Auditions

Auditions can be one of the most difficult times to work at a theatre. Almost everyone involved in the auditions is nervous - will I get a part? who else is auditioning? how do i feel right now? who am I reading with for the next scene? As the director, you try to provide a "level playing field" for everyone participating in the auditions. If it's a non-musical, you can have them read scenes and then go home. If it's a musical, you have scenes plus singing and dancing - musical auditions can (and have) gone very late into the evening.

At MCT, we have traditionally held auditions on Sunday and Monday night. I made this change when I arrived because I felt that providing a Sunday night auditions allowed some people to audition on a day they didn't have to work. The downside is the fact that its the end of the weekend - and sometimes people just forget until they go to work on Monday. However, we don't require you to be there both days, so two days of auditions are usually enough to cover our needs. If we have youth (ages 8-14) auditions, they are usually held on Saturday, adding a third day of auditions to the process - this will happen for both A CHRISTMAS CAROL (our upcoming 2009 holiday musical) and THE WIZARD OF OZ (our 2010 opening musical).

This past weekend, we held auditions for TUNA CHRISTMAS. These auditions are a little easier - after all, you only need two guys to do the show. However, we had nine talented men audition for the show, and this meant some hard choices - check out the cast list on the MCT website. However, I feel very lucky that MCT has such a talented pool of actors to chose from. This past summer at the conference in Tacoma, I heard from many of my friends in community theatre - "we have no men". MCT has a great talent pool of male performers, and I hope that we can continue to provide our men - and women - with many opportunities to let their talents shine on our stages.