Musical Theatre (2) - Audition Preparation & The Audition

Out of the ten people that are taking part in this unit, only three of us are girls - this means that the roles we will all get one of the following roles: Mimi (centre), Maureen (right) or Joanne (left). I decided that I definitely wanted to go for Joanne. I decided against Mimi as I personally don't think that I suite her. I love Mimi's songs and I can dance, but I don't have the right figure for her and I would suite the other two better. I am currently doing another production of Rent at my theatre school, where I am playing the role of Maureen, so I didn't really fancy going for this character again, as not only would the choreography/staging become confusing, but I fancied playing her partner. I have always loved the character Joanne due to her personality and her songs (especially "Tango: Maureen"). I think that I would suite this character best vocally as well - although I can belt, I prefer Joanne's songs and I find it a challenge to belt as high as the role of Maureen demands.

For my audition, I chose to sing Joanne's solo song "We're Okay". In this song, she is having three phone call conversations at once. The song starts with her talking to "Steve", a councillor who she works with, about business ("so tell them we'll sue, but a settlement will do"). The pay phone rings - Maureen is on the other end asking about arrangements for her protest ("yes I have the cowbell, we're okay"). Also on her other phone, her father is trying to ring her to talk about her mother's hearing. Throughout the song Joanne is gradually getting more stressed out. Towards the end of the song, her lack of trust for Maureen is obvious as she tells Steve that she "gotta go", and she continues asking Maureen about Jill. During my audition, I mimed holding the two phones - although this was quite cheesy, I thought it was necessary to ensure the song makes sense. Another vital element of musical theatre singing is facial expressions - like anything, without facial expressions, a lot of meaning is lost - so to show my characters constant change of emotions I really varied my facial expressions.

The feedback from my audition is as follows:

• "Very strong singing voice." - Mr Webb
• "Good song choice. Clear understanding of the piece shown through body language and facial expressions" - Mr Webb
• "Acted it well. Perfect timing. Character could have had more Lesbian qualities" - Mr McKay

I was really happy when I found out that I got the role of Joanne. I was also really happy when I found out that Alice got the part of Maureen, as we work really well together and so there should be no problem about doing duets together. The full cast list for our version of Rent is as follows (I have put the initials next to their names as this is how I shall refer to each person in blogs to come):

• Henri Alabi (HA) = Roger
• Cameron Falconar (CF) = Mark
• Taylor Medford-Major (TM) = Mimi
• Lewis Fisher (LF) = Collins
• Owen Pickett (OP) = Angel
• Alice Abbott (AA) = Maureen // Mrs Cohen
• Lorna Clark (LC) = Joanne
• Will Dunn (WD) = Benny
• Warren-Joe Banfield (WB) = Alexi Darling // Mr Jefferson // Warren
• Tyler Goodyear (TG) = Waiter // Mrs Jefferson // Gordon