More than anything, what do you like to hope to get out of the audition experience? A role? A role? Yeah.
From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Virginia Hunt. This is Pod Culture, a podcast about arts and culture on campus and beyond. It's Showtime. Every fall, an influx of performers flood the Virginia Wadsworth Word Center for the Performing Arts.
They're here to audition for a variety of productions through a process known as Generals. The student theatre coalition, also known as Stuco, and Wertz, are the two major organizations that students can audition for. Stuco is Undergraduate Student Run, while Wertz collaborates with graduate students in the Greater Evanston and Chicago communities. Sarah Charles Lewis is one of many freshmen who has prepared for this year's late fall audition cycle.
We caught up with her right after her audition. I definitely was anxious and nervous, auditioning for a bunch of upperclassmen that's always scary. I've done theater my whole life in high school, and I was just excited to go in there and show him what I got. Sarah's brother, one of Western grad, raved about Stuco and the Northwestern theatre community.
He inspired her to join in after. I practiced a lot. A lot of lives. Today was the day.
The audition requirements are minimal. It's an interesting cast of a song from a musical. They don't have time to listen to every single person sing a five minute song. You cut it to 32 bars, which is about a minute, so you're in and out in basically two minutes.
Sarah doesn't want to stop at being on stage. She hopes to go behind the scenes. Here at Northwestern, this is a very unique institution where we can explore all of our interests, and as a mainly performer, I'm very interested in learning more about writing and composing and directing and stage managing, and just all the things that go into all aspects of theatre. Lewis isn't the only one trying to explore their many interests.
Freshman, Darius Dautry is using his audition to continue a passion from high school, even though theatre isn't at all related to his academic pursuits. I mean, I'm actually a journalist and major, but I'm really interested in musical theatre and it's something I love to do when high school, so I just love to be a part of something like that in your college as well. We talked with Darius before his audition about how he was feeling and how he prepared. Right now, I feel decent enough.
I'm probably not the best preparerable auditions, but at least for me, I warm up by just doing the song I'm going to do over and over. I'm not a huge fan of exercises, maybe I should do more, but I just like getting the repetition of more than anything for sure. The theatre community fosters a unique space for Darius. You're part of something bigger.
It requires practice, which means being with those people a lot. And generally speaking, theatre people, they're very outgoing and very friendly, so I've definitely made a lot of friends doing it. Throughout the final week of September, callbacks and open calls will be continuing, as cast lists are whittled down and announced. But for some, like Dautry, seeing their name on the cast list isn't the most meaningful part of the process.
Probably the biggest thing I would say is controlling nerves, it's definitely ten times more intimate than when you're doing an actual performance, so I would say composure is the biggest thing that you can probably get out of auditioning. From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Virginia Hunt. Thanks for listening to another episode of Pod Culture. This episode was reported and produced by me, Virginia Hunt.
The audio editors of the Daily Northwestern are myself and Lillie Shen. The digital managing editors are Scott Huang in Laura Simmons, and the editor-in-chief is Avni Koulra. Make sure to subscribe to the Daily Northwestern's podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or SoundCloud to hear more episodes like this.