I’m imagining the civil engineering society of the Greater Boston area got together at some point and said —
“All right, all right, listen up — we’re dealing with old horse paths here. The roads are narrow. They wind in all directions. And there aren’t any alternative routes.
“So, here’s what we’re gonna do — we’ll just hew to the historical legacy of these questionable thoroughfares and make sure the lighting at night is true to the road’s 1805 founding. There won’t be any.
“And reflectors? Paul Revere didn’t need them, did he?
“And we’re not so profligate as to squander tax funds on things like reflective paint for white and yellow lines. No. When it rains and it’s dark out, folks can maneuver themselves through the small ponds on Route 9 using bat sonar.”
Maybe it’s because my eyes are gonna be 46 this month, but I’m not about the night time rainy roads around here.
The other night I drove home in the rain and literally missed my exit off the Mass Pike.
Signaled, followed the signs. I saw the arrows, but the road? Nope. Had to rumble my way back on to the highway and try my best to intuit the next offramp via ESP.
This morning Melissa and I thanked our guardian angels, lucky stars, and trusty green 2009 Scion XD —
(her name’s Willow — purchased in Hollywood. We joke that she’s been super traumatized by all the East Coast weather she’s been subjected to in the last 9 years.)
— we thanked them (angels, stars, and car) for getting us to Newton-Wellesley hospital this morning where Melissa’s having a long-anticipated surgery so she won’t feel like her abdomen is in perpetual revolt anymore. I’m excited for a new chapter for her. 🙏
But all the recent nighttime wet-road driving around the Boston area’s got me thinking — isn’t that just like your creative life?
You’re driving along wondering if your headlights are working or not, trying to make out if that’s asphalt or a hydroplane disaster pond in front of you.
An oversized Infiniti SUV barrels past you smacking your windshield with a puddle wave, and the Yukon behind you decides high beams are the appropriate selection when tailing a wee hatchback.
When you’re a singing storyteller and have a desire like
🪄 play a role in a beautiful show with a company of excellent people and get paid a workable wage for it 🌟
the road to the stage door can feel like dark New England rain driving.
It’s not like you can bump your CV on LinkedIn or apply at your local musical theatre branch.
There’s auditions. And there’s finding out about the auditions. And there’s getting to the auditions and getting in the door. And there’s having materials that’ll serve you and the needs of the production(s). And there’s reaching out to casting folks over and over with no response. And there’s spending hours creating self-tapes that you hope get watched. And there’s getting used to being back in an actual room with real people after you’ve been putting everything on video. And there’s the very recent reality that one microbe can shut down an entire art form that you’ve dreamed about being a part of since you heard the high school chorus sing that arrangement of “I Dreamed a Dream.”
Oh, and you need to be really good at compelling, honest, wholehearted storytelling while singing in an adrenalized state.
Blind driving on Route 9 is easier.
BUT AND — rainy pitch-black puddle skid motoring has some lessons to teach us.
🌧️ You can only see the road you can see in front of you. Aim in the safest direction you can, pay attention, and refrain from using cruise control.
☔️ Some assholes get assholey-er in rough conditions. Let your wipers do their work, and focus on your lane.
🌂 If a car is going effectively in the direction you want to go, use their tire tracks and tail lights as a guide for a while.
⛈️ Take a deep breath and slow down a little. No need to put on your hazards. You’re moving. You’re taking care of the road in front of you one headlight zone at a time. You keep driving, you’ll get where you need to go.
⚠️ Sometimes you miss Exit 117 to Framingham because you can’t see the road. Keep driving. You can get off at 111, and there’ll probably be less shenanigans on the quieter lanes.
You’ll get where you need to go.
Your heart rate will spike. You’ll swear. But you’ll get there.
Take care of the road you can see in front of you.
And remember there’s only one you, and folks need to hear the story only you can sing.
Love much,
Dan
PS Melissa and I had a terrific day date a couple weekends ago — got to see several of my BoCo kidz do great work in City of Angels. 👏
We had lunch at Petit Robert Bistro in the South End (or as I like to call it, Lil Bobby’s.) Highly recommend if you’re in Boston. The mussels were the best either of us ever had. All broth was duly sopped with freshly baked baguette. And our macarons to go — my mouth’s watering just remembering them.
Every morning after I get off the train, I stop at Flour Bakery + Café on Dalton Street because if you BYO cup, you get coffee for $1.50.
Their coffee is delicious, and the pastry game is epic.
I usually skip the food and just get coffee. They know me now, so they grab my cup and ask, “Dark or medium?”
Except for last week. My friend at the register said, “What do you want today besides your coffee?”
The upsell skillz caught me off guard.
