We knew who to call for advice…

Singer Michael Civisca

Jamie’s crooning uncle, Michael Civisca, came to the rescue with this remedy:

“Here is a gargle recipe that an ENT gave me when I was treated in NYC several years ago. It works to help with some the inflammation of the vocal cords.

4 -8 oz Warm to hot water (warm enough to melt the honey yet not too hot to burn).

1 Tbls Local honey.  Local raw honey contains pollen that is specific to your area and therefore can really help those local seasonal allergies.  Taking a spoonful of raw honey once or twice a day is a great help.

1/2 Tsp Baking Soda

1/2 Tsp Salt

Stir the honey into water first to melt it.  Add the other items.  Then, over a sink perform a soft, silent gargle.  Not the noisy one you hear during mouthwash rituals.  The silent gargle helps to keep the cords loose.  The salt and baking soda help to draw moisture and the honey coats.  If cords are really sore, I also take a Tbls spoon of the honey three times a day… because I like honey.  Also it soothes.  I call that the Winnie The Pooh factor.

Sweet Tip: The Winnie the Pooh Factor

Vocalize each day for twenty minutes to keep things in order. With inflammation, you may get discouraged because you can’t execute as well as you are used to. I keep the warm ups to a compressed range and only go for range at the end.”

So Jamie dodged the bullet and got his voice in decent condition to sing at his “A Christmas Story” audition, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Stay tuned for my next post on why to always expect the unexpected at auditions!

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]]> https://www.modelingmentor.com/blog/singer-tip-gargle-your-way-to-a-great-audition/feed/ 0 https://www.modelingmentor.com/blog/broadway-audition-tips/ https://www.modelingmentor.com/blog/broadway-audition-tips/#comments Tue, 30 Jul 2013 22:22:35 +0000 jill https://www.modelingmentor.com/blog/?p=1934 J just auditioned for Newsies, which is a big deal on Broadway right now. Most of the “kids” in the show are played by adults (casting someone who is 18 or over is much cheaper and less complicated: no tutors, no chaperones, no child labor laws). But “Les” is meant to be 10, so he has to be played by a bonafide kid. The e-mail for the audition at 1 PM on a Wednesday came in Tuesday at 5 PM, and attached to it were 2 songs and 4 scenes. Great, thanks for the advance notice! A driven kid—or one with a stage mom with whip in hand—may have crammed for the next 5 hours. J and me—well, I can pester and get about an hour out of him on an inviting summer evening (he had a ballet intensive the next morning so no time then). His agent said to focus on a song from his book—that’s what he expected they’d ask him to sing. So, we spent 15 minutes on vocal exercises, 5 minutes reviewing the songs in his book, 20 minutes listening to the Newsies songs on Youtube, and 20 minutes running the scenes.

Newsies Dance Audition

Naturally he got to the audition and they asked him to sing the Newsies songs, which he hadn’t heard with piano accompaniment, so he didn’t know his cues. He ended up singing “Electricity,” his go-to song at the moment, and did several scenes. He said he got lots of laughs, but the song flub no doubt got his headshot dumped down the BAD EGG chute. Or, he’s just too tall. Coming from the world of modeling, where height rules, it’s hard to watch J hit the ceiling as far as child acting opportunities. The most successful kid actors are teeny tiny. They can play young kids (but with the advantage of great maturity—same deal with child models) and stay in the same role for a few years. A tall kid is a risk; a growth spurt could propel him past the adult cast members.

AUDITION TIPS

1. Practice songs with the piano tracks, which you often can find on youtube (I didn’t learn this until after the fact). Or, even better, with a vocal coach who plays the piano.

2. Ideally, prepare all the material you are given. (But my theory is, don’t make yourself/child nuts if it’s just not feasible.)

3. Often actors read from a script in the audition, so memorizing may not be expected.

4. Murphy’s Law will ensure that if you haven’t prepared, casting will want it all, and if you’ve prepped carefully they will ask for a smidgeon of the material provided or something different altogether (J prepared the callback song for “A Christmas Story” exclusively for 3 weeks prior. For once, plenty of time to practice and specific intstructions! Yeh! Nope, not so fast. He was totally thrown when they asked him to sing his original audition song instead. Does that qualify as child abuse?)

5. Short child actors have a big advantage!

On Monday, J auditioned for MacBeth at Lincoln Center. He nailed the scene. He really did. He was reading for the role of MacDuff’s son, age range 8 – 11. Perfect. J is 10. Then I noticed a little note in the audition info: “The younger looking, the better.” Groan.

Newsies audition song: Carrying the Banner

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I contemplated whether we should go to the open call and spend Saturday morning in a room full of ambitious kids who can sing like birds—or like Adele or Bruno Mars in this case. The casting directors were looking for kids with “excellent pop voices.” J does a pretty awesome rendition of “Grenade” and we had to be in New York for his dance classes at Alvin Ailey anyway, so off we went…a little late (ok, friends, stop smiling knowingly). My plan had been to catch the 8:07 so we could get to Telsey + Company on West 43rd by 9:45 to sign in early (casting started at 10). But at midnight the 8:32 started sounding a lot better. So we got to the casting at 10 and slapped the white sticky label on J’s shirt that read: #127.

