My butterflies turning rapidly to dragonflies, I thought back to just how stupid I must have seemed to Paula Scotland.
The day before, I had interviewed Paula as she prepared to audition for a chorus role in the Durham Savoyards’ production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado. She’d been with the august, 47-year-old community theater group for years and had auditioned many times.
I asked her if she was nervous and actually was surprised to hear her say yes, yes she was.
“Really?” foolish, ignorant, incorrigible me had asked that Sunday afternoon at the Durham Arts Council.
“You’ve done this a bunch of times. You’re just auditioning for the chorus [i.e. not a principal role with solos and whatnot]. You’re going to get in,” I added, as if I knew. “And you’re still nervous?” Yes, she repeated, politely.
I shook my head, said “wow” and thanked her for her time.
Pish-Tush. (Inside joke alert!) It’s just singing a little diddy for four people for less than two minutes. Yet, to a person, nearly everyone confessed to some level of pre- and even post-audition anxiety. “How trying can it be?” I asked myself.
It was my second completely idiotic question of the day.
*******
You probably see where this is going.
I decided, you know, for the sake of journalistic exploration, to take a stab at auditioning myself.
I asked producer Sarah Nevill, a delightfully cheery person with an equally delightful British accent, if that’d be OK.
She said, and I paraphrase, “Jolly good, then.”
Alright. No biggie. I managed to make it through the day Monday without feeling anything akin to dread.
I sweated a bit over my song choice, in large part because, to be honest, I didn’t know the first thing about Gilbert & Sullivan.
It was a relief to discover that chorus auditioners could sing any song they liked. I wanted to stay within a whiff of the genre, so I chose Jolly Holiday from Mary Poppins. My sports bar buddies no doubt got a kick out of that last sentence, but the Disney classic is mother’s milk to me, having watched it early and often throughout childhood. I reckoned a selection from this sort-of British musical would be close enough to the very British operettas G&S turned out in the mid-19th century.
Song selection, as it turned out, was the least of my problems.
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