Auditions

This weekend will be very busy with auditions for the whole family.

We’ll be descending en masse on the Ashtabula Arts Center Saturday for its auditions for the Strawhat Theater summer productions. Productions scheduled for this summer include Seussical the Musical, Urinetown, Streakin’, Romeo and Juliet and Camelot. My children (and a couple others tagging along to auditions) are interested in Seussical, and Doc-wife is most interested in playing the nurse in Romeo and Juliet (a demotion for her?) I have heard good things about Urinetown (there’s a sentence I never expected to write) and also like Camelot.

Problem: I haven’t auditioned for a musical in more than 20 years. Well, actually, to be completely truthful it’s been over 25 years. My only recent public singing consists of the couple times my daughter has dragged me onstage for karaoke.

It’s not that I can’t sing; I have sung on stage many times…it was just a while ago. The last musical I actually tried out for was 1776, performed in 1979, at the Ashtabula Arts Center, and I landed a good part. I sang for nearly all my public school years in the arts center repertory choir. I also got drafted into musicals (Pippin, Oliver) by directors who knew me.

I’m just a little…rusty. We’re talking ironclad-battleship-sunk-in-warm-brackish-water-100-years-ago-rusty. I think I’ll either sing The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha or They Call the Wind Maria from Paint Your Wagon. There’s still plenty of time to decide..I’ve got 26 hours remaining.

Note to self: Don’t even THINK about the dance part of the audition!