She must’ve seen the eyeballing the blueberry muffins next to the currant oat scones.
And before I could say “No thanks, just coffee,” I heard myself blurt, “Blueberry muffin.”
In the space of two seconds, I noticed multiple thoughts.
I mean what kind of morning crazy pants must I BE just to get coffee when this pastry repast splays itself so wantonly before my gaze?
And
I mean, I don’t want to disappoint the employees of Flour Bakery + Café by not ordering a sunrise carbohydrate.
My mind was Jim Carrey’s Grinch yes-no-no-yes monologue.
So, out the door with my little blueberry muffin brown bag I departed.
I tell the pedagogy students at the Conservatory that we make a plan so that the plan will change.
And the plan always changes.
It makes me think about how we know exactly how a song is going to go.
We know who we’re going to sing to. We know we’re on that park bench next to the sycamore tree where the pigeon pooped on our shoulder that time.
We know what our imaginary partner just said during the introduction to make us sing the opening line of our song.
We smell the spring tulips growing in the flower bed next to the tree. We even crafted some swans gliding across the water in the distant pond.
Then we get on the stage or in the room, and all we can think about is how fast our heart is beating, wondering if we remembered to zip in the bathroom, and that the gap in the curtains we chose to sing toward just looks like a gap in the curtains. Where’s the sycamore tree with its dappled bark????
All the things we imagined aren’t coming up like they did in the shower.
So, we focus harder.
Usually, this leads to existential pain and your consciousness hovering out like a critical drone shooting comments into your brain while you’re just trying to tell the story you so meticulously devised.
You weren’t planning on someone asking you what you wanted with your coffee.
But see, you made a plan. And you have to make a plan so that the plan can change.
So, say “thank you” to the rapid heartbeat.
Check your zipper or just accept it it might be down.
And remember that you can look at a gap in a curtain and let it be a curtain gap.
In the meantime, why don’t you go ahead and take the pressure off of you to focus so hard on yourself partner?
Think of all the serious conversations you’ve had with folks only to notice that your attention wandered.
All that to say, we made a plan. Now it’s going to change. And we just have to deal with it. And that can be exciting.
This is super true in big life as well.
Back in 2019 in the before times, the Callaways were planning to move to the Jersey ‘burbs.
I was up for a job at NYU and was on campus for final interviews on March 9, 2020. A lot of people found that their plans drastically changed around that day.
But we’d made a plan, and we were making steps. Then, new information directed us in other ways.
The closed the door in NYC meant I got to spend one more year at Elon. That year deepened and sweetened my love for teaching and clarified the privilege that I have to walk alongside singers like you.
It also opened the way for us to head to the Boston area and for this gift of a job at the Conservatory.
This was nowhere on my radar when Melissa and I were pulling carrots out of our front yard garden in Los Angeles 10 years ago.
This is all to encourage you that it’s all right if you feel blindingly clue free at the moment.
Take out a piece of paper and write down at the top “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
Then write a few things down.
Make some plans, and take some steps. Google a thing. Write an email to someone who knows something about something.
The original plan you have won’t be what it looks like later. Just know that.
I believe what comes will be even better.
Make a plan so the plan will change. It’s probably going to be frustrating. But if you just keep taking steps and adjusting to what comes, you’re going to find satisfaction and gratification in walking toward what you know to be the direction of your contribution.
Some days you may purchase an unexpected blueberry muffin.
Other days, it’s being amused that your brain’s thinking about pop tarts, instead of your song scenario.
And other weeks it’s letting yourself feel sad about a closed door and waiting with expectancy to know which direction to go now that you’ve been redirected.
Make a plan so the plan can change.
And I suggest one of your plans can be to sing something today because there is only one you and folks need to hear the story only you can sing.
Love much, Dan
PS It’s Melissa’s Birthday today! I made her a chocolate cake with cherry buttercream frosting. I had a terrific plan to make some cherry syrup that I was going to drizzle over the top. It ended up looking more smeared-atop-an-English-muffin than boulangerie dreams, but I’m confident it’ll taste nice.
PPS In the plans changing category for this week, we were having a fun time drawing pictures yesterday morning.
Noah tried to copy a picture of a helicopter I’d drawn, and when he got frustrated with his attempt, he wadded up the paper and threw it in the kitchen trash. I fished it out and asked him what was up. He was really sad and frustrated that he couldn’t draw the helicopter the way I drawn it. I got out the crayons and made a little creation with what he’d done. I was pretty pleased with our collab 🙂
Poor kid has inherited my perfectionism gene. I seriously pray I can help him navigate it early.
