From the reveal to the opening night, the performers of the Theater Department put their all into giving the audience the best they can. Behind the spotlights and catchy songs, it is the auditioners and auditionees who make the show. Time invested and thought goes into both the auditions and the choice of who makes the lead. Behind the table of Legally Blonde, the director and vocal coaches listened and give advice to the performers as they selected the roles.
Vocal director Annie Hawks said “A lot of thought goes into these roles, it is not a ‘this person looks most like the character, so they get the role’ we consider the persons voice, their audition song, range, personality on and off stage, and so much more to really give the roles to those best suited.”
She continued, “On both sides it is a learning experience, we learn about the students and how to help them improve and they learn how to get their desired results both acting and singing wise and grow overall. As the saying goes; work works harder than talent works hard.”
While this is Ms. Hawks’ first year being a judge for a musical, she expressed the excitement she felt to be part of the process and how her passion for music helped her when scoring the performers and seeing their personalities.
“I was a teachers aid in my college, so I have seen what goes into both sides of the auditioning process and the effort it takes. When Mr. Underwood asked me to join in on the process, I was originally stressed as I am not overly familiar with the acting part,”
Adding on, “but working with both Underwood and the other vocal director Mr. Bosse, it was very exciting, and I loved learning off of them and about the students figuring out who can handle the strain of the leads and who fit best where.”
Knowing that along with her teaching schedules at Cypress along with other students who cannot make all the practices there should be ways for these students to stay caught up with the other performers, so she created a website where the students could listen to the audio tracks, lyrics, other stage performers and herself singing the parts.
“I created the site so that if someone misses the practice or wanted to be prepped beforehand, they can. The site is not super complicated, it shows the tracks we are using and some vocal warm-ups that I suggest students use before rehearsals just so they do not walk in blind.” She mentioned but continued,
“While it’s important to try not to miss practices, as we all need to hear each other to learn, everyone has sick days or other obligations so it’s up as an offer if that happens.”
Although the theater department has many talented performers, the number of leads for this show was small making the choice of who would be best suited more difficult for the coaches and director.
“There were so many performers, two days just to hear them all, and only 8 lead characters to choose. We recorded them all and referenced the recordings a lot if we needed to hear specific high notes or just hear the voice again to remind ourselves of the voice we were discussing at the time.” Ms. Hawks explained.
“The choices were not easy to make, and everyone did great but there were small key things we looked for in the performers. It was a very back and forth process as we kept narrowing it down until we found the right fit sometimes even listening to the same recording three or four times before deciding” she elaborated.
