Avenue Q Audition (part 2)

When I got to the audition I felt ready and confident in what I had worked on. I had even found a consistent Nicky voice in the past couple days which has always been a hard thing for me. After hearing some pretty great guys while in the hallway, it was my turn. I walked into the room and actually felt pretty comfortable. There were definitely some nerves trying to work their way into the directors line of vision, but I was able to combat them with preparedness.

After realizing that I had a ton of material to do, Evan (the director) asked what I'd like to start with. I chose "Purpose" because it was how I had envisioned the audition starting for the last week. Whenever I have the choice to make something happen the way I've envisioned it, I take the opportunity. Tempo wise, I feel like I might have taken it slightly slower than I wanted, but I was able to hit all the acting beats I had been working on so I wasn't too worried about that. Next I did a Princeton scene which felt great. After that I did the scene between Rod and Nicky that sets up "If you were gay", first as Rod, then as Nicky. I was prepared to do "If you were gay" too, but we moved right on to "The Internet is for Porn". "I wish I could go back to College" was next and I was a bit worried what I would sound like after doing Trekkie, but in my search for placing his voice, I think I've found a healthy spot.

After "College" it was puppet time. They asked if I would rather put on Princeton or Nicky...a tough choice because Nicky is a cooler looking puppet, but Princeton is Princeton so I chose him. The puppet builder in me really wanted to sit and inspect the design but that's not exactly what you have time to do in an audition so I had to set those feelings aside. They had me start "Purpose" again, puppet in hand (or on hand) to check what kind of Puppet skills I might already possess and to see if I would be right to continue.

This is where the puppeteer in me started trying to reassure himself of all he's learned in the past. I'm not sure what I must have looked like but for you're reading pleasure, I've broken my though process down like so:

Purpose, ~wow, this grip is different from anything I've built before~

it's that little flame that lights a fire under your a*$... ~hmm, I wonder what it's made of...it's kinda like the king fish puppet built by Henson that I used in Elmo's World Live...

Purpose, ~that would make sense, Rick Lyon worked for Sesame Street~

it keeps you going strong ~ooh, remember the acting, I want to punch "full" tank because that's really the operative word, not gas just because it rhymes with the first line~

like a car with a full tank of gas ~yes, got it~

Everyone else has a purpose, so what's mine ~puppet acting, make sure he's alive, they don't care how good you sound right now, they just heard you sing...crap what do I do for the penny bit ~

oh look, here's a penny, it's from the year I was born ~watch your syllables ~

It's a siiiiiiii ~loosen the wrist, make it fluid~

iiii-iiii-iiiiii ~this new version of the music is good- oh crap what have I been doing with the arm rod ~

iiii-iii- ign ~do something with the arm rod ~

I don't know how I know ~ act!!! don't forget this means something ~

but I'm gunna find my purpo-

"Good, that was great"...

The second callback was a success!

On to the final, but with a quick stop along the way... Avenue Q Puppet School, a two day workshop involving puppet manipulation and character study to prep for the final callback. This means another trip to New York, and boy will it be fun. This is a chance to get to see how they teach puppetry and it means the opportunity to work on the material with the director. AND... I'm not sure if this is 100% for sure, but it is my understanding that Aymee Garcia (Avenue Q original cast member, It's A Big Big World tv show, and currently Shrek on Broadway) may even be leading the puppet workshop.

I can't wait! I'll let you know what I can after it happens.

Merry Christmas from Wells

I just finished a new Puppet! A little Christmas present to myself...

Wells

It took me a while (I started him back in the spring) but here he is. I tried to do a little video on the digital camera my girlfriend and I got today. Hope it works.

Happy holidays to all. I hope everyone got what they wanted.

Expect more from Wells in the coming year.

Avenue Q Audition (part 1)

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.

Christmas Critter - Furry Puppet Studio

Recently, Zack Buchman of Furry Puppet Studio brought this project to our attention.

Check it out. The puppet looks great, and what a wonderful feeling it must be to have your work in a national commercial!

Click here to find out more about it. There's even a video!

Congrats Zack!

David + Avenue Q Audition = Blog

Today is a big day for one, Sir David Corris, who is attending his first Avenue Q audition in NYC!

By all accounts it seems to be going well - he got a callback!

So keep your fingers crossed and your eyes peeled... we're going places!

Serendipitous Media Exposure!

A few weeks ago I took Yancy to the National Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City. While unsafely filming inbetween lanes of traffic, our attention was suddenly drawn toward a frantic woman beckoning us to finish crossing the street for an interview. Not one to pass up an unbelievably well-timed opportunity (it was November 10 - the day Sesame Street turned 40), I traversed the remaining lanes and safely arrived on the sidewalk. Within moments I was given a microphone to wear and the camera was focusing on my cloth-covered hand!

We spoke for a few minutes about what I do for a living and what Sesame Street means to me, and as I settled into this impromptu interview I realized how crazy lucky the entire situation seemed. After a mere few minutes the interview was over and we parted ways... Talk about being in the right place at the right time!

A "Barrel" of Gratitude

In the midst of a hectic week of shows fell the holiday that reminds us how distant we've become from our families...

Thanksgiving!

Being on the road, we were forced to go commercial for our celebration - thus we attended the illustrious Cracker Barrel in Southaven, MS. As a last minute decision, I grabbed some felt, Fabri-Tac, and Yancy to come along for the ride. Within half-an-hour Yancy had a new outfit, and an entire restaurant gawked at how rude it seemed to be to have a puppet at the Thanksgiving dinner table!

Forgive the lack of editing and obvious "puppeteers arm", there was not nearly enough room to get a nice angle. Enjoy!

A Meaningful Weekend to Come

This may not be about puppets, but I have to share.

This weekend I'll be traveling home for a drama club reunion. The school finally passed a levy that allows for a much needed new high school to be built. This means that they are tearing down a beautiful old theater with generations of memories from shows that changed the lives of so many people, not just high school students, but community theater actors and small touring troupes too. This is the stage responsible for Kyle and I meeting in a community theater production of Oliver...Heck, even a young Tom Hanks came through while working for a small theater company years before anyone knew his name.

The biggest disappointment though, is the generation of thespians who signed their names on the green room walls upon initiation into troupe #946. To any visitor, the hundreds or maybe even thousand+ names would look like graffiti meant to deface school property, but to us the names mean an enormous amount of commitment to arguably the best organization that town has to offer. I think I learned more about myself and about professionalism within those walls, than I have learned anywhere else.

I worked with people there that put a ridiculous amount of energy and passion into creating art together... something I've missed about performing anywhere since. We might have been a poor Ohio high school, but some of the most professional artists I've ever worked with were right there on that stage, too busy battling puberty and high school hormones to notice how good they really were.

This weekend is the last chance 40+ years will have to visit their old stomping ground before it is knocked down and the new space is built up. It will be the last time for us to touch the walls (and ceilings in my case) where we proudly painted our names. It will be the last time to visit the prop room and catwalk where we snuck away with girlfriends and boyfriends. It will be the last time to climb up on the roof, or up through the secret hole in the ceiling... so many memories were shared there, so many lines, so many laughs hang in the auditorium air.

It's hard to believe it will actually be gone.

I'm so thankful there will be a new one in it's place though, so that generations to come wont miss out on the same kinds of experiences that changed our lives. It's a horror that theaters everywhere across the country, especially high schools, are forced to be abandoned because of budget cuts. I can't remember a thing about any of my gen-ed classes in high school, but I can remember performing in that space years before high school in community theater...The Sound of Music was my first show ever. I remember 60+ performances (if you count band, choir, and orchestra) that shaped who I am today and for a town with a fast dying economy- even before the recession- I can't imagine life without that theater.

While I'm excited to see what the new school will look like, I'm not sure what it will be like to visit once there's nothing to call my own. The only part of the building that will be left is the oldest, which cannot be torn down since it is considered a Historical Landmark having been built in the 1800s as the "First Chartered High School West of the Allegheny Mountains". Of course this was the part of school I tried hardest to avoid as it was where I had most of my English classes, so it doesn't mean as much. Perhaps it will now.

I'll always have a strong sense of pride for that school. I have so much to be thankful for because of it.

This Little Piggy Caught Swine Flu

Happy Swine Flu Season!

In commemoration of all of my friends who have been blessed with H1N1 in the past few months, I have made this little piggy friend. Kyle was fortunate to get it at the beginning of the summer, and recently my friend Jordan (Kate Monster performer in the review show I just did) was hit by the same flu bug (err...pig) the day of opening night, causing her to miss the whole run of the show. Now that she is over Swine Flu- and without ever having gotten to perform Kate Monster in front of an audience after working so hard for a month to learn it- I figured I'd give her something to remember the show by.

"Flu" the swine as Jordan now calls him, is the first puppet in my new GOAL for the next few months. This may be a bit more ambitious than time will allow, but I'm going to try to post a puppet each week until an undetermined time that will be determined as soon as the determining time can be determined.... My goal is - at least - to make it through Christmas and into January before my GRADUATING semester of school starts.

First, I'm going to start by physically completing past projects that were put on the back burner. These are mainly puppets I created for practice or for my own collection. This is not only to save time (because that's definitely part of it, what with a conservatory schedule that sucks about 20 hours from my life everyday) but to find that sense of completion for my own projects. A lot of times as artists, it's easy to put our own projects off, in order to complete what other's have commissioned us to do, or we let work or school dictate our lives...

Well, school's almost over. I'm on my last year and provided it all goes as planned, graduation is getting closer than ever and it will be time to start searching for a way to pay back loans. This is the other reason for setting the goal. After a couple emails back and forth with Sean over at Swazzle, he made the good point that I should build up my portfolio now if I want to look for work as a builder after school instead of waiting tables. It was essentially - and indirectly - his idea for "Puppet-A-Week" as I'll now call it, so that when I'm ready to apply for build jobs after school, I have something to show for myself.

Here's hoping time and I become besties.

The End! hah.

Some days are diamonds...

Kansas City has been a really cool place. The city is a vibrant example of a place that really cares about their image and cares about the arts. Crossing the campus of the Art Institute of Kansas City, we were surprised to see a tree with doors, which is an obvious invitation for exploration. Opening the creaking wooden doors we found a set of oil pastels and a notebook mounted within. Not one to argue with an opportunity to play, my friends and I took turns adding a bit of ourselves into the tree. Although this post has nothing to do with puppets, it was a refreshing example of how inspiration is everywhere.

I hope all is well!