PPPS if there are any typos or horrible grammatical errors present in this email, I’m going to blame our younger nugget Jude. Here’s a snapshot of my experience getting this email sent out to you today.
Noah’s been wanting to decorate for Christmas since Halloween. He could NOT understand why anybody would wait until after Thanksgiving to haul out the holly.
Seriously, he woke up Thursday morning and said, “We get to decorate for Christmaaaaas!”
I can remember losing my mind about draping lights all over everything when I was a kid. It’s terrific to get to live it through Noah and Jude’s eyes.
We finally got the tree up and ornamented yesterday evening.
After being waylaid by a Saturday urgent care trip to see about an ear infection, a rogue LED on our pre-lit tree that never got resolved (even after Melissa and I undertook the Sisyphean task of replacing every unlit bulb in the strand), and general exhaustion, extracting the Christmas bins from behind the I’ll-get-to-that-someday boxes was going to be a mythic test.
That’s what I thought, anyway.
The true trial began when I tried “decorating” with the boys while Melissa braved the elements (mostly human) to source a new air mattress from Big Lots. My brother Ben’s visiting from Spain, and our current one’s motor gave up the ghost.
But yeah, placing fragile, tinselly things around the house in tasteful locations with 4- and 5-year old humans full of testosterone and opinions — I went ahead and pulled down the bourbon and the “Dad — Aged to Perfection” tumbler Melissa got me on my last birthday.
While I coaxed Noah into the half-bath to help me put the Santa toilet seat cover and rug into their coveted positions, I heard a loud crash on the kitchen tiles and Jude’s voice say, “Sorrrryyyy!”
I emerged from from the toilet room with wide T-rex eyes and saw that one of our Christmas cocoa mugs lay shattered on the floor.
I calmly said in my whispery Daniel Tiger’s Neighbohood Dad voice, “That’s all right, son. It was an accident. We’ll get this cleaned up together.” Then we sang a situationally themed song about the learning moment.
Nope. That’s not what happened.
I don’t remember my exact vocabulary, but the subtext was, “Why can’t you listen to me? I TOLD you to come into the bathroom with the Christmas towels! SEE? This is what happens when you don’t do what I say. This is the opposite of fun, and I’m pissed about it because Bing Crosby’s whistling “White Christmas” on the Alexa cube, and we should be happy, dammit! And LISTEN TO ME!”
The thing I’m grateful for is little Judelet’s ability to say a hearty sorry and move on.
He knew it was an accident, and he wasn’t beating himself up about it.
But in these moments of exasperation, it’s like someone pushes my reactivity-bot button, and up from the bile center come phrases like, “Why would you DO that?”.
I can feel how ugly and damaging it is when it comes out — like I’ve slimed the boys and myself at the same time. It’s not who I want to be, and it’s not how I want to affect them.
“I’m SORRY, Daddy!” Jude repeated.
I’m grateful for his sense of self. HE knew he was just trying to put the mug on the counter near where the coffee cups go. HE knew it was an accident.
It was just the moment I needed to regroup.
“I totally forgive you, Jude, and I wish you’d waited for me like I asked.”
We swept up the ceramic and finished turning our toilet into Santa Claus.
And I took a generous sip from my tumbler.
That moment wasn’t about Jude not listening to me. It was about me not feeling listened to.
It was also me telling myself a story of inadequacy. “If I were really an effective dad, my boys would listen to me and do what I say.”
And I made up a terrifying future scenario when I would yell at Jude to stop running in a parking lot only for him to ignore me and careen into danger. (Although the exact opposite thing happened that very morning after church.) Disaster outcome planning is rarely open to countervailing evidence.
But think about those three needs:
You need to be listened to.
You need to feel effective and adequate at your tasks.
You need to have some reasons to believe things will be okay.
Now think about how these needs get challenged every time you walk into an audition room or put your finger on the red circle on your phone screen and pretend you’re singing to somebody.
We ask ourselves, “Are the table people listening to me? I don’t know if they are. How can I get them to listen to me? I know, try harder.”
If we feel unheard and unseen, we can do the time-tested kid logic of, “If I’m not being heard or seen, then it must be my fault. I must be bad at this. There are other people who are so much better, clearly. I’m sure they get listened to.”
Or we hurl the blame outward. Also ineffective.
And that quickly leap frogs to, “This will always be this way. This is what auditioning is like. This is what being a singing storyteller is like.”
So we do one of two things.
We armor up. We don’t let ourselves want the thing, and we offer up half-alive songs what might sound just fine, but there’s no open door into the heart. The unheard, unseen, inadequate, always-like-this story goes on.
Or we quit.
But there is another way that brings satisfaction and joy to your work.
