I am always seeing students and voice teachers asking questions about prescreening and musical theatre auditions online, so I thought I’d share some observations about this year’s auditions. This is just one point of view, and it is important to point out that different schools will have different things they are looking for in an audition. But I hope this will give some insight that others can add to in the comment section below. Let’s start with prescreens.

Prescreens: This year we split up the prescreen viewing across three faculty, I watched about 400 of them. Out of the videos I watched, these things stood out to me the most:

• You don’t need to hire a film crew for this video. The overwhelming majority of the videos (95%+) were filmed on smart phones or another digital device with similar quality. That’s good enough, the ones with fancier setups were fine, but it didn’t change my mind, so if you are looking for a place to save money, save it on the filming.
• Good lighting is more important than the device you use to capture the video. Natural light is always best, if you cannot find a space that lends itself to natural light, a ring light will at least help.
• A neutral background is best. There were a lot of videos with cluttered backgrounds, it is not a deal breaker, but it is nice when the background is just a solid color.
• Live accompaniment isn’t necessary. A track is fine, our primary focus at the prescreening stage is the performer.
• Dance videos are optional for some schools, but here is something to consider: If you are not a great dancer, you may be inclined to not submit a dance video. This can play to your advantage if you are an incredible singer and actor. The lack of dance video makes us curious how you move and we are likely to invite you based on the rest of your package. However, if money is tight and you are trying to minimize campus trips, not including a dance video leads to the possibility you will be invited to a school that is looking for a movement skill set that you do not have. If that was discovered in the prescreening stage, it could have lead to you not being invited to campus, but that would save you money on a campus visit that wouldn’t have worked out in your favor anyway. There is no good answer for this dilemma. But the past few years has made me more inclined to suggest that everyone include a dance video if the school offers the option.
• The wildcard videos are always interesting. The get ready with me (GRWM) videos are not great, I get to know your personality, which is nice, but I think there are more interesting options and a lot of people took this route this year so it does not stand out as unique. There were a lot of bakers out there this year. They were good videos and they made me very hungry, but just know it is a common option and there may be better options to stick out in the crowd. Videos that featured a special skill like baton twirling, taekwondo, sports, other instruments, or songwriting are always nice. Over the years we have learned that if someone is highly coordinated in athletic activities but has minimal dance experience, they tend to pick up dance rather quickly. It is also nice to have a student body with a wide range of skill sets when it comes to casting shows, so showing us what else you got up your sleeve is a winning strategy.

Materials:

• Resume: One page is all we need. We don’t need any career statements or goals at the top, just a list of shows you’ve done, training you’ve received, and special skills you have. Names of people you have worked with is helpful as long as you are ok with us reaching to them to ask about you.
• Your headshot really needs to look like you on the video and you need to maintain that look into the live auditions. Every year, at the end of the process, we flip through headshots to find people we remember, and if the headshot does not match the look in the room, we can’t find you in the headshot pile and you may get lost in the crowd. That means no major haircuts, hair colorings, or makeup routine changes. Pick a plan and stick with it for the whole process. I actually don’t mind if you make your audition outfit the same outfit as you have in your headshot. Honestly, it makes it really easy to remember you.
• Book: When you walk into the live audition, make sure you have all of your book materials organized. Ideally you should have at least six songs ready to go in case the audition panel wants to hear something else. Your cuts need to be clean, and have a table of contents at the front with tabs for each song so you can move quickly through your rep.
• If you are using tracks: Make sure you have sure you have at least 5 seconds of silence before the track starts so you can press play, lay your phone down, walk to your spot, and get into the song. It is also a good idea to connect your Bluetooth speaker and set your levels before you walk into the room. Finally, be sure to charge everything the night before.

The performance:

• Song selection: Show us what you can nail, not what you can almost do. We understand you are 17-19 years old, we know you will grow with age. It is ok that you are a tenor who can only sing an A4 right now, it is ok you are a belter who can only sing up to D5. It is better to be perfect at what you do than almost there but not quite.
• Sing what you love: we can see the joy and it makes a difference.
• Belting is not yelling: cast recordings are deceptive, they make you think voices are bigger than life. Some Broadway stars do have larger than life voices, but many do not. Students must stay within their personal limits. Belting should not be about the volume, it should be about the heightened stakes of the story that is being told. A song that is belted should not be the same volume level the entire time, it needs to have levels, you need to build to the peak of the song.
• Monologues: Because it needs to be said again, there is a lot of good material out there. Plenty for you to find material that is not about suicide, sex, death, or cancer. Yes, all of those topics are real, but your monologue is supposed to help us get to see how you can interact with an imaginary scene partner. That’s it, we just need to see how you connect. You can accomplish that without the shock value of making us think about someone who committed suicide, underage sex, death, or cancer. All those stories are better saved for a show than a general audition call where we just want to see your skills and get to know who you are as a performer.
• Dance: If you want to do musical theatre, get into dance classes ASAP. Jazz and ballet are great places to start. Then get on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram and start learning dances in your spare time. You need to get quick at picking up choreography, and learning a dance combo a day from social media is a great way to teach yourself how to quickly learn combos.
• Don’t sing to the panel: When you sing directly at us, it’s weird. Very rarely there is a song where one or two lines may make sense being delivered directly to the panel, but most of the time it does not work.

The people who stuck out:

• Were confident with what they offered regardless of their skill level.
• They treated the admissions staff, current students, and their fellow auditionees with respect. They cheered each other on in the dance call and were supportive of each other in the holding room.
• They were open about their weaknesses and training needs in the interview.
• They were easy to talk to and made us feel comfortable with the idea of spending four years together.
• They were interesting to talk to in the room.
• They had a good sense of who they were as a person and what they wanted out of their college experience.

There are many other things we could discuss, but these are the biggest things that stood out to me. As I mentioned earlier, different colleges want different things. Our program is focused on preparing students to move to NYC and immediately start working. Most of our students sign with agents or managers during their senior year and many immediately start working. Programs that are not focused on those goals will have different criteria that make students stand out to them, so be sure to study up on who you are auditioning for and what they might be looking for in the process. But if you start with this list, I think you will be heading in the right direction for most schools.

What do you think? Did I leave something off? Engage in the conversation below in the comment section and add your items to the list. Thanks for reading!

~ Matt

Matt Edwards is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Musical Theatre Voice at Shenandoah Conservatory. He is also the Artistic Director of the CCM Vocal Pedagogy Institute and author of the book So You Want to Sing Rock, along with dozens of other book chapters and journal articles on singing musical theatre, commercial music, and the college audition process. More at CCMInstitute.com and EdwardsVoice.com.