Christmas Carol

I've done a lot of shows over the last 3 years but I think this one has to be one of my favorites...I've done it 3 times with 2 different theaters and different parts each time. The first time I did the show was when I had just barely started doing shows. I was cast a support lead in the show as the role of Young Scrooge. I was pretty stoked cause I got to die and everything on stage..I also ended up playing about 7 other parts in the show cause we didn't have enough people for everything. It was a lot of costumes to be changed a lot of songs to be remembered and a lot of fun. I made some really good friends that year and just had a good time. The following year I did the show again, but it was a little bitter sweet. The theater I had been performing with for the last 2 years was going out of business and this was their last show. We were pretty lucky to be able to even put on the show, due to the fact that the owners had lost their theater and had to find a place to perform. The show went well and in the last performance that we did, a ton of people that had performed with the theater over the last 5 years that it had been around came and we took one big picture. It was great fun, but pretty sad at the same time. A part of my life was falling away. I had spend almost every day at that place for the last 2 years and had so many great memories and made so many friends. I also had no idea what I was going to do performing wise. I have never taken any acting lessons, almost never auditioned for one of the 18 shows that I did with the old theater and really didn't know where to go from there.

I ended up making a couple shows at a theater down in Orem and had a blast with those ones. I was pretty stoked that my dry spell had finally ended and I was able to do another show. It had been about 4 months of auditioning and getting rejected and my spirits were getting kinda low. So I was pretty happy about that. The only thing that worried me is the show that I looked forward to doing every year, A Christmas Carol, was only done in one theater in basically all of Utah, and that theater was the Hale Center Theater. UGH. I was so bummed. I didn't think there was ever going to be any chance whatsoever of me ever getting into a show there let alone one of that magnitude, but I figured what else do I have to lose, I might as well give it a shot. At least I could get good auditioning experience at a top notch theater and maybe get some advice. I didn't expect much at all and was just hoping that I wouldn't be laughed off the stage. The director of the show was one that I was pretty good friends with seeing that I had done 2 shows with him over the summer, so I felt a little more at ease at that point. He is a very nice 80 year old man that if you totally botched the audition would make you feel like you were the best he had ever seen. So I got signed up and worked on a song with my voice coach to better prepare me for the audition. I really appreciate Pam, she took extra time to make sure I was ready to go. She sees something in me and wants me to be great and thinks I can do great things with this voice I have. The day before the audition she sat with me for about 2 hours going over and over the song I now use as a lot of my audition songs, and I got prepared in the best way I thought I could. The audition was the next day and it was now or never, you can't not show up to an audition at this place...they will eat you alive if you do that, so you kinda have to go lol.

That whole day I remember just having my heart in my stomach. I was freaking out. Which is something I almost never do, but this was the HALE, the most prestige theater we have in Utah, or so everyone and their dogs said so. I got to the theater, said a little prayer in my heart and walked to the door. I went downstairs saw some friends and said hi to Robert, who was stage managing the show again. Talking to him lightened a bit the huge tension that I was feeling. Then I realized this is just gonna be in front of Jerry and the Music person, this should be easy. It looks like a small room anyways...Boy was I wrong. I got called up and walked into the room to 14 smiley faces...Everyone that had anything to do with the show was in that room. Including the owners of the theater......They just sat and smiled and were like we are ready for you to start. Jerry said hi and I introduced myself and sang my song. I realized that they didn't have an ipod dock for me to play my song, so I basically sang well no I did sing the song Ac Capella. Jerry smiled at me and was like nice to see you again and put my paper to the side. I walked out thinking I had a pretty good audition and I at least got my foot in the door, so when I don't make this show I can come back and they will kinda know who I am. The call I got 2 days after was a complete surprise to me. They wanted me to come back for the choir. Now for many people just being in the choir is something that would be boring and lame, not for this show. The only people that sing more then one song in this show are the choir members. They set the scene for almost every scene and they are the foundation of the show. Other people sing, but its only a few tidbits here and there...So I was pretty dang happy!

The callback day came and I went in feeling pretty confident and happy that I had at least made it past the first round. I was in the door and starting on a path at the Hale. Whether I made the show or not I had gotten farther in my first try there then most of my friends had said I would make it. There was a lot of people there for the choir. I was surprised, they probably had over 80 people there and they were looking for 16......So that puts all sorts of pressure on one ha. The callback went as follows. They asked 2 of us from each range, bass, tenor, alto and soprano. They gave us music and said ok go. They played the song and we were supposed to sing them going off of a 5 minute session of singing the songs as a whole group. Always fun..........the plus side was that the amount of basses that we had there totally was out weighed by the number of every other range, so us basses got to sing with a lot of different groups. Now the first cut came up, I had no clue that they would be doing first cuts. I figured we would just all sing and be on our way and they would let us know. They started calling the names of the people that they wanted to stay....always crazy...I heard my name come up and was just more happy! So they asked us to get in more groups and sing more songs and such, all in all callbacks went for about 4 hours....It was a crazy day. I was out to dinner with a friend a few days later when I got a call from Robert saying that they would like to cast me in the show as a choir member....I had been going crazy for the last few days, checking email making sure my phone worked and all just so I wouldn't miss anything...Auditions do that to a person lol. The first meeting of the show was the next day and I couldn't be happier to be doing the show again.