Here you go —
Listen to YOU. Are you even listening to the words you’re singing? I bet if you do, that story might come alive, and you might start to have a little fun.
Along with that, let everybody off the hook. Nobody has to listen to you. But I guarantee if you’re having you’re own auditory party over there, I’m gonna be all “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Assess your skills well. Do you need to bolster your tools? Are there things you need to integrate and gain confidence with? When you watch yourself back on video, are you meeting your own aesthetic standards?
This is a helpful question, and it gives you something to DO. You can get to work, and you can get better by spending 7 minutes a day on that technical skill.
Then you have evidence to show yourself — I am effective. I do have these skills. And when I don’t, I have the GRIT to acquire them.
And then open your heart. Prepare the hell out of your work. Then “connect, George, connect.”
Don’t perform. Prepare and connect.
Imagine there are French doors, latched at your sternum. Open them up, step out on your balcony, and say, “You’re invited in here!”
There’s nothing more beautiful than your soul, so trust the inward welcome.
Listen to you. Bolster your skill for your own satisfaction. Prepare and connect.
Because there is only one you, and folks need to hear the beautifully crafted story only you can sing.
Love much,
Dan
PS I’m writing a book!
The focus is on telling you all the things I say in lessons that make people say “I wish I’d known that before!” in a systematic fashion while sharing my experience of singing as a way to heal.
Also, if you’ve got a singing while pretending issue you wish you could solve with a book, let me know! Any idea you have — I’d love to say thank to you in the acknowledgements 🙏📚.
There was a callback for a production of Ordinary Days, and I prepared the CRAP outa that audition. PRE-PARED. I knew the song cold. I knew my point of view. I was ready to live this experience.
I did my thing. The director even let out a “Wow” when I finished.
I didn’t book that job.
But I remember that audition, and it’s a satisfying memory.
I also remember a callback for a production of Fiddler on the Roof. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick were in the room. I started my work, and when the director gave me adjustments, I became the amazing shrinking actor.
Am I going to get this right?
How do I get them to pick me?
I’d already thought up my opening night cards and everything — a picture of me playing Tevye in the 1996 Mt. Airy High School spring musical. (Sounds crazy, no?)
I didn’t get that job, either.
I can still hear my agent delivering the feedback afterward, “They said you just got smaller and smaller.”
What did that mean? Talk louder? More gestuuuures?
Now I have a clearer idea what probably happened.
(After many years of getting the note in tech rehearsals — “Dan, look up, we’re losing your eyes,” I have a clue.)
I wanted to hide and be seen at the same time.
Auditioning is hard. You go in there after investing hours and dollars into preparation, throw your guts on the floor, and then the teachery people tell you just to leave it in the room. (Or on the self-tape. That one’s even harder.)
As I survey the times I shrank back, I see 3 things behind it all:
1. I wanted one of the table folk to give me my you-belong-here card.
2. I thought I needed a you-belong-here card.
3. And I believed what I wanted couldn’t be available to me. Because see number 1.
I loved what I did, and I wanted to do it on big stages. And I was using my career as a mechanism to tell me I was all right after all.
If I got picked, that must mean something, right?
And here’s the irony.
I’d already picked myself. I was already paying NYC rent, taking that subway to midtown, in the room singing the song.
But, the moment I walked in the door, I decided to un-pick myself and plop that responsibility in somebody else’s lap.
It’s like you invited me to dinner and asked me to bring the salad.
I say, “Great! My salad game is legend.”
Then, I show up at your house and ask, “Where do you keep your croutons? Wait, you only have iceberg?”
Same for you. You already decided that your life needs to include singing about your innermost thoughts and feelings in a narrative construct.
So, now your responsibility is to make sure you put together your proprietary blend of fresh greens, crunch, savory with sweet surprise, and get your dressing ratios right.
Slap that in a big bowl, and BYO utensils because you’re fixing to mix that UP when you get to the audition.
(And I always advocate for quality dijon and mayo in the dressing. Secret weapon? Maple syrup.)
You’re prepped for the party. Whether it’s an appointment or an open call, you’re invited. You belong there. Get in there and serve it up.
Because there’s only one you, and folks need to hear the story only you can sing.
Love much,
Dan
PS That audition for Ordinary Days that I didn’t book? I look back on that with satisfaction because I was fully and deeply prepared. I did my work that day. And I’m committed to doing the same in every audition I have from now on.
I had the privilege of talking with Merri Sugarman from Tara Rubin Casting last week, and one of the things she returned to many times was this—
The only thing we have as actors is our preparation — the excellence of our work and choosing to open our hearts. Leaving the room saying, “Yep, I’d gladly pay the ticket price to see what just did in there.”
