With a mocha in hand from my new favorite shop, Black Press Coffee, I thought I’d take the time to write up a little life update. Ladies and gentlemen, I have finally made it to my final semester at AMDA New York! I’m only one week in, and I already love it. All my classes are from 5:30 to 11:30 at night, leaving me room to audition for professional shows in the morning. I haven’t auditioned for anything as of yet, however I don’t think I’ll be speaking publicly about what I’m auditioning for. If there’s one thing I learned in the multiple seminars I had to go to last week, it’s that I should expect to go to about six hundred auditions before I get any good news. At least, that’s how many auditions Mark Ruffalo said he’d gone to before he landed anything.

Besides the night classes and being free to start auditioning, there are three major components to my fourth semester schedule that I have to look forward to: drama showcase, panel night, and musical showcase. For the next four weeks, I’ll be rehearsing for my drama showcase, which is essentially an hour long performance of small scenes from different plays. The purpose of the showcase is to highlight the acting talents of our eighteen-person cast. So, over the course of the last week, my classmates and I brought in three potential scenes that we had casted ourselves, and pitched them to our director. It was hours and hours of cold reads, cutting dialogue, and multiple people try their hand at different parts. By Friday, around nine scenes were chosen and cast, and a theme for the showcase was set: The Life of a High Schooler. I won’t go into specifics yet about what parts I’ll be playing (in an attempt to convince you to come see my showcase from March 13th to 16th at 7pm.)

After I’m finished with the drama showcase, I’ll spend the following five weeks in classes. As I understand it, the focus of these classes will be to teach us audition technique. We’ll have mock dance calls, we’ll have to prepare monologues, sing 16-bar cuts: all the stuff I will be spending the rest of my life presenting for casting directors. By the end of these classes, we’ll participate in what’s called Panel Night: a mock-audition in front of AMDA faculty as well as actual casting directors and agents. I am very nervous and excited for this one. 

Once the five weeks of classes is over, I’ll begin auditioning for my musical showcase. This is the same concept as a drama showcase, except it features solos and duets from different musicals instead of scenes from plays. I’ll audition all of the songs that I worked on in my musical theatre classes over the last three semesters, and then some. According to a couple of friends who are currently in their musical showcase, it isn’t uncommon to be assigned a song that we have to learn, cut, and present by the next day. After our individual songs or duets are chosen, the directors will draw up a running order for the pieces and outline a “story” that we’ll be telling. The best showcase I’d seen recently told the story of an artist painting people in the park, and all the people came to life to tell their own story. It was amazing how well all their own stories came together by the end—I had goosebumps. 

By the time my musical showcase is over, I’ll graduate from AMDA New York! The last year and half has been… a dream, to be honest. I’d always wanted to visit New York ever since I was a little kid, so I still can’t believe that I’ve been living here. I can’t say for sure what my academic future holds after I graduate (I’ve been working it out quietly and will definitely share my decision once it’s made). All I know is it will consist of many, many auditions, and many, many cups of coffee. 

-Ken