We all got together to see who made the show, what friends had made it and how many new people we would get the chance of meeting. We went down the list of people that had something to do with the show and everything they had to say to us. We were told that we would have to grow out our hair and our beards till the run of the show was over. That was a first for me, spending the Christmas season looking like a hobo hadn't been on my list of things to do but if you gotta do it for a show so be it, especially if this show is paying you.... :) Rehearsals started and things got underway. It's incredible the things that go down and the things one can learn in as little as a month and a half. We got our costumes and started the gloriously awful tech week that always and forever will drain you down to your very last fiber of being and stretch it to the limit. Running numbers over and over, having costumers grab you and add or take away things, getting note after note on where is better to stand and how to look and where to not look. All of this that we are supposed to remember for opening night and for the run of the show. Needless to say ladies and gents all the hard work and all the things you see going on in the show are pounded into us actors the week before lol.

Opening night for me was kinda surreal. I'd only been to the Hale once before when I was dating Aimee, about wow almost 3 years ago now. We went with her family and the show was awesome. I always wondered when I was doing shows at Center Street what it would be like to do a show at the Hale and 3 years later here I was standing behind the curtain ready to go show my stuff. I had a awesome partner. Her name is Lauren. She's beautiful talented and was just a great person to be around. She probably thought I was a total dork and wondered why she got stuck with a guy like me as her partner, but we had a great time in the show. Doing this show made me realize a couple things though. 1) We don't really put forth all that effort and time to make ourselves look better as actors or make ourselves stand out in the next audition for the director that may be at the show. You see the theater is pretty big yet the stage itself is square, maybe 20ft by 20ft. Its not very big and the audience comes right up to the stage on all four sides. In any other theater except for maybe the Scera Shell which is also awesome, all lights are out and you can't really see any of the audience faces. At the hale you can see everyone, everywhere..what they are doing what faces they are making, do they like the show, do they hate the show lol, and you really get to see all your hard work paying off, like I said not for you, but for everyone that came to see the show. I don't know if it was just cause of Christmas and the nature of the show, or the fact that you are so close to everyone, but you really do see every emotion. Being part of the reason that, that emotion is there was pretty cool. I remember many times when we would get done singing Coventry Carol(setting the scene for Tiny Tim's death) there would hardly be a dry eye in the theater. Women and kids would grab our hands sometimes as we walked off just to give them a little squeeze.

The show itself was insane, many funny moments and some really close calls, one of them being mine.....I almost missed a show because I forgot that 2 a day shows started a week ahead of when I thought they did. I got a call from my partner asking me if I was coming to the show, and said yea at 8 right? She text back nope....at 5.....it was almost 4:30 and I work in Alpine, pretty close to a 30 minute drive from where the theater was. So I freaked and ran down there as fast as I could, almost got pulled over and showed up to the theater about 5 minutes before we started the show. There were the rest of the 4 guys downstairs with all my costume and mic ready to help me out, because if I missed the first number I would have to sit out the whole first act, and there was no way I was gonna do that to my partner. She didn't deserve to get left behind cause I made a mistake. I somehow made it down to the theater got dressed and got my mic on and got upstairs right as Lauren was ready to pull the curtain back and go on stage. I said sorry, and she said glad you are here. We did two shows a day for the last 2 weeks with 3 shows a day the last 3 days. I think it was like 25 shows in a little over a month and a half. Pretty crazy but tons of fun and I hope I get to do it again sometime.

Second it helped me see that I really can get into a show at any theater as long as I try my best at the audition and in learning parts and so on. I was told by almost everyone I talked to that there was no way I could get in the show my first try, that it would be a great audition experience and that was it. Well out of 60 o more people I was chosen to be one of the lucky 16 that made the cast. Proving to me and everyone else that I can do it! The whole process and the show gave me the confidence I have always needed to go out for the big roles and get them. Being a part of such a treasured theater has been such a great experience and I look forward to doing another show there in the future.

Now I have no idea why I've posted this but it has been on my mind and I figured I might as well...Not many people will understand this post unless you do theater but oh well. This show kinda changed my outlook on shows from there on out, and I'm thankful it did.