We got to New York late on Friday because I went to the whole day of school. I've been missing a LOT lately and may be missing more as I'm pretty certain I have the flu right now. But I digress. Anyway, our host (who we stayed with for Unifieds as well, among other things) asked me not to vocalize in the morning. I was like...okay? My mom reasoned with her and I got to do some quiet humming. But no screlt. (Not that I would screlt in a college audition and I know that a lot of voice teachers hate the term, mine included. I actually prefer "wail.") So I didn't properly warm up beforehand, but that was fine—not the first time!
When we got there, they had a little breakfast buffet thing and a Starbucks. Everyone was camped out in the hallways and current students were mingling and answering questions. The dance call was first, and super fun. Everyone was great and I had seen a lot of them at previous auditions. After, we all went to a general info session and I asked a good question and the guy leading it was great and I was like "mom I totally wanna go here"...and then the MT lady came out. She was very...harsh, even in the discussion. I knew I blew it when I asked about whether the audition opportunities they bring to the school are equity. I mean I know it was a little gross sounding and I regretted asking as soon as I did, but yeah. Oh well, I thought. I can come back from that and have the best audition ever! So we all go to the bathroom and then get to the room where we're supposed to be doing this workshop/audition or whatever, and of course it's the woman from the info session who I had already made a bad impression on. Well, when people started going up and singing in alphabetical order, the workshop thing didn't happen. She'd hear your legit song, say "do you belt," hear a belt song, and then done. On the website, they're like "oh we're not just testing voices!" But that's obviously all they were doing. The only people getting "workshopped" were the ones with wildly inappropriate audition material. She criticized one girl's headshot and outfit and worked with her to do better. But if your outfit and material choices and stuff were on point, 16 bars x2 was all you got. It was honestly so impersonal and I hated it. She did not say one thing to me (or anyone else) beyond "what will you be singing?" Maybe it was because of the environment or maybe because I couldn't warm up, but my songs were not the best. I was also nervous being in front of the other auditioners. Oh well. But then we went to do monologues, and they were like "ok we're only giving you so much time before we cut you off but we won't tell you how much just do what you can." They had told us to prepare 2 minute monologues, and mine is up there. So they cut EVERY SINGLE PERSON OFF HALFWAY. It felt like a cattle call which like I get that that's the business or whatever, but this is a college audition. I was so freaked out that I blanked on a couple lines of my monologue which I have never done before EVER and I kind of slurred at times. And they cut me off right before my favorite part. They can't have given us more than a minute and a half. God, it was awful. The only thing that was remotely interview like was that they went around at the end and we told them what we liked to do outside of theatre. So you DO care about knowing who we are as human beings? What? Honestly, rejection was a blessing. It was my only audition where I felt like they didn't care about me.
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