Over the past few months, I’ve had four auditions for the upcoming production of Godspell on Broadway. It was a cool opportunity, and a fun way to dabble in the world of professional auditioning, a world from which I’ve been effectively absent for almost 10 years. If I did anything that was worth noticing, it was the performance I eventually gave of the video posted above.
The assignment was to tell the parable of The Good Samaritan in an interesting way. I wrote the rap above and performed it twice: once at my first audition in June with the inimitable Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan as my beatboxer, and once without prep at my last audition in August, when the musical director of Godspell was kind enough to wing it on piano with me (he was amazing). Stephen Schwartz said it was “excellent”. Who knows if he was blowing smoke up my ass or not, but I know how I’ll choose to remember it.
The video was made after I spent two hours the night before the audition putting this together. I can only write when the deadline is looming. I sent the vid to my sister and my friend Cathryn for some tips and feedback, and they were incredibly supportive. My wife heard this rap probably 50 times in under an hour that night, and she gave me invaluable advice. My kid watched me do it the next morning over and over. He mostly screamed and cried, so that wasn’t very helpful.
Anyway, the rap underwent some significant changes between the video and the actual performance (a span of about 9 sleepless hours), and though the video has none of the performance elements of the audition, it captures the essence of the content. Also, I ruin the incredibly easy piano part I’d just taught myself off of a youtube clip. Oh, and also, I’m incredibly flat in a couple portions of the song. Ok, the video is kind of embarrassing. The song I sample (bastardize?) is Jessie J’s “Price Tag”.
That’s all a lot of build-up for an anti-climax: three days ago I got a call from the casting director saying that, though I was much-discussed in the final decision, I wasn’t chosen. And actually, that was ok. For the first time in my life, I had a good time at a bunch of auditions. 10 years ago, I never left an audition room feeling like I let people see what I’m like, what I think is cool. This time around, I did work I was proud of; it wasn’t perfect, but it was me.
And Jessie J, if you’re reading, message me if you wanna rock a collabo, gurl.