The waiting room soon was packed with 200 eager kids and their parents. Ugh, would we even make it to Alvin Ailey by 1:30? BUT then the audition began and a chirpy brunette with a megaphone voice started calling 10 kids at a time to line up outside each of 3 rooms. Efficient wranglers stood at each door, sending in the young aspiring stars and starlets (way more of the latter) to sing 16 bars of a pop song, a cappella. Before 11 AM, they reached #100 and J started warming up outside the bathroom, where a few mini Katy Perrys and Justin Biebers were doing the same. The kid doesn’t really get nervous so I have to for him. “Don’t you have to go to the bathroom?” I ask him. “No, mom.” “You really should pee. You might get nervous right before and have to go.” “No, mom, I’m fine.” I go to the bathroom instead.

J chats with a teenage Wendy wannabe in line in front of him. 121 goes. Then 122, 123, 124. I need to pee again. I hold it until 127 comes out, and as the woman at the door staples a ticket to his headshot, he asks, “Does everyone get one of those?” NO, they don’t! J has been asked to stay and sing again! We are ushered into a room where about 20 beaming hopefuls are waiting for their next round. Most of these kids seem like veterans. They are talking about their recent auditions, they are flipping through their “books” (containing sheet music for their repetoire of songs). A boy next to us, about 11, sitting alone, starts chatting with two girls and their moms. “I’m from Massachusetts,” he says. “I got a ride down with a friend. She’s out there.” He pointed to the door, now closed to the waiting room where the rejects are filtering out of the casting agency. “I feel really bad that she didn’t get called back, and they gave me a ride here.” He really looks like his heart might break for his friend. The moms reassure him. That’s showbiz. (And a higher percentage of boys were asked to stay, considering all those Lost Boy parts.)

“He’s adorable,” says a mom, leaning over to me and gesturing toward J, who has his head buried in some dark book. Again, like at the “Matilda” audition, no “Dance Moms” in sight.

Yeah, adorable is nice (and not the side a mom sees most of the time!). But mostly I’m proud he made the cut. I manage his expectations by letting him know it’s a long shot to get beyond this audition (poor kid, saddled with a realist for a mom).

Now it’s back to Ballet Etudes “Nutcracker” rehearsals (tickets are on sale now at the Westport Country Playhouse). He’s Fritz this year. He won’t get to fly (although some of the dancers seem to!) but he does get to sword fight. It’s almost as good as Peter Pan.

Ballet Etudes “The Nutcracker” at Westport Playhouse,  Photo by Beth Shepherd Peters

Aspiring models, stay tuned for some tips coming from my Model Advisory Board on Thursday.

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Casting Agent Nora Brennan

1. If it actually is you who wants to be there more than your kid, then expect A LOT of whining.

2. Arrive early to reduce the wait time. Sign in for “Matilda” was at 9 AM; we arrived at 9, not a minute before, because breakfast always overshadows all other priorities in my life. This put J at #23—not bad, but more than half the people arrived earlier than sign-in time.

3. Bring a book, Ipad, something to entertain yourself and cherubic child. The audition was slated to start at 10, but the first group of dancers (20 kids) didn’t go in until 10:30. The rest of us were told we could leave but had to be back by noon.

4. Expect bribery. J thought he deserved a cultural excursion to Toys-R-Us in return for working so hard at the audition (never mind that all he had done so far was read a book). Luckily I managed to keep the damage to one DVD for the family (which my kids managed to lose before they even watched it; does this happen in anyone else’s household?).

5. Remember to feed your child. J had a bag of popcorn but somehow I forgot about lunch, which might be useful before a two-hour dance audition. Yes, TWO hours!

6. Don’t expect to see any of the audition. All I heard was the stomping and shouting from what sounded like the “Revolting Children” number. J came out at 2:30 exhilarated and exclaimed, “That was fun!” But that’s all I got. (Of course that said A LOT. Insert sigh of relief from mother who prefers not to be a pushy stagemom.)

Matilda, the Musical

7. For a singing audition in which children need to bring sheet music, which is most of the time, they should have a “book.” This is a 3-ring binder with pages of music inside in plastic sleeves, which makes it easier for the pianist. We were part of the newbie crowd with loose sheets of music. Oops.

8. Expect some intimidating kids like the ones who broke into song, unabashedly rehearsing in the waiting room, and a toddler-size Michael Jackson belting out “ABC, 123″ in the ladies room. Likewise, several boys demonstrated rubber-band-like flexibility warming up for the dance portion. But by and large, the kids did what most kids do everywhere: played on their parents’ IPhones.

9. Sorry, no “Dance Moms” anecdotes. The parents chatted politely. We exchanged info about an upcoming open call for “Peter Pan.” We discussed community theatre and our artsy boys. Nobody boasted. I learned that some families traveled in from as far as Florida. The casting directors thoughtfully let those who had to catch flights jump the line.

10. Don’t expect to find out much about what the casting directors are looking for beyond a couple lines in the audition details. I learned more about what casting agent Nora Brennan wanted in this article I stumbled upon in the Huffington Post: “Nora Brennan’s Precise Art of Casting Children.” She’s not looking for a bunch of cute kids. She wants distinct faces and body types. That’s one thing I noticed looking around at the crowd of Broadway hopefuls. They had memorable faces, but they were characters more than cuties. In a former post, someone commented about being careful about the importance of looks in the acting and dance world. Maybe in Hollywood. I haven’t seen that at all here. The most talented kids are cast in these shows; the cutest, well he’s just plugging along getting experience at auditions and waiting for his big break.

Billy Elliot

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