To Get the Thing Worth Journeying... (Part 2)

Okay, so when we left off in the thrilling saga of Alex does musical theater, I'd gotten a call back and was super excited. So, here's what happened next!

I got to the call back...about thirty minutes early. I was so freaked out about being late that I basically booked it there (woops). Anyway, I got there about the same time as another person, who I'd talked to a little during the open audition night. She was excited, too, and together we journeyed into the building.

The Director (who, coincidentally, is my bathroom buddy from the last post) split us into three groups. While I was busy trying to figure out the method with which they divided us, I was herded into the first round of the call back - rhythm.

Stephen Sondheim likes to make people cry (especially the performers), so his songs are...challenging. Yeah, we'll go with challenging. We had to sight-speak what might be the hardest song in the musical because it's so fast-paced.

We were randomly assigned parts, and I got The Baker the first go 'round, which was quite disastrous. Our group stumbled through that for about fifteen minutes or so, and after slowing down the tempo to a snail's pace, we left that part of the call back feeling defeated.

Then we went right to choreography and half my group groaned tragically (myself included). When we did musicals in high school, I was always that kid in the back that the good dancers hid. Don't get me wrong, I have rhythm and was always one of the people keeping people on-beat - while we were singing. But you ask me to dance and I have two left feet, and whatever the other non-dancey cliches are. So, I stumbled my way through that two eight-count, mostly jazz squares routine and thought that perhaps this wasn't for me, after all.

Luckily, our group saved the best part for last. We went to the acting part of the call back determined to get something right - and we did! We had a couple of asides set aside, and got to act out various scenes from the musical. I was picked to go in the first scene, and was assigned Jack. With the scene I had, my only line was in the beginning and I basically spent the rest of the time off to the side while everyone else in it argued. So, instead of doing that, I started talking to an imaginary cow (he's milking it at various intervals in the scene). Since I was probably a failed stand-up comedian in another life, I encouraged the cow to produce milk because hey, if the US Hockey Team could be Russia in the Olympics and win the gold, the cow could also beat the odds and produce milk. I referenced the movie Miracle, and asked if the cow remembered watching it together and, by this time, the people not in the scene were laughing at how ridiculous I was.

We switched characters and scenes around, so by the end of it I'd had my fair share of yelling/fighting/being sad. Then we all went back into the auditorium and after five minutes of conferring, they called a group on-stage to talk out that difficult song from earlier. Guess who one of the people they called was?

Yeah.

I did a bit better this time, and even ran across the stage at Cinderella at one point (apparently I harbor a secret disdain for Cinderella. No idea how that happened). They ran it through a couple more times with a different group, and then lined us all up on-stage to sing a few bars from a song in the musical. That part was awesome because we all got to hear each other's voices (up to that point, we had no idea what everyone sounded like when they sang).

We were dismissed after that, and waited for an email with the cast list.

And waited.

And waited.

And then, it finally happened!

I'm pleased (and proud) to say that I got a part!!! WOOOO!

Which part, though...well. That's another story for another day :)