Auditions over...now the wait

We had auditions yesterday at the Ashtabula Arts Center for this summer’s Straw Hat Theater season. Son-and-heir opted out, but Doc-wife, the blog-daughter and I were on hand to sing our little hearts out and do a monologue for the assembled directors.

BD picked a compilation of Jayne’s monologues from Joss Whedon’s late “Firefly” television series. She said one of the directors actually looked ill when she got to the part about the crazed Reavers, who “rape (people) to death, eat your flesh and sew your skin to their clothing…and if you’re real, real lucky, they do it in that order.” Of course, another of the directors (The Fantasticks) actually recognized the source of the monologue – major geek bonus points for that!

The shows we are interested in include “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Fantasticks” and “Moby Dick-The Musical.” Straw Hat will also present “Sideshow” this summer, but it sounded a little depressing and I’m not ready for that yet after “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” plus I don’t want to be a role hog. The director of Sideshow sounded hurt that I wasn’t auditioning for that show. When asked for preferences, I told them I’d like to be the Tin Woodsman in the Wizard of Oz and Doc-wife expressed a longing to be the munchkin coroner in the same show.

Doc wife sang “Les Poissons” from “The Little Mermaid,” but in the interest of brevity they cut her off before she could whip out her little plastic lobster prop. I sang “The Bare Necessities” from “The Jungle Book” and the blog-daughter sang “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” from “Easter Parade.” The songs were not rendered in a stellar manner as it was difficult to keep pace with the erratic young accompanist. All in all, though, things could have been much worse.

There were at least 50 people signed up for yesterday’s three-hour cattle call audition, mostly junior high and early high school girls. I assume they had a similar-or-better turnout at Saturday’s auditions. Hopefully, they had a more diverse age group at Saturday’s tryouts.

Casting is expected to be announced within a couple weeks.