I never would have in a million years guessed I would apply for a musical audition, but this week I had the privilege of attending one and simply put, it was a lot of fun. I had a chance to learn the process, meet some cool and talented people, a be a part of something that was clearly passion-driven.

As someone with zero acting experience, I definitely felt like a fish out of water compared to my peers, but my music background gave me something of a leg to stand on. I didn’t quite understand how all of this was supposed to work as I started reading rules, waivers and directions about conduct. I didn’t have a specific role or character in mind either; I kind of just went in with the thought of trying something new and seeing what happens. When I got the callback to try for a few specific roles I was surprised to say the least.

My initial audition was a bit of a mess as I had chosen songs that I was not allowed to sing as they were songs from the play that was being planned. I ended up having to demonstrate with “O Canada,” which was somewhat embarrassing but apparently enough for these kind judges as they wanted me to attend the next session to see if there was potential here. I took that as a victory in and of itself for sure.

The following session had me and several other folks go in and try some of the musical numbers. I had grinded out some of the songs this week, playing my relevant songs on repeat during my work hours, and also taking the time to watch the play on Youtube front to back since prior to this week I had never even heard about it. I felt pretty comfortable with it, but I knew it was going to be difficult to learn on such a short timeline. Needless to say, I was pretty nervous when presenting, but the other candidates that were with me helped to ease my nerves, as there was a sense of camaraderie among us. We were in this together and we wanted the best members to be selected for the roles. Even if I wasn’t to be selected, I was happy enough to just attend these sessions.

The whole experience definitely felt strange to me, but the community of folks I met there were very encouraging despite my lack of background in theatre. In hindsight, I’m really glad I got to do it. If anything it’s given me more confidence to try this kind of thing again if the opportunity were to ever come up. Sometimes you really do have to just throw yourself out there to see if you’ll like something or not. It’s easy to feel ashamed or embarrassed for failing, but if you’re with the right crowd, they’ll do anything but make you feel bad about it. Everyone had to start somewhere, and the people who are the most sensitive to that feeling will always be there to meet you in the middle.