Disney Audition #1 (of many, hopefully)

I suppose this is the first post of many about auditionings...


I auditioned for Disneyland. Glamorous, right?! Not really. Haha


Earlier this year I flew down to Burbank, CA at 6am from Sacramento and went to the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio. I was auditioning for two new shows for California Adventures: one set in the 1940's, a quartet of flight stewardesses with tight-knit harmonies reminiscent of the Andrews sisters; and one set in the 1920's, a trio of sisters from the middle-of-America, also tight-knit harmonies, also reminiscent of the Andrews sisters.


I had literally NO IDEA what I was doing, or what to expect, or what was going to happen. Granted, I have a friend in-the-know, but it was quite a different circumstance and I'm not nearly as trained in the art of auditioning as she.


Anyways, check-in was supposed to start at 9:30am for a 10am audition. Mistake #1: I showed up 15 minutes early. Now, to those of you who have never been to a large-scale audition, this might not seem like a big deal. I was early, right? That's a good thing, right? Well, yes...but here's the thing: roughly 500 people show up to open-call auditions. It's first-come, first-serve. You do the math. So....needless-to-say, I got in line that was already making its way down the street, and watched it snake (fairly quickly, Go Disney!) into the dance studio. I ended up being #147 of the non-union auditionees. There were at least 2 alphabet runs of union auditionees...They were bringing in 10 people at a time to hear them sing their 16 bars of their piece. Yikes. At 1: 00pm Eric picked me up to have some lunch. At 1:30pm he brought me back to go wait some more. I had the privilege of watching some of the union auditionees who had made it to the dance round learn and perform some simple but well-choreographed movement. Professional entertainers are so very fun to watch. That is their job. :) When they finally called my run of numbers around 4pm, they were (obviously) just trying to get through everyone. My guess is that they already had picked their 5 people for the small cast (they were hoping to cast the same actors for both shows...which narrows the cast down even more) and were just being polite not asking everyone else to go home. How kind of you, Disney. :) So my group was told to get in numerical order and we were led to the hallway where we waited and individually went into one of the small rooms to sing. I walked in, went straight to the piano. I handed my binder to my accompanist, chatted-it-up with him a little. He completely understood my piece, tempo, dixie-swing, everything. I was feeling great. I got up, they said, "Katie, is it?" I said, "Yes! Hi!" They said, "Whenever you're ready." "Ok, great!" Then I began.  I sang all 16 bars. At least they didn't cut me off! They warned us that they might. So, that felt nice. Then I finished, they said, "Ok, great, that's all we need. Thank you." "Thank you so much for your time." I walked over grabbed my music from the accompanist, and walked out.


Eric took me to dinner, and I flew back to Sacramento.


And that was that.


In retrospect, I probably sang the wrong song, because as it is Disney, they were looking for a VERY particular sound, and on that day I did not fit it. But, that's okay. I had NO idea what it was going to be like.


Now I know. I'll be better prepared next time and it won't be so much of a shock. I'll also get there earlier ;)


Until next time! Happy auditioning, everyone!