun to ride back together and catch up. Roger went before me, he said he felt so-so about his audition, but I am sure it was amazing. I had a hard time settling my nerves during mine, but I felt really good about it. I did my monologues and then I sang, "Lovesick Blues" (written by Hank Williams, who is also famous for singing this song). I thanked the directors and left the room...after a moment they asked me to come back in and sing something that showed more of her lower register. So, I chose "Crazy". It is her most famous song (written by Willie Nelson), but it shows the range they wanted and I felt very comfortable singing it. ANYWAY, we will see what happens! The other shows they are doing are Blithe Spirit (classic Noel Coward comedy), The Mousetrap (Agatha Christies' mystery play that set the mold for all other mystery plays and one that is still running in London's West End since it's original opening in 1952) and Shakespeare Abridged (a comedic speed-through of the Bard's best...perfect for Roger) I will keep you posted either way. One thing Roger and I did decide to do is try out for everything this summer. Not that we are hungry for the work, Lyric really takes precedence if we end up being offered contracts, but we both agreed we need more current audition experience to build up confidence in that area. I don't want to be so nervous all the time. I think some nerves come from waiting so long in between shows. We can audition for Tuacahn, Neil Simon, The Comedy Storm and just get ourselves acclimated to auditioning. And even if our experiment doesn't work in settling the nerves we will have built up a little repertoire of songs and monologues that we can use for future auditions AND leave our foot in the door to these other awesome companies so they get used to our faces and our talent so down the road we will hopefully be cast in more of their shows. Should be fun! And just for your viewing pleasure, here is the song I sang for auditions. I had my heart set on singing it to show that I could 'yodel' and it is just plain fun to sing! But I ran up against the fact that there was no available sheet music for it in Patsy's key. I couldn't even find a minus track for it. I asked around to my musician friends and finally my dear friend Brenda Reep was able to produce me a minus track she played and arranged within and hour and a half!! Thank you Brenda! Here it is sung by the one and only, Patsy Cline:
Comments
Post a Comment