You might want to read Audition, pt 1 first.

And now for the exciting conclusion to…well it’s probably not that exciting really. I mean, I don’t have some big suspenseful cliff-hanger up my sleeve or anything like that. Sorry. Um, we were here:

We eat and head out; the auditions begin at 7:00pm at the playhouse. We pull up at 7:02pm and park across the street. B., the I-borrowed-a-book-from friend, pulls up at the same time. As we cross the street, a car, coming entirely too fast for downtown Starkville, careens around the corner and is racing up the street towards us. I push M. behind me and try to step back myself but my left leg doesn’t quite clear and the car clips my leg right at the knee. I do one of those movie-martial-arts spins and end up in a heap on the pavement.

Ok, that last part didn’t actually happen. I was trying to make it more exciting. Man, I bet your mouth was hanging open and you were like, Gosh! Sorry, I’ll try to keep the, uh, imprecise drama to a minimum.

So anyway, we cross the street and go inside. The theater has a small foyer of sorts with a box office and a couch and a table and bathrooms. I get a sign-up form and find a seat in the small auditorium and fill it out. After introductions and an explanation of What We Were All Doing There, auditions begin.

There are several guys and girls in attendance. They all seem to know each other, what with the comfortable lounging around and chatting and kidding each other and all. The procedure is you volunteer and go up on stage in front of everybody, hand your music to the accompanist, go over any points in the music with her that warrant it and then sing. I let most everybody go ahead of me, you know, to size up the competition. Everybody does a decent job. Some do an outstanding job and make me even more nervous. I ain’t goin’ after them. Pretty soon all that’s left is me and a homeless guy who came in to get away from the birds; he was mumbling something about dive-bombing winged rats, so I’m not really sure. The moment has come, I rise out of my seat and make my way to the stage. *cue dramatic music*

I trip on the steps on the way up to the stage. No, I didn’t, but I thought about it. After I got on stage, I gave a simple introduction, Hi, I’m new guy and I’m terrified. There were laughs. I actually don’t remember that much about my audition. I remember the pianist saying, Oh good, I know this one. I remember starting the song, looking at M. for inspiration a few times and ending the song. Those places that I was worried about forgetting a word or screwing up a phrase, I have no idea if I got them right or not. I’m going to assume I didn’t flub them too bad. No shaky hands or embarassing wet spot on the front of my pants. Rock!

When I finished there was applause and I hurried off the stage back to the safety of M. She squeezed my hand, You nailed it. Awesome. After about 5 minutes my nerves started to subside and I was all, Come on let me sing something else.

Turns out I would need to sing again the next night. I thought it was two separate audition nights and you would sing at one of the two. I chose the first night to go ahead and get it out of the way. They did ask us to come back on the second night if we could, for group singing, so I didn’t think anything about it. Everybody who sang the night before sang again and they sang a different song. I only had one song. Ah well, I sang it again. They weren’t going to make me sing or anything, but I thought I should contribute something. My intro, This is the slightly-less-terrified-version from last night. I don’t know if I did better or worse.

Afterwards we sang the show opener as a group. Dang I’ve missed singing with a group. I really enjoyed it and I think I’m going to enjoy this experience. I’m supposed to get an email telling me what I’ll be doing. The options are chorus, small group, duet and solo. Everyone is in the chorus and other responsibilities depend on the audition I reckon. I hope I get something other than chorus, if not just to validate that I don’t suck, but I don’t really know what I’d want.

I’ll post when I find out the results. w00t! My first ever audition. I hope to have more and be involved in future productions at the playhouse.

For a while I’ve been thinking of getting involved in the local community theater. I found out last week that they were having auditions for their summer musical revue this last Monday and Tuesday. I like to sing, says I, so I borrowed a book of Broadway songs and began looking for a song to sing. Turns out, I don’t know many Broadway songs. I looked through the book and had a piano-playing friend go over some of them with me. After 30 or 45 minutes I’d pretty much given up hope of finding something in the book I could work up from scratch over the weekend for the audition on Monday.

I grew up singing in church choir and whatnot but I’ve never had to do a singing audition or sing a solo (‘cept for that one time in 5th grade but that don’t count). So after a while I was like, Hey why not do a hymn? I know lotsa those. Well, we’re rehearsing in a catholic church you see, so there aren’t any Southern Baptist hymnals laying around. Crap, what now?

We go back to the book and D. (my piano-playing friend) says Hey I know this one, let’s do it. It’s called Memory. I’m like whatever. We work on it for at least 45 minutes and it starts to come together. I’m starting to think I might pull this off after all. About this time I remember what my I-borrowed-the-book-from friend said, Whatever you do, don’t do Memory. It’s so overdone. Well I’ve never heard of this song and I kinda like it but apparently theater people would claw their ears off and shoot me and then themselves if I were to sing this song. Crap, what now?

We find Younger Than Springtime (YtS) from South Pacific. It’s short and simple, two items that are high on my list of Things To Look For In A Song. We work it up a bit and call it a night.

A couple days later (Sunday) we meet again. I try out The Lady Is a Tramp (LiaT); it’s ok. I probably need more sass to really pull it off and I ain’t feeling real sassy. After running through YtS and LiaT a few times, I feel more comfortable with YtS. I whip out my sweet PowerBook, fire up Garageband and make a recording of the piano part so’s I can practice it later that night and on Monday before the audition.

Between Sunday afternoon and Monday night, I practice this song a buncha times. See, I add a new vocal track in Garageband and turn on ‘monitor’. I plug in some earphones and I can hear the piano and myself singing. Pretty danged sweet. I’m sure I’m annoying the ever-loving piss out of the neighbors, given our close promixity and all but I don’t care, this is my moment to shine! or something.

Monday comes and I make it through the day without wetting myself even once while thinking about my audition that night. Yes! M. says she’ll come with me and watch and Do I want her to bring the videocamera? Cripes, woman, are you trying to break me? I mean, I say No thank you dear, I don’t need the added pressure.

We eat and head out; the auditions begin at 7:00pm at the playhouse.

(tune in next time for the exciting conclusion of “I have to sing an audition in front of a bunch of strangers and I’ve never sung solo in public before and I really really really hope I don’t screw up real bad or trip when I get up on stage and maybe I shoulda worn some Depends undergarments in case I lose bladder control”)