Tale #15: Nope! You won’t be.

Some of my favorite memories at VACT involve kids saying absolutely ridiculous things. There is nothing more comedically precious than when a small, innocent looking creature mutters something completely outlandish.

Audition days are very tiring especially for the youth shows. For a youth show audition, we could see upwards of 140 kids in a day, and then there are callbacks. The audition process starts about 1:00pm and ends around 5:30/6:00pm depending on how many kids audition and how many kids are asked to stay for callbacks.

Every year, there are the hugely popular audition songs. When Frozen came out, every little girl sang “Do You Want to Build A Snowman.” When Moana came out, every little girl sang “How Far I’ll Go.”

And when The Greatest Showman came out, oh lordy. I think I’ve probably sat through about 100 different audition renditions of “A Million Dreams.”

When you’ve worked on youth productions for over ten years, you’ve gotta find a way to stay attentive during the auditions. While we’d all love to believe every audition is an entirely unique and amazing experience, that is just not the reality of the situation. The reality is that you are tired, you desperately want to eat the m&ms the producer put in front of you, and you are so sick of hearing [insert popular song of the year here] that you want to scream.

There are moments throughout the audition day that really wake you up from your audition sleepies. Those moments could be kids with such an exceptional level of talent that you are in absolute awe of their audition. Those moments could be kids who add a dance and some pizzaz to their audition to increase the entertainment value. Those moments could even be kids that speak so loud at you during their introduction that the pure volume of their voice alone brings you back into focus.

Then there are the moments, like this.

We would see the kids in groups of ten in the audition room and this young lady was the ninth in her group.

She waited patiently for her turn as each kid stepped forward to complete their audition. There were only two renditions of “A Million Dreams” in that group.

When it was finally her turn, she stepped forward in a calm, professional manner and said, “Hello my name is [insert name here] and I am nine years old.”

Our director asked, “And what will you be singing for us today?”

This young lady stared right at us and said with the utmost confidence, “I will be singing Spooky Mormon Hell Dream from The Book of Mormon.”

I almost spat out my sparkling water.

I quickly swallowed it and stammered out, “Nope! You won’t be. Let’s go with Happy Birthday.”

She then proceeded to negotiate with us. She promised that she would only sing the first part of the song that did not have anything naughty in it. I countered with “fine but I will cut you off when we get to the bad stuff.”

She made it through “and the terrible vision that I had that night,” before I thanked her and she had to step back into line.

The poor tenth kid who had to follow her looked so flabbergasted that I think he almost forgot his name. He proceeded to sing one of the year’s popular songs, and normalcy was restored.