If you do what she says in there, things will change.
Here are the links to check out our conversation. I’m still digesting all we talked about. I promise if you listen and do what she says, you’ll see growth in your career.
Part 1: How has casting changed since 2020? changes in audition procedures. What does preparation mean? One primary mistake actors make in the room.
Part 2: How little moments turn into consequential trajectory changers Trusting your nudges What Merri sang when she booked Les Mis All about follow up
Part 3: Practical simple and straightforward things you can always do Reality check on your skills, being real with yourself watching people grow through the audition process some tough truths that’ll set you free
I got to work with MTCA (Musical Theatre College Auditions) last week in NYC, and it was terrific.
One thing I wanna tell you, well, two.
One — go ahead and sing the basic song that everybody sings.
There are 2 reasons for this.
Reason 1 is that the table people will already know it, so they can focus on you.
And that leads to reason number 2: If I’m listening to a new song, my brain will be split between you and the song itself.
What is this song? What’s the story? You have a lot more heavy lifting to do as the storyteller when you sing unfamiliar material.
And
Two — sing the basic song knowing that you’re the only one who can sing it like you do.
Objectively. Genetically, biologically, and on the level of your inimitable soul, you’re the only one who can sing it that way — which brings me to the real point.
Table people will know you can sing in the first couple of bars. What makes all the difference in the world is whether or not you open the door to your heart and invite folks in.
No one knows the secret things you’re singing about (and it’s none of our business), but we know if we’re invited into your singular, one-of-a-kind space.
When you do invite us in, your soul rises up, dissolves your ego, and shares beauty that you can’t even be aware of.
You’ll sparkle and love and care bear stare, and it’ll feel satisfying, beautiful, and a little like you’re doing nothing.
If you haven’t heard the news already, there’s a little bit of advice for theatre singers that’s been going around for a long time.
It has to do with the sinuses in your face, and folks who taught bel canto singers back in the day often used these mysterious skull caves as guide posts for singers to know they were making the right kinds of acoustically amplified sounds.
Versions of this legend have been passed down through oral tradition and may take on the form of phrases, such as “get it forward” or “use your mask,” or you may even have a visual of a very well-meaning voice teacher pointing on either side of their nose, and telling you to aim your voice there like a laser beam.
In my experience, all of this has been the opposite of helpful.
And I can tell you why real real quick.
First of all, nobody can hear what’s going on in your mask except for you. The only thing folks hear is what vibrates through your mouth and through your nose.
You might not even have the self perception to feel the resonance there, and that’s okay.
The second reason I never think this way or encourage singers I work with to think this way is because the vast majority of your resonance happens in a little place that I’d love to talk about.
That place is your pharynx.
If you snort, let your uvula flop back like your sawing logs at 3 AM (my wife reports I am expert at this these days, sorry sweetie) you’ll feel the spot.
? In the above pic, you’ll see the blue, yellow and green portions — those are where your prime resonant money’s at.
Makes sense, right? They’re directly north of your vocal folds.
Your folds vibrate, and then all that vibration gets bounced around and amplified right there in the recital hall of your vocal tract.
Feeling resonance in your mask is an EFFECT, and what you’re feeling is nanoseconds past tense. The vibrations you’re feeling there are the result of what just came through your folds and pharynx.
In my experience, when I’ve tried to aim for the front, sing into my mask, or hit any kind of back row through a lot of forward resonance, my body recruits all kinds of muscles to direct this feeling to this spot.
And this makes the pharynx muscles do the only things they can — constrict.
Lookit: (image courtesy of Teach Me Anatomy)
The green, orange, and blue muscle groups — they swallow for you hundreds of times a day. And the only thing they can do is get smaller.
To sing well, this mischief has to be managed. The softer and meltier these muscles are, the more room the recital hall (your pharynx) has to bounce sound waves around and amplify them.
If they’re squeezing just a little trying to laser beam your sound forward, well, you’re going to get a real samey, monochrome, bright metallic sound that honestly musical theatre gets made fun of for.
And for good reason — it’s dopey, and folks are missing out on all the individual color that the rest of their singular vocal tract can paint those sound waves with as they travel through.
So, what DO I do?
I encourage a dual perception — a centered awareness of the resonance vibrating through your vocal tract while your communication attention goes to your scene partner.
Musical theatre performers have to manage multiple awareness all the time.
I’m Christine Daae, I’m me, there’s the conductor, the audience is full tonight, that bobby pin is in too tight, maybe I’ll offer Raoul a breath mint later, I should have warmed up better before this show, I could use a nap, watch the conductor.
I’m astounded when folks believe we can’t think about vocal technique and storytelling at the same time. We have to. Humans have to think about more than one thing on the regular.
