What an emotional week! Saturday Evie auditioned for Peter Pan at one of the local performing arts centers. This is her second time to audition for a role outside of her ballet/theatre school. She has been in plenty of short plays where if you sign up to attend, you are guaranteed a role; and she is legitimately good in the those productions, but auditioning at a community theatre or performing arts center is a big level up from what she’s used to and I’m so proud of her for putting herself out there. In May, she auditioned for Mary Poppins so she’d had the experience of walking in, introducing herself to the pianist and telling him/her where to start in the sheet music, “slating” (i.e., saying to the casting directors, “Hello, my name is X and I’ll be singing X role from X musical), and performing her 32-64 bars. Once. She’d had that whole experience once. But at least she knew somewhat what to expect and what to do for that. So in preparation for this audition, we scheduled some brush up sessions with her vocal coach, got her headshot reprinted, and I talked her through reminders of how to present yourself, what they’re looking for, and that even if she didn’t get cast, the experience is worthwhile. She told me and Seth on the way how nervous she was. We got her checked in and they were about an hour behind, so after she went through her song a few more times, she started asking us to play charades to entertain her and take her mind off the upcoming audition. They were calling people in one by one, so finally it was her turn, and she went off into the theatre. I tried to listen at the door to see if I could hear her, but there was too much hubbub in the lobby. I had learned from the audition table staff that if they liked you, you would be invited to attend the dance call that evening, at the end of your musical selection. So when Evie came out, she was all smiles and reported that they liked her and wanted her to come back for the dance call.
Then I realized, she’s never done a dance call! So over lunch, we talked about what happens during the dance call (they teach you some choreography in a short amount of time), and what they’re looking for (good movement, quick to pick up the choreo, and not necessarily perfection but an ability to sell it). Again, we talked about how if she didn’t get cast, it was good prep for the next one, etc. I drove her to the dance call that evening and she was so distraught when she came out that she burst into tears on the way to the car. She said she did a terrible job and knew she wasn’t cast. She had a moment of “I’ll never be cast in a show, I’m no good” and I quickly told her I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of talk – that you never know what people think and that even if she didn’t make it that didn’t mean she never would. I asked her if she would tell her friends something like that and she said, no, and I told her, you need to be at least as nice to yourself as you are to your friends. I know that’s hard; it’s something I work on all the time too. Then we spent some time naming emotions instead of judging, and talked about how vulnerable you are during an audition, how scary it is to put yourself out there to be judged like that, etc. She calmed down and felt better by the time we got home, and then she showed Seth and me the dance and I was floored. There was all this clapping behind your knees and jumping and even a forward roll! I said, “Evie, I cannot believe for a second that you were not as good or better than at least half of the people there! That is an intense bout of choreo and there’s no way kids with average dance experience did better than you!” I meant that completely and that cheered her up.
The cast list was supposed to be announced on Monday night, and so we had to spend all of Sunday with Evie oscillating between, “I think I may have gotten in” to, “There’s no way I got in”. It was made worse by the fact that a girl that she exchanged phone numbers with at the dance call told Evie that she had gotten a call back on Sunday. Once Evie heard that, she was sure she hadn’t made it. I told her that’s not true and she had no way to know whether she’d just been so good that she was already cast in a role without question, or whether she might be in a non-speaking role that she didn’t need to come in for. Monday, unfortunately, the cast list wasn’t ready because the director had additional callbacks, so the saga continued, with Evie being very emotionally charged. Tuesday when I went to get her ready for ballet, she insisted she did not want to go because she was too sleepy, but I could tell there was some other reason. After asking some questions, it came out that she was still feeling unworthy, not good enough, and generally being down on herself, largely to do with the fact that she hadn’t yet heard that she was in. I talked her down and she agreed she could go to ballet.
As she was at ballet, unofficial word came that she had been cast as a Native – a dance-heavy role. Granna had picked her up from ballet, which gets out just about 10 miuntes before trivia ends, so when Seth and I got home from trivia, Evie was waiting eagerly in the living room to see if we knew anything. I told her, “The cast list hasn’t been officially released yet, BUT, I heard from a reliable source that you were cast as a Native.” The look on her face…. She jumped up and SCREAMED, “WHAT?!”, cupped her hands over her mouth, and looked around in wide-eyed disbelief. She was so excited and kept saying she couldn’t believe it. Today when the official cast list came out, I showed her and she was just over the moon.
It's been a roller coast of a week, dealing with her emotions. She is so very hard on herself, and I am so relieved that she was cast because I was starting to be afraid of what the rejection might do to her. I’m hoping what she learns from this experience is that you don’t have to be perfect to win a role (and please apply that lesson to the rest of life), that she is truly talented and worthy, but what I’m hoping more than anything is that she will gain the self-confidence to bolster her through moments of disappointment and grief, and that she won’t let a future rejection make her feel worthless. I worry about her tendency to feel like a failure and have a low opinion of herself. Frankly, I don’t understand it because so many people tell her how amazing she is, how smart she is, how talented she is – and she has proof of it through her grades and getting cast in more prominent roles in her dance/theatre school, etc. I think she’s still recovering from being bullied last year to an extent that I wasn’t aware of, and I think she feels like an outsider at school still, even though she is very well liked. I still wonder sometimes if COVID hadn’t happened if she would have had this rough period… I guess we’ll never know.
But anyway, I am excited for her and proud of her! I hope that the experience of being in this show will give her some new friends, some new ways to interact with folks, and a renewed sense of self-confidence. Rehearsals start in January, and the show is March 8-10, so we’ll get through Nutcracker first, thank goodness!
In other news, this week we went to see The Crucible with Eden’s family. Evie really enjoyed it and wants to audition for it the next time they produce it (ha!).
No comments:
Post a Comment