Jacqueline Agrusa does not look happy.
“I was nervous,” she says. “I had to go first.”
Agrusa has just emerged from Yeager Recital Hall in Elon University’s Center for the Arts, where she completed the first of a three-part audition for Elon’s Bachelor of Fine Arts music theater program in the Department of Performing Arts March 2.
But even though Agrusa doesn’t feel confident in her singing audition, she still has two more components to try: acting and dance. She says she plans to prepare a bit more for those auditions before they occur later in the day.
“I’ll probably (prepare) a little bit for acting,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”
Agrusa isn’t the first one to feel this way. This particular audition day is the last one of the year the Department of Performing Arts will hold for its three BFA programs — music theater, acting and dance. In total, the department has held eight audition dates throughout the 2011-2012 school year, each one bringing more than 100 hopefuls to Elon's campus. But only about 20 students will be selected for each of Elon's BFA programs, and the audition process frequently goes unmentioned. Each performer in the department starts the same way: As a prospective student anxiously awaiting the call of his or her name, eager and excited to audition on Elon’s stage.
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Video by Morgan Mayer | Multimedia Reporter [/box]
Revamping the audition process
The Department of Performing Arts has continued to expand through the years, and the audition process is changing with it. According to Fred Rubeck, chair of the Department of Performing Arts, there is no other option but to make the audition process thorough.
“This is the first step of us getting the people here who are going to make the program great,” Rubeck said. “It’s why we build a process that’s really detailed and longer and cares more about people than just having them come in and show us something for 10 minutes.”
The department’s attention to detail has paved the way for a multi-step audition process. First, applicants must go to the department’s website and fill out an application, which needs to be completed two weeks before the day they want to audition. After applications are received, auditions coordinator Kimberly Rippy compiles a schedule of tryouts.
Rippy said the online applications have streamlined the process, in contrast to the department’s former snail mail system.
“They’d call me so that I’d have to mail the form to them,” Rippy said. “They’d have to complete them and return them to me by a deadline. And inevitably, it’d get lost in the mail, or their dog ate it.”
But despite the efficiency of the new system, an important component has been taken away: Rippy’s relationship with the auditioners prior to their visit to Elon’s campus.
“Now that we’re on the online system, I don’t physically get to handle their information as much, so I don’t feel like I get that earlier connection,” Rippy said. “Now that we have everything out there online, they don’t have to really contact me as much.”
The relationship the Department of Performing Arts forges with its students often sets the tone for the students’ time at Elon. Rubeck and Rippy are able to tell countless stories of performing arts alumni who have kept in touch long after graduation, including a Class of 2011 graduate who sent her Save-the-Date wedding announcement to members of the department faculty.
“We don’t lose touch with them when they leave,” Rippy said. “I still keep in touch with students that graduated.”
According to Rubeck, the student-faculty relationship can begin as early as the auditions.
“It’s not just us getting to know the talent of the students and getting to know them as a person,” Rubeck said. “We’re getting to know each other, and that works both ways. I think that is the most successful when they really fall in love with us, and we fall in love with them and we’re all just a big, happy family.”
The auditions for the BFA programs are an all-day process, and each prospective student must demonstrate endurance. After auditioners check in, they attend an information session for a specific major. They also have the opportunity to sit in on an actual performing arts class before they begin the audition itself.
Music theater auditioners, in particular, are broken into three groups. While members of Group A complete their singing audition in Yeager Recital Hall, Group B auditions for dance in Dance Studio A and Group C performs an acting monologue in Dance Studio C. The groups rotate twice before the night is through.
“We’ve developed this kind of three-ring circus where they’re divided into groups, and each group moves through a room,” Rubeck said. “It’s about keeping as many people busy as continuously as we can, rather than one at a time and stringing it out.”
The students’ attitudes throughout long audition days make a difference as well, Rubeck said.
“We want someone who’s going to be nice to work with for the time that they’re at Elon,” he said. “Someone who’s going to work hard and be upfront and honest in who they are, not artificial.”
If at first you don’t succeed…
Though many of the students auditioning for Elon’s programs are high school seniors, some are not. Agrusa is currently a freshman at Wayne State University in Detroit, and will transfer schools in the fall.
In contrast, Corbin McConnell is already a freshman at Elon University and is auditioning for the BFA programs for the second time.
[quote]It’s because the training is so sincere and raw and beautiful, that it is going to make me into a performer that I can be proud to say I am. -Corbin McConnell, freshman[/quote]
“I came to Elon to be a music theater major,” McConnell said. “I auditioned to get into the program my freshman year, but unfortunately I didn’t get in, which is totally reasonable. Hundreds upon hundreds of kids audition.”
McConnell has not let rejection stop him, though. On the contrary, he said he has used his first year at Elon to develop his skills more thoroughly and find where his passion truly lies.
“It’s not about the trivial stuff,” McConnell said. “It’s not about your own self-gain. It’s about creating something that for one moment in time, one two-hour period, is sincerely yours. And no one else can take that away from you.”
McConnell’s case is not uncommon, according to Rubeck.
“Any student may audition for any of the programs a maximum of two times,” Rubeck said. “We must evaluate each candidate on their current skill level and consider how much time we will have to help them develop.”
But McConnell said he recognizes his current skill level and wants nothing more than for Elon’s faculty to help him grow.
“It’s not because I want the name behind me,” McConnell said. “It’s because the training is so sincere and raw and beautiful, that it is going to make me into a performer that I can be proud to say I am.”
Calming the nerves
Even current students in the BFA programs can remember how they felt during their auditions.
“I was extremely nervous for my audition,” said senior BFA acting major Kat Nardizzi. “However, I used my nervous energy in my audition. That’s usually how it goes for me. I get nervous, but I calm myself down physically through breathing and other relaxation exercises.”
Others have found themselves on the opposite end of the spectrum. Patrick Clanton, a sophomore music theater major, felt relaxed about the process.
“I never feel too nervous about auditions,” Clanton said. “I just have the mentality that if it’s meant to happen, it will happen. Everyone was so nice on my audition day that it was almost impossible to be too nervous.”
In fact, the laidback atmosphere of Elon’s auditions is something on which the Department of Performing Arts prides itself.
“We’re a pretty friendly bunch,” Rubeck said. “We’re sitting there hoping they’re going to do well, not the opposite.”
And this year’s auditioners felt that support of faculty members and current students.
“Everyone seems to love it, and I think I love the fact that everyone just always uses the word ‘family,’” said Shaun Nerney, a senior at Mater Dei Prep High School in Red Bank, N.J. “It’s very highly regarded, and it just seems like it is a great place.”
The tight-knit friendships found in the Department of Performing Arts are constant, and one of the aspects that most distinguishes Elon from other universities, according to Rubeck.
“There’s a lot of good schools, but we’re distinctive and unique,” Rubeck said. “We’re up with the really impressive programs.”
McConnell said he agreed the department is second to none in its support of the students, something he will believe regardless of whether he is accepted into a BFA program.
“They’re not only friends who help each other,” McConnell said. “They’re friends who are pushing each other and really putting them toward a great, great pathway into a great career. The Department of Performing Arts really does not realize how beautiful they are.”