Mamma Mia! (Auditions)

By: Jaylon Goodwin

Hello hello hello!! Welcome back to another blog post about my nonstop life here at Furman! This week I will be talking about the upcoming Pauper Players spring show Mamma Mia! Auditions were this past weekend and of course, I had to audition because this will be my LAST full stage production while I’m at Furman! No, I’m not okay thinking about it either!

Now you may be wondering why I put this gif here. Well, I have never seen Mamma Mia. No not the movie, no not the musical, not even listened to the soundtrack. Honestly, I didn’t even know who ABBA was. Yes, pass your judgements but I still felt like it would be fun to get to know the story and show while being in it! So one thing you should know about me is that I don’t get extremely nervous when I am performing on stage, at that point I am feeling the crowd’s energy and trying not to disappoint. Auditions are a completely different story, I think auditions are the most horrifying part of any show ever. I’m not sure whether it is because I am singing for people that are judging me and I am afraid they won’t give me a role or because I am singing something I have chosen for myself to sing and maybe it wasn’t the right choice but they freak. me. out! The good thing is that being a senior and having done Pauper Players for nearly 4 whole years is that everyone knows me and I know just about everyone (excluding some of the freshman since this will be the first show they could audition for), but I know the production team holding auditions which helps my anxiety levels go down a bit.

For my audition, I went for a song that I think I am good at singing and thought would have some comedy to it which would lighten the mood. The song was “Dead Girl Walking” from Heathers. Needless to say that it was received well and the production team was laughing and enjoying my performance. Additionally, I had to do vocalizations, which is basically just following notes played on the piano to test your range and voice part, sight-reading, which was a mess because I don’t know how to read music but that has never stopped me before, and then a cold read of some lines from the characters in the show. The song I sang is below if you’re curious what it sounds like.

In addition the vocal audition there are also dance auditions that go along. These are formatted in a way where there are two in a day and you just go to the one closest to your audition time whether it be before or after your audition. You then learn the dance piece by piece as a whole group and then get split into small groups of 3 or 4 to perform it together where the choreographer watches and evaluates. This is the part where I thrive because dancing is my specialty. The song we dance to was Voulez-Vous, which was surprisingly fast and the dance was the same, which I enjoyed because I get bored and somewhat frustrated when dances are too slow and easy, but I do understand this could be difficult for some people. Overall, the dance audition was great and I felt my vocal audition was pretty good as well. They thought the same as well because I got two callbacks for Harry Bright and Sky! I am super excited for this but also have a lot of learning to do because like I said in the beginning, never seen the show, never listened to the music and now I have to sing specific songs on Saturday! I’m shooting for a Harry because it’s a bigger role and it’s my last show and I want to end off on the best role possible but will also be happy with Sky. There are two other guys called back for Harry and four other guys called back for Sky. Hopefully it works out in my favor!

Wish me luck!