Blog #11

Blog 11: Mentorship 10 hours Check

Title:  Mentorship 10 hours check (*remember to title it Blog 11, then the name)
Label:  Mentorship
Due Date:  Friday 1/11/13 at 8AM.

Content:

Gregory Cohen Mentor, Hunington Beach Playhouse, 10 hours thus far
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Mentorship Day #1 / Example

When I arrived at Hunington Beach Playhouse, I discover that it is indeed not a traditional playhouse, but a library called the Hunington Beach Library. However, there is a small space under it used for some local showings. Still cool, but I learn that is not the correct location 15 minutes to audition from the assistant of Gregory Cohen. I have no car with me, so my Mom has to drive all the way to pick me up and drop me off nextdoor, which apparently it was.

So I get to the new playhouse, and it's smaller then the other one. Grand.

However, everyone is there – happy and chipper for auditions.

I find Mr. Cohen's assistant, Kara, and she asks me to take mugshots of each person after the auditions to make sure that their faces match their personal headshots (professional pictures of themselves.)

Finally, I get to meet Gregory Cohen for the first time. He's happy to see me, good to see, good start.

He actually saw me in the play at the school (I used it for my first Independent Component), called Lady of the House, in which I was the star Antogonist.

As the auditions begin, we start with dance workouts. I think it was to point out the most upbeat people firsts. There were certainly upbeat people, and some even tried to outshine the others. Cohen pointed out at this time, to “Sell” us the material (saw this term used in WWE), meaning they have to make us believe their performance. The play that we are performing is a comedy about “Odd people in Rome”. Cohen's wife said Improv experience was grand. She pointed out that it is very helpful in the play/auditions. She also asked for personal ideas, possibly to stretch or see any imagination and innovation from the auditioners. I also noticed the amazing amount of comedy and fun this audition has. I was always under the impression that auditions are professional interrogations where everyone stares at your awkwardly and there is a dark scary man intimidating the heck out of you. I was only half-right. The audition, however, was welcoming and fun. I suppose this makes sense because it's a comedy broadway after all. Everyone had to dance and sing to piano from this guy called Mike. The auditioners had to write lyrics down from a broadway and sing it. The examples I saw were “My Fair Lady”, “Oklahoma”, “Camelot”, and “Kiss Me Kate”. I noticed the people they attracted. Very old people, very young people, and very middle aged people. If they didn't show off the range enough when they sand their examples, they had to sing “Aaaaaahh” or “Yahahahaaah”. Nearly all had the correct way to introduce themselves and exit – so my theory is that they all took acting classes or broadway classes before, thus meaning they are passionate. When the acting auditions begin, I don't spot Method Acting anywhere. Understandable, I mean realistic acting only comes in handy in movies and stuff like that. By the way, in the middle of all of this – someone recognizes my Zack Ryder shirt so that was very welcoming. Another interesting thing to point out is that they all seem to know each other, so Cohen uses this group of people often it seems. At the end, Cohen and the others determine the callbacks for Wednesday. Unfortunately, there was a guy with a disability and he couldn't find anyway to be in the broadway. Other than that, Cohen was very strictly making the decisions. Only the people who gave it their all made the cut it seemed like. Makes sense.

In conclusion, this one session taught me that auditions can be fun, social, and all-around awesome. I am also going for more hours tommorrow (Tuesday's auditions), so we'll see how much they'll diverge from today's auditioners. I am very happy to see how this is going, as it is very interesting to finally look at the other side of the auditions and spot their reasonings of the you, the auditioner, versus you seeing what they think of you based on your own logical interpretation.