Back Up on the Horse

Sorry for the long hiatus. Things have gotten away from me a bit recently. Part of that is because of all of the crazy stuff that has been going. So to catch up, audition week.We had the exam for our audition unit, and I went out to my first professional audition since I moved here. I'll start with the exam. They brought in a panel of outsiders to watch us. Professionals who hadnt worked with us at all, and so had no preconceptions of our work. They actually managed to get some pretty prestigious people to sit in. Stephen Clark who wrote lyrics for Martin Guerre and Zorro, Kate Golledge who has directed many West End shows, most recently the Wizard of Oz, and Conrad Nelson a local actor/director. The whole day ran like a general audition. A lot of people had trouble understanding this concept. I think that general auditions don't happen nearly as often here as they did in Seattle. Most of the theaters here do not run in rep, so they do not have set seasons, where as all of the big theaters in Seattle are repertory theaters. Therefor theaters here don't hold yearly auditions, most things are done on a show by show basis. Several of my classmates had a hard time choosing material because they could not target it towards a specific show. I think that being able to do a general audition is a useful skill, so I think it was smart that they planned things this way. However it is also very important to be able to tailor your material depending on the show. Basically I wish the audition unit covered more. Once again with our audition unit we had the problem of too many cooks. I think I worked with at least 3 different coaches on my monologue, so by the time I had to perform it, I had lost any grasp of the material that I had. Lets just say that I wasn't very happy with how things went that day. I made the day even better by following up one mediocre audition with another. In the afternoon I went to an open audition for a production of Hairspray, on a cruise line. If I ever do this again, please tell me it is a bad idea. It was such a stereotype of a horrible cattle-call. I waited for over 3 hours in a room full of catty women with make-up caked on an inch thick, talking at the top of their voices about how awesome they are until I was given a number. I then walked into to an audition room, which perhaps had the worst acoustics I have ever encountered to sing 8 bars of my song to a video recorder. Then the pianist loudly complained about my choice of song as I walked out the door. YAY! Not a fun afternoon, let me tell you. It took me a little while after that brilliant double header to find my confidence again. It is one thing to know that this is a difficult business, and quite another to experience it at its worst. But hey I've done that now, and I know that I can survive. And hopefully I can avoid situations like that one in the future. After that week it was on to the show. Rehearsals for George have actually been pretty great. I really like our director, and I love the work that he is having us do. They have come up with a beautiful design, and some neat ideas about how we will work the set. While I did not get the part that I had hoped, the role I am playing has some great stuff in it. I get to be both funny and heartbreaking. Now I just have to deliver on those two things and I can steal the show! (My ultimate goal for this term) We spent most of the day last Friday working on my big scene at the end of Act 1, which was really wonderful. That day gave me back a lot of my confidence. I know I still have a lot of work to do before we open, but I am feeling good about the way things are going. We have had some pretty big speed-bumps along the way in our rehearsal process, but I wont get into those tonight. Right now I am going to get back on task and keep inviting agents to come see the show. My motivation for wanting to steal the show is really to get an agent. If I can get an agent out of this term it will make staying in London a whole lot easier. Crossing my fingers.

Going Live!

I know it has been several (very busy) weeks since my last post. And this will be followed up by a full update soon. However, first I have an announcement. My website is live! Check it out: www.katiebeudert.com Now to get down to the dirty business of self promotion. The goal- to get an agent out of this show. The plan for this evening? E-mail every agent in London. Ok, so that won't be possible. But I can make a stab at it. Here goes.