Yes, I know all the recent studies on how you can’t really multitask, and yes, hand raised.
But are you trying to tell me that when you’re scrubbing your tub you can’t sing “Alone” by Heart at the same time?
See?
I mean, anybody who’s sung and danced simultaneously can tell you that technique and singing can happen at the same time. Or else you fall over.
So here’s what I want you to understand:
Your primary resonance happens in your pharynx.
Folks can only hear what vibrates through your mouth and your nose.
Therefore, let’s do things that help these two factors happen as freely and efficiently as they can.
You might feel like your forehead’s gonna buzz right off your head, but someone could make a very similar sound and feel none of that.
Here are the questions you can ask yourself in order to find the sweet spot for efficient resonance and honest communication.
What are you singing?
What’s the world of the show or the song? Ado Annie’s gonna sing differently from A Little Night Music’s Ann, and she’s gonna sing differently from Ana in Frozen.
You’re a theatre singer. You make thousands of different sounds.
Once you know that,
What kind of breath support are you using?
“If I Loved You” support is gonna be very different from “Take Me or Leave Me.”
(”If I Loved You” is gonna have floatier ribs and be generated from the lower transverse abs and obliques [appoggio], and Rent is gonna have more rib closure and engagement which produces compressed phonation —
think toddler wailing over their banana being peeled the wrong way, broken, or slightly bruised. Those ribs know how to engage with the focal folds.
Then get a sense of the emotional impulse you’re working with.
Ado Annie: “It ain’t so much a question of not knowing what to do….”
Ann: “Soon, I promise. Soon I won’t shy away.”
Ana: “For the first time in FOREVER!….”
Three very different needs to communicate. These emotional images will light up in different parts of the body, and they’ll move the voice in a different way. Pay attention to your body on this.
Then, notice how that affects the phonatory pattern of the voice —
What happens when you notice the emotional energy of surmising, “It ain’t so much a question of not knowing what to do.”?
And how’s that different from Ann singing, “Soon, I promise….”?
And Ana’s got a completely different set of circumstances going on.
Your folds are going to sing these three different characters in different ways.
Now, it’s time to notice what the voice is doing just north of you larynx — in your pharynx.
Meditate your attention right back to that spot where your uvula vibrates against the back pharyngeal wall when you snort.
That’s the spot where I want you to notice your vibratory energy flowing past like a stream.
How does Ado Annie’s stream move?
How about Ann?
And Ana?
Notice the differences in air speed and how you feel the vibrations. Does that feel different from what you normally do?
Do you still feel sensations up in the front of your face? For me, I never think about them anymore. I may just be used to them, but I just don’t focus there.
Then after that, how can you shape your articulators and the rest of the tract to help you the most?
The one tip I have for you on this is to let your tongue float into your mouth. You want your tongue to float high and close to your hard palate.
This does at least 3 things:
1, it gets your tongue out of your most resonant place, your pharynx.
2, it floats the root of the tongue off of the larynx, so this whole mechanism has freedom to move.
and 3. When the tongue floats high toward the hard palate, it creates a very helpful acoustic bottleneck that causes sound waves to bounce back into the pharynx and amplify even more.
Then, the dialect of these characters, their self concept, and the world of the show are going to affect your articulation choices. Your entire body energy based on who you believe you are is going to shape how your tongue, teeth, and soft palate, and pharynx all interact.
And that’s the flow of energy that you have actual immediate control over. You can witness that as the actor/storyteller while looking to see if your communication is landing with your scene partner.
You can, in fact, do more than one thing at a time within a given task.
I hope this takes the pressure off of you to think you have to target and aim vibrations in a certain spot on your face. Sometimes you may feel sympathetic resonance galore in all kinds of places in your skull. Other times, you won’t.
That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you are making free, efficient sounds that come from a deep belief and empathy for who you are being, and the story you are courageous enough to live.
Again, what I want you to walk away with from this is —
Your primary resonance happens in your pharynx. Nobody can hear your mask.
You can indeed think about vocal technique and storytelling at the same time. In fact, I believe they serve each other.
Trying to aim your voice in a forward direction can sometimes recruit muscles that decrease efficiency and cause unwanted constriction.
Then, when you’re working on any kind of material, ask yourself:
What world am I in? What am I singing?
What kind of breath support does this call for? What’s my body’s identity here?
How does this affect my phonatory pattern? What kinds of sounds am I making?
And then what do the resonances happening in my pharynx feel like as they flow through?
and then,
How do your articulators, affected by your body’s ego identity as this character or in this style, sculpt this vibration when it flows through your mouth?
