Students prepare musical auditions

The main stage in the Edith Mortenson Theater is bare. It sits as a blank canvas ready to be splashed with the atmosphere of the next production.

For junior Kayla Straub, and 47 other students who auditioned for the fall musical Into the Woods, this blank canvas holds the potential of a performance to come.

Into the Woodsis a musical written by James Lapine with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It premiered on Broadway in 1987, and will be brought to life as the fall musical at Augustana.

For Straub, preparation that began in July culminates to this moment of performance in the nearly empty Edith Mortenson Theater. There are four judges sitting at the panel: artistic director Dan Workman, musical director Scott Johnson, choreographer Deb Workman and assistant music director and senior Ryan Becker.

"Hello, my name is Kayla Straub and I will be performing a monologue from The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and a selection from ‘The Gun Song' from the play Assassins," she says

The whole audition takes less than three minutes.

3:21. Straub crouches down into the role of a maddened old women and repeats a short monologue she has said a hundred times over by now.

3:22. Straub switches gears to a young woman singing about a gun that apparently was bought on sale.

3:23, and the audition is over.

Straub thanks the judges and returns to her seat next to the other students in her small audition section.

For a theater major such as Straub, it isn't the performance itself that's nerve-wracking.

"It's the unknown," she said. "Like, I know my monologue and my song, I can do it in mysleep. But you don't know what it's going to be like doing it in front of the people whose job it is to judge you."

Once everyone has performed their material, either a monologue, song or both, the group files out so that the next can file in. Once two groups have gone, they combine to learn and perform a short dance sequence.

Deb Workman explains the moves in a short lesson. The sequence involves steps that partners do together, and ones that require more individual movement.

"So you can think for awhile as a group, but then you've got to think for yourself," Workman said. "It's tricky."

After they perform the dance number successfully, the group is dismissed once again. Now it's time to wait for callbacks.

"It's more of an anxious, excited feeling, rather than nervous," Straub said. "I trust Dan, and I know that whatever role he gives me is the one that lets me fit into the puzzle the best."

Once the list is posted, callbacks begin shortly thereafter. The students are divided into men and women to learn and perform a few lines from a song in the musical. Becker directs the students who stand in a line and sing individually.

Then, Dan Workman assigns specific lines from the play for students to learn, so that he can see them perform in their potential roles. The women are dismissed to practice while the men sing.

Out in the theater lobby, Straub is practicing her lines with senior Martha Stai.

"I have so much homework to do but I just can't," Stai said. "The whole day is shot because of this."

The two rapidly exchange dialogue back and forth, changing from New York accents to laid-back surfer tones with ease. They laugh off their tension.

"This is what happens when you've been thinking about this all day," Stai said. "You go crazy."

In a department like theater that works together and plays together, the close relationships span across the unique kind of competition of auditions.

"You're up there not against, but fighting with your friends," Straub said. "We all want the same parts."

When scenes are called, the students assigned to them file in to perform. Scenes are repeated multiple times with different students playing different roles. Then the lengthy, tiring process of auditioning is over. The directors will award 23 students with parts in the musical.

"Did he say the list won't be posted tomorrow?" Straub asks. "That is torture."

After the months of preparation, the anxiety, the anticipation, and the stress of the actual day, the worst part of audition comes at the end. Now all that's left to do is wait.