Auditioning Crushes Souls

This is not new information - the process of auditioning can truly squash any passion you may have once had for your craft and hinder any hope you may have of ever becoming successful at anything. By auditioning for anything, you are setting yourself up for doubt, insecurity, and general unhappiness. And yet, I (and clearly everyone else who shows up to audition) continue to put myself through this awful process.

This post is inspired by the following email correspondence:

Dear [person in charge of my fate],

I am writing to check on the status of my audition, which was on [such and such a date THREE WEEKS AGO]. I was worried that I may have missed something in email form. The emails I provided were this address and [my profesh email address] (on my resume and conflict form).

My name is [ZAN!] and I auditioned for the role of [a part that a million other people likely auditioned for].

Thank you and best wishes,

[ZAN!]

No more than twenty minutes later, I received this response:

Dear [ZAN!],

You should have received an email from us several weeks ago.

Unfortunately, you were not cast.

Sorry,

[Douche Nozzle McDreamcrusher]

THANK YOU SO MUCH. Thank you for not getting back to me and then acting like you did. Oh, are you new to email, Zan? Clearly you must be because you didn't get this email that I never sent you. Not cool, D.N. McDC. NOT COOL.

Friends, let me walk you through the audition process:

1. Spend an hour a day reading audition postings on a website you pay to subscribe to. Filter through hundreds of postings, many with age limits, to find something that is a) in your general vicinity and b) has a role available that you could sing. Keep in mind, many places will say that certain roles are already cast, and those are usually any soprano roles (I'm a soprano).

2. Find a possible gig. Complete the application. Send them your headshot and resume and an audition fee. Audition fee may be anywhere from $10 to over $100, depending on the program. In some cases, you must be GRANTED an audition after submitting your money and a pre-screening recording. Sometimes you are NOT granted the audition, and you lose the money you gave them.

3. Schedule your audition. See if there is an accompanist fee (yes, they will provide the accompanist but you may have to pay them on top of your audition fee). Request off of work. Find transportation.

4. Do the audition. Go to a location where there is no space for you to warm up, sit in a small room with 50 other girls singing the same repertoire as you, and wait for them to call your name. Go in, hope the accompanist knows your rep, go through tempos. Introduce yourself, say what you're singing, and try to hit that high note at the end. SOMETIMES, they will ask you to just sing the high note at the end. That's always super-pleasant.

5. Feel good (sometimes) about your energy and your singing. Think to yourself, "I gave it my all and I sang my best. If they don't like it, they must be looking for something else!"

6. Begin to doubt everything about #5.

7. Wait to hear back. This could be days, it could be months. It varies depending on the program. Sometimes, if you don't hear for a while, it's a good thing. It means you've made it through another round of cuts. Sometimes, it just means that they're saving all of the rejects for one day. Sometimes, like in the case stated above, they are just inconsiderate and don't let you know what's going on.

8. 99% of the time, get rejected. Feel like shit for 20 minutes. Question your self-worth and why you wasted your time getting a degree in something as intangible as classical voice. Quietly sob in the bathroom of your workplace or whatever awful public place you happen to be in when you check your email. Consider quitting all together.

9. Start all over again at #1.

The above checklist does not include: hours devoted to practicing, money spent on headshots/coachings/accompanists/lessons, the comparisons you make between yourself and your friends or frenemies who are getting things, or the time spent toiling away at a job you hate so you have money to audition in the first place.

The following is advice I've gotten from people over the years, all of them people I trust:

-"You definitely won't get in/get the part if you don't audition."

-"Everyone goes through a time of rejection after rejection, then everything will start to click."

-"You don't know who else auditioned, maybe it was the next Renee Fleming!"

-"You could be the best chocolate ice cream there is, but if the director likes strawberry, they won't pick you."

-"You just have to keep going."

BUT HOW LONG DO YOU KEEP GOING? When is there a point where you say to yourself, "Okay, I gave this a shot, and clearly it's not what I'm supposed to do." When do you cut your losses and find something else to do with yourself? I am not saying any of this because I've done anywhere close to enough auditions to consider giving up, but is the self-hatred worth the possibility of being cast in something in the future? I only do this because I truly enjoy it, but what if the process actually kills my happiness?

That being said, I just came from a GREAT audition, minus the dance portion, and I feel good. But again, WHO KNOWS. I felt great about every audition I did this year, and nothing came of anything. The only positive thing is that I learned how to audition without losing my cool and ruining my day. I've learned to do it like a job. I guess I just have to go through the motions without expectation, until my cool exterior is broken and I am merely a shell of my former self without any passion for life.