Oh God, I Need this Show: An Audition Blog Part 1

I had the great pleasure of attending, during Level III of the CCM Institute both a lecture and masterclass with David Chase.  David has been a musical director, supervisor, and arranger for 25+ Broadway shows including Nice Work If You Can Get It, How to Succeed In Business, Anything Goes, Billie Elliot, Curtains, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Kiss me Kate, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, Music Man and Damn Yankees.  He's currently working on the new production of R&H's Cinderella and will be working on the upcoming Tuck Everlasting. 

"What do I do?  I'm a sculptor and music is my medium.  I'm a storyteller." -David Chase

David was a biology major at Harvard thinking he was going to be a doctor but to him it was all about finding something he was passionate about and doing it.  He has no musical training, but he loves what he does, he's passionate about what he does, and he knows an enormous amount about music and musical theatre (which I can attest to after hearing him talk, the man's a walking encyclopedia).    He says his world isn't based on fact, it's based on ephemera: what is in fashion right now, what do people want to hear, our culture and its expectations.  This is a great point to keep in mind when going into an audition whether it's here in Grand Rapids, in NYC, or around the world.  Musical theatre is still a business, it has to sell, and getting cast is about so much more than if you're a good singer or not. 

 "There are so many aspects to what makes for a successful performer but the only universal is that the singing is done healthfully." - David Chase

As a music director and supervisor David essentially listens to people sing and judges them.  He says he chooses people on various qualities, only one of which is singing ability, but he wants them to be healthy because he needs them to do 8 shows a week.  The same could be said for regional and community theatres where there aren't 8 shows a week, but there also aren't understudies.  It doesn't matter how wonderful your sound is, if you lose your voice or have unhealthy vocal production which leads a musical director to believe you will lose your voice, no one will get to hear you sing.  

"It is our job as artists to communicate and that is mostly what I'm looking for in someone who is singing for me.  Are you communicating, are you telling the story." -David Chase

 David's "3 C's for Communicating" are Character, Context, and Culture. 

• Character: Who is singing?  This doesn't mean just who "you" are or who the "character" in the show is, but knowing all about them.  What's their education level?  Where are they from?  Do they have an accent?  What's their point of view about what they're saying?  Are they being spontaneous in what they're saying? 
• Context: Where are they in the story?  What do they want?  What's the action?  What's going to change from point A to point B (or point C or D depending on how far the song is going to take you.) What is the obstacle to be over come?  There has to be something that somebody learns in the context of singing the song. - That being said there are plenty of songs in the musical theatre cannon that are pop songs, about a stage of being.  A pop song says, "I love her, I love her I love her," vs a theatre song which says "I love her, I love her, but she doesn't love me."   For example in the Music Man when Marion sings "Dream of Love" she's just inhabiting that moment, she's not taking any particular journey, she's just giving us a moment of solace and beauty before all the proverbial stuff hits the fan.  Not to be confused with catalog shows like Mama Mia or Jersey Boys where originally the pop songs didn't have a journey, but now they've been given a context and made into "theatre" songs. Each type of song must be approached differently and it's important to know which is which.  Know the show. 
• Culture: You have to know: when it was written, who sang it first or what show did it come from, who wrote it, what was the original composer/lyricist/book writer's intent.  Part A of culture is knowing the culture of the time it was written and Part B is knowing our current culture and how we perceive that style, that world, now.  For example you cannot sing the song Oklahoma and the words "I know we belong to the land and the land we belong to is grand" unless you know that the show was written during WWII.  That song only makes sense in the context of people defending their land, their home, their country.  My favorite example of this, and you'll know it if you've had a lesson with me in the last week, is Brigadoon which was written immediately post war.  When that audience walked into the theatre in 1947-48 they were seeing a show about two Americans wandering aimlessly in the Scottish countryside.  That audience did not need to be told  that they were ex GI's who had seen the horrors of war and were looking for someplace that was the impossible fantasy of peace and escape.  So you can't do the show at face value anymore unless you can find the cultural moment now that reflects that moment then.  David also gave the example of How to Succeed, when it was written it was the "Producers" of it's time, it made fun of theatrical conventions.  When it was revived in the 90's that had been lost.  If you take Rosemary's song, "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm" at face value it is a very pre-feminist song, but it was never meant to be taken at face value.  It was always meant to be sung tongue-and-cheek, not with the character making fun of it but with the writers making fun of it.  In the 90's revival that had been lost and the song came out as more of an apology, "We know this isn't the way we think today, but it's how things were then."  When it was most recently revived the country had been through Mad Men and could acknowledge that women, at that period, were usually controlling everything behind the scenes.  So now we can sing "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm," with renewed knowledge of the irony of it.  To sing a song like that you have to know the culture of the time it was written and how our currently culture looks on that time and reflects on it.  

Style.  David also talked a lot about style and the disconnect he feels young people have with it.  Throughout the 20's, 30's, and 40's all of the music written for Broadway was pop music, it was the music of the time.  Gershwin was writing the hot music of the 20's.  Now would we sing a Gershwin song as it was sung in the 20's?  Probably not, that wouldn't make any sense to audiences today, but you still need to honor the history.  In the 30's Cole Porter was writing all his witticisms during the Depression, his stories about the rich and the elegant taking ships across the Atlantic came out of the need for the people of the day to go to the theatre to escape.  By the time we've hit the 40's with Rodgers and Hammerstein they've tried to integrate all the elements to tell the complete story.  They started out with Oklahoma and we've been trying to do that ever since.

David gave us an enormous amount of information that I'm going to extend over several blog posts in the coming weeks.  To my students, and those here in West Michigan who are preparing for fall auditions take this information to heart, do your homework, know your history.  Know everything there is to know about the show you're auditioning for, with the wealth of information on the internet (and pirated clips from Broadway shows on youtube) there is no excuse not to know the complete story, all the characters, their relationships, the songs, the style, the time period, the writers' intent, etc...  Knowing all of that is the only way to make an informed choice for an audition song.  We all want to find a song that mirrors the show and character we most want to play and also shows off our voice.  You can't begin looking if you don't know what you're looking for. 

More wisdom to come.  Happy Singing.