And sub note on this, and this is a whole other topic — let your tongue float high and fill a lot of the mouth. It gets out of your pharynx, frees your larynx, and creates a terrific acoustic environment.
All of these things you have direct agency over. You can stand in your energy column, share generously, and observe how your scene partners respond with openness, curiosity, and play.
Practice these things, and reach out if you have questions at dan@dancallaway.com. Or click on “work with me” to find out how you can, well, work with me.
I’m all about getting you simple tools that make sense and work fast so that you can tell the stories you want to with joy, freedom and love, feel confident and excited at auditions, and contribute beautiful and satisfying work in whatever room you collaborate.
Because remember there is objectively, empirically, and scientifically only one you, and folks need to hear the story only you can sing. Now go sing. Bye. ?
I’m going to tell you the reasons folks you think are demonstrably average seem to work all the time.
And I’m also going to tell you how this information will make your auditions and overall creative expression more successful.
One time I was doing a show, and one of the leads was offensively average. Company members noticed. Crew noticed. I definitely noticed.
Management were delighted with them.
To seal the deal, this artist spoke matter of factly about their inherent belonging in the principal player echelons. (I think this was more of an anxiety thing than arrogance to be fair.)
I was an ensemble member, and (funny enough after just criticizing what this person said out loud), I thought I should be playing a principal role, too.
I worked with an acting coach at the time who saw the show, and I’ll never forget what she said:
“They stood for their work.”
What do you mean? They stood for their work?
It meant this:
They weren’t asking for anybody’s permission; they owned their performance, and there wasn’t any whiff of a question in the air whether or not they should be wearing those costumes and singing those songs.
Dammit.
This lights up a major lie that performers tell themselves. Wreaks havoc in general life, too: The Just World Belief.
Good things mean good outcomes. Bad = bad. And the world should be fair.
Extensive studies on both combat veterans and abuse survivors show that holding to this belief increases and prolongs PTSD symptoms.
Now please think about one actor acquaintance who carries this just world belief into every audition room.
Every table of deciders now holds the weight of universal justice in their hands, and with every heartbreaking opportunity, more evidence piles up with how unfair the world is.
The truth is — auditioning is not (and can’t) be a meritocracy. It’s decided by humans, and we are notoriously fickle. And it’s not a fair process.
I remember not booking a tour of Les Miserables and crying on my therapist’s couch because it was a dream of mine,
so I was sad.
But there was also a part of me that believed it should be my turn, and I deserved to get picked.
My advice — question this belief.
And notice the things in your life that work out well, when the odds skew ever in your favor.
We get so focused on how life has slighted us, we forget to notice that we can see, hear, walk, and have food to eat.
Dang, I still remember the time a cop just let me go in North Hollywood for talking on my Blackberry without a hands free contraption. She even said, “I don’t know why I’m doing this. These phones make me so mad.”
The next reason for all this audition mayhem is a very human thing that no one’s ever going to change — Middle School.
I’ll explain.
You’ve written a play, and you need folks. Who do you think of first? Your friends, people you KNOW.
If you have to look outside your familiar circle for roles or production support, what do you do? You ask your friends if they know somebody.
What are you looking for?
Someone who’s competent, kind, detail oriented and lives for stage management.
Can you imagine if you were interviewing a company manager, and the candidate said:
?? Can you give me a chance to solve your problem? I mean, I don’t know how I’ll solve it, but just pick me?
or
? Problem? I don’t see a problem here. And I’m amazing, so yeah, here I am. (Sits back and puts shod feet on desk.)
OR
? Hey there. I get it — I see your problem. I’ve solved a lot of these before, and here’s how I can help you solve yours.
Who are you gonna sling a contract at that second and pray they’re available?
Yet actors often bring in versions 1 and 2 into rooms and then get frustrated that their results are crap.
It’s human to want people to pick you for stuff. We want to be chosen. It’s a natural and good desire. When my wife puts her hand on my back and says, “I love you,” I mean, that’s the stuff.
But if we’re talking about getting picked for shows, you need do 1 of 2 things:
Create positive emotional associations to yourself,
OR
pick yourself.
Then create positive emotional associations to yourself. Because no matter how much you pick yourself, if you’re an asshole, no one will want to be in the trenches with you.
If this feels middle school, it’s because it is — because guess what middle schools are full of? People, just younger with under-developed prefrontal cortices.
This bears out in many rehearsal halls, too.
So what can you DO about this? How can you make your auditions and creative life more successful?
First, we are going to define a successful audition:
A successful audition means you prepare well, share the work with artistry, skill, and an open heart, and accomplish the goal you set for yourself in that meeting. It’s a clear preview of how you’d solve a casting problem, and it’s also a glimpse into the straightforward joy it will be to work with you.
