Ooooooooooh my colleagues, it has been a while! In the upheaval of audition season I fully acknowledge that I have been a sub-par colleague and neglected you.
Right now I am in New York City at the height of this audition season of 2011 (fun fact: I have only ever been in New York for winter auditions. No wonder it kindof makes me nervous flying in), and I have noticed a phenomenon that I have only heard spoken of in passing: audition crashing. Today I witnessed it artfully done by two congenial colleagues in the infamous halls of NOLA studios on West 54th Street, and it made me stop to wonder - just how DO you do it well, and who teaches you?
My guess is that you learn from watching your colleagues, as I did today. These two talented guys (too bad they weren't tenors, that would have made for some great alliteration) had performed with the company they were crashing before, and so waited for the monitor (person keeping track of the appointments list) to come out, greeted him, handed him their resumes and asked "if they were allowing anyone to crash." Although those auditions were getting pretty behind schedule, they both got to sing, and within an hour at that (Sidenote here for our musical theater colleagues who, if non-union, often have to wait up to 8 hours to be heard for 20 seconds: as far as I can tell, you are way more hard core than we are. In my limited experience, I have never seen or heard of a classical singer waiting for that anywhere near that long to audition.) Following my own audition - incidentally after both the crashers had sung - I saw another guy asking the same question of both the monitors in the hallway, without even really knowing what either company was.
I saw this happen in the very same hallway last year. Curiously, all the instances of audition crashing that I have witnessed have been by men. Now, while I truly believe there is a time, place and gig for all of us, it is widely acknowledged that at these long company auditions (notice the avoidance of the tacky term "cattle call" - lets not refer to ourselves as smelly bovines), men are in much shorter supply, and therefore probably in higher demand. Does that mean it just "isn't done" for a woman to crash an audition? Is there any bold and brave div-ette out there who has done it? All of us eavesdropping in the holding room would love to know how!
It seems standard when crashing to bring your resume - much like bringing a gift when crashing a wedding - for the monitor to take in for the directors' review. Showing up in audition attire just seems like common sense - we aren't Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happiness (at least, we'll explore those parallels in a later post). Should one also send in a headshot? Is it very cynical of me to think that might be helpful for a female crasher? A little research always helps beforehand, but unless you've reached a certain professional level do you have to know someone in the company? Your colleagues who have reserved appointments have often paid a fee for the application and/or accompanist - should you bring your checkbook to be fair, but without seeming to bribe anyone?
Dear colleagues, please send me your stories of auditions you've crashed and crashers you've witnessed. Has anyone out there been coached on correct crashing? Lets bring this out of those cramped studio halls and into the open internet air - it might just give some of us a little extra courage to try it ourselves.
Happy hunting and a big hockin TOI TOI* to everyone!
*verbal simulation of the Mediterranean tradition of spitting on someone to give them luck. Yes it's weird. blame the Italians.
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