Hello All,
There's a good reason why I have not been posting lately...
Now I don't want to jinx this, but since it's puppet related I feel like I couldn't NOT blog about it.
As Kyle mentioned I just recently made a quick trip to NYC to audition for Avenue Q! As you might imagine it's the ultimate dream show for us puppet loving musical theater majors, so when they said they'd like to call me back, it took everything not to jump through the ceiling. Adam, the casting director was great and upon realizing I had flown out from Chicago for the audition, offered to let me do the callback via video tape so I wouldn't have to pay the money to fly right back.
From the looks of it, they were mainly looking at me for Princeton/Rod which has been my dream role since I first heard the soundtrack on a car ride a few years ago. They included, however, material for Nicky/Trekkie too; in case I could be considered for an understudy position.
As much as I would have liked to tape and re-tape, nitpicking until I got a perfect take of each part of the audition, there was not nearly enough time... nor would that really be fair since everyone else gets only one shot anyway. With that, the taping was complete. Kyle gave me a crash course in video editing over the phone and I posted it to a private youtube account that night.
Soon after, I got word from the casting director that I was invited to the second callback. This meant flying out to NYC again to do the material for Even Ensign, the director!
Adam gave me a lot of great notes to work on from what he saw on the video. Notes that would help with characterization, intent, voices, and so on. What was great, was that I had a couple days to take those notes and really work on them with some of the faculty at school here. Since it was finals week, there was more time to spare and the sessions I had really helped break down the acting beats of the songs. Being able to talk through the lyrics with different minds was really beneficial. Everyone was on the same page, they just identified with different lines in different ways and had a different vocabulary for articulating those ideas.
Since there is a lot to say (and hopefully more to add within the next month) I'm splitting this up into different posts.
Check back for Part 2 coming very soon.