That’s it. There’s no outcome component. You’re not going to get the job. Most of the jobs, we don’t get, so dispose of the lie that you have any direct control whatsoever over manipulating a casting decider into picking you.
For more on this, and to really set yourself free, read Audition Psych 101 by Michael Kostroff.
So, to have this successful audition, do this:
Number one, the folks you’re pissed about? Stop paying attention to them. They have nothing to do with you except what you can learn from them.
Number 2, this one’s real simple, but people discount it because it’s not shiny enough.
PREPARE THE SHIT OUT OF IT — and I mean prepare the shit out of it. This means that although you are holding your papers, you’re off book. You have your pitches, rhythms and lyrics in your body because you’ve taken the time to do it.
You understand this person you’re being on a cellular, empathetic, and experiential level.
Confidence only comes from competence, and that comes from your current skill level plus PREP.
And put yourself in the table people’s shoes — how do you feel when the person comes in PREPPED and READY? Exactly — good.
And go ahead and let this boost your ego. If you know you work harder than other folks, let that fuel you. Know that it will pay off because it has to in some way.
The same way that you don’t look for completely fair and equal measures based on your input and output, you can also know that there’s still cause-and-effect in the world.
If you put in the work, if you give away incredible work in the audition room, you’re going to get results. It can only have a compound interest.
If you go in and share fantastic skill with someone who makes casting decisions, and that particular project isn’t a fit for you, you’ve built up artistic goodwill with that decider. It’s just human that they’ll want to pay you back for your investment with them with more opportunities for future projects.
Ego is like butter, salt, heat, and sugar — a little conscious and measured addition in your recipe goes a long way.
Number 2A is also important, and that’s this: Be good.
Have a sober and humble estimation of your skills.
Video yourself. Get a good ears on your voice. Get a wise, incisive and kind acting coach on your storytelling.
What are your blind spots? What are your blocks?
Get in there and work on them and become the electric malleable and expressive performer that you yourself can trust to tell a story with honesty and power. If you know, you can do that, imagine the difference that will make when you walk into a room to share your solution to a casting problem.
And Number 3 —
Have something rich and meaningful going on in your life besides this audition.
Your performing career needs to thrive inside a rich and meaningful life. What do you have going on that gives life to you in life to those around you?
Sit down and write down what’s truly most important to you. Who are your people? Who do you love and who loves you?
And this is dramatic, but effective, and let’s face it, we’re dramatic. When you’re on your deathbed, is this audition or this show opportunity going to be the thing you’re thinking about?
If you’re at an appointment and you know that you have a writers’ meeting later that day on the project that you’ve put together or you’re going to meet up with that friend you haven’t seen in a long time, it’ll set you free to put things in context, and you won’t put value on things that you don’t need to put value on.
What is valuable is your preparation and showing up with excellence so that you prove to yourself that you’re a skilled and generous performer, who has a rich depth of artistry to bring to the table.
So, back to those folks booking all those jobs who clearly don’t deserve it and fill you with indignation. Here are some possibilities to weigh:
Maybe they’re better than you think they are. And maybe just because you understand what a good performance entails doesn’t mean that you’re delivering that yourself. I remember when I realized the gap between my intellectual understanding of the thing and my actual physical execution of that same thing. Ouch. And thank God.
Notice what’s in their energy. It might just be bravado, but there’s something in their energy that communicates “I don’t need this.” They’re not thirsty for connection at the party.
And remember, you don’t know their life. You’re judging a performance aesthetic and skill set, and you’re attaching meaning to their character. Stop doing that. Number one, it’s not your business, and number two, it’s a waste of your time while you could be working a messa di voce exercise to get your head and chest voice making terrific friends.
Comes back to work my acting coach Elizabeth said that time.
You’ve got to stand for yourself, and I’m convinced that having the skill, competence, and preparation underneath you is what will give you a substantial foundation that you can plant your feet on. Do that over and over, and great results will show up in your audition in creative life.
So get in there and do the work. There’s only one you, and folks need to hear the story on the you can sing. Now go sing.
Did you ever have the acting teacher who kept poking until you cried?
Somewhere at the Bogfart’s School of Acting Teacher Witchcraft and Gizzardry, there’s a class:
“How to Make Your Pupils Weep So You Can Validate Your Ego and Tell Yourself You Facilitated a Breakthrough.”
Listed as FORCEDSOB 2937-AB in the catalog.
There’s a lie behind this manipulative pursuit, and that porky is this:
If you really feel it, the audience will, too/love you/think you’re great, and you’ll be a real actor.
I mean, maybe.
But storytