SummerStock

Summer Stock. The craziest few weeks of my life. 

Auditioning for summer theater companies was my first taste of the real world. You walk into an audition where they don't know you and you sing your heart out and pray that they heard something unique and ask you for a callback. It's nerve wracking. 

I auditioned for 3 different companies. Pickleville Playhouse located in Bear Lake; Lake Powell Playhouse located in Lake Powell; and The Neil Simon Festival located in Cedar City. Each gave me a new and different experience and taste for theater outside of school. 

Pickleville held callbacks and dance callbacks. They had everyone that had been called back come into the tap studio where they taught us a short snipet of dance. I was very nervous because I hadn't had an actual experience with a dance callback and my dancing is not my strong point. And, especially after my latest conversation with Peter I was not feeling too confident in anything I was doing at that point. 

But I gave it my all and did my best to pick up on the movements quickly. I had fun and it didn't even hurt that much. Which is always cause for bonus points in my book ;). After everyone learned it, they had us perform it in groups of 3, after which we all went out to the lobby to await their decision. 

The directors came out and read off all the names of the people they wanted to stay and read and my name was one of them! You should have seen me inside my head. I was quite literally jumping for joy shouting "in your face!!" to and at anyone and everyone who had ever told me that my dancing wasn't going to amount to anything. Mostly I was just yelling at myself and telling myself to stop being so hard on myself. It was such a glorious feeling that I cannot even begin to describe. 

The cold reads went on for another hour and a half but when they were over, it was over. We all walked out of there smiling and talking about the experience and the characters and about how fun it would be to be apart of "The Drowsy Chaperone". 

The Neil Simon Festival audition and callback experience was very interesting. Richard Bugg was/is the main director/casting director etc and he is the one who held the auditions. Which were suuuuper unorganized. I was honestly disappointed. I was expecting them to be more professional and put together, but it all sort of got thrown together at the last minute. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience. 

When I auditioned, Bugg seemed impressed and asked me a bunch of questions about housing situations and how wide my range was and if I lived in Cedar etc. So I thought that was a good sign. When callbacks came around he had me read for one show which he said I did well. 

I missed Lake Powell auditions all together because I didn't know about them until the day right before and I didn't have anything prepared in a western accent that I could do well. So i didn't worry about it. But then Peter told me that I should audition and pulled some strings and put me in touch with the director, Nate Marble, and Kollin and I drove down and back one Saturday evening so I could audition. 


Each of these auditioning processes was unique and I was holding my breath for an offer to work for any of them (except Lake Powell because after visiting Page, Arizona, I felt it was super ghetto and a tiny place). The only issue was that I'm going to be gone the first week of May, celebrating my mother-in-laws recovery from cancer, in Florida. So I was super worried no one would be willing to work with me. I was also super worried because I had somehow gotten it into my head that if I didn't get cast it meant I wasn't good at what I was hoping to spend my life doing (I hadn't been cast by Peter in NtoN and I was worried that Bugg wouldn't cast me and that that would mean that my faculty that was telling me how good I was, wasn't willing to work with me. I know. Stupid. But that was my mental state for a few days). 

Turns out the only offer I received was for Lake Powell Playhouse. At first I was super bummed because I didn't want to be in Page and I didn't want to perform on that tiny stage. But I warmed up to the fact that I was going to be performing over the summer and making money doing what I love! 

Moving out for the summer, moving away from Kollin for the summer is going to suck. There is just no other way of saying it. It's going to be suuuuper sucky and I'm going to hate that factor of it. But it's going to be a GREAT experience and I'm super excited. 


So, what did I learn from all of this??

1.) Don't go on vacations during the rehearsal process because most companies won't try to work with you ;)

2.) Don't play mind games with myself. I need to be confident in what I can do and stop weighing so much of that on other people. 

3.) I CAN dance! Maybe not perfectly, but I can do it. 


I'm super excited for the journey ahead and the experiences to come. This summer is going to be fantastic. 


<3: CourtneyRae<3