As we had started the unit later than the rest of the class we were thrown into the deep end a bit and we were brought up to speed! We were going to put on a production of RENT by Jonathon Larson and that auditions will be held on Monday's lesson where we'd have to perform Seasons of Love the musicals main song, along with two other songs by characters we express an interest in playing.
As I've seen the movie many times and seen last years Year 13's perform production of it, I know this musical very well so I had a good understanding of each character. Due to my build and naturally deeper singing voice, I ruled Angel out of my possible choices for characters as her she is typically very skinny and has a high voice. I was then left with Mark, Roger, Collins and Benny.
My preferred out of these roles was Mark as his singing voice has a very strong American accent and it seems like his songs could be referred to "spoken sung" and as I'm not 100% confident with singing, I felt that Mark would not only be a safe bet but I feel I'd be able to characterise him very well.
I feel that Collins would also be a very good character for me too because I have a deep singing voice which suits the character well. Also, I feel I'd do very at playing Collins as the opposite of a stereotypical homosexual, Angel. I feel that I could play him in a way that could change the audience's view on homosexuality.
With Benny, although he seems like a very interesting role and I have experience playing the antagonist (Mephistopheles in Dr Faustus), I don't feel that the role wouldn't suit me and I would rather have a part with more lines.
Finally Roger... With him being my favourite character and having easily, in my opinion, the best story arc in the whole musical, I definitely wanted to give him a go, despite not being fully confident with singing.
With this all kept in mind, I needed to pick two songs for my audition to perform along with Seasons of Love. I narrowed this down to a couple of songs per male:
- Mark - Rent, Tango Maureen
- Roger - Rent, One Song Glory
- Collins - Santa Fe, I'll Cover You
After narrowing down which songs I could do, our teacher, Mr Webb, asked me to perform I'll Cover You with Owen; we were told that Owen was to be Angel and I was to be Collins. After performing this, I feel more confident with Collins and I feel that it would be a lot of fun to play. Webb said that as he heard me perform Collins today, I don't need to worry about singing a Collins song at the audition. This makes my decision a lot easier as I only need to worry about choosing songs for my characters rather than which characters to choose from.
I was then asked to perform another song and, feeling pretty ambitious, I decided to give One Song Glory a go and it didn't go too bad. I seemed to have a good reaction everyone else, however, as soon as I started in a much a higher key that I normally start in so when it came to the chorus which is a bit higher than the rest of the song, my voice cracked and for most of that portion I wasn't singing at all as I was trying to get back into the right key. I would rectify this by starting in a lower key.
After these two performances, I've decided my two song choices for auditions on Monday:
- One Song Glory - As long as I start in a lower key, I feel that I'll perform this song rather well. I would be very pleased if I were to get my favourite role in the show.
- Rent - I believe this will be good as I would be able show off not only Mark and Roger but also a small portion of Collins too! I also know this song very well as is, so it would be a waste to not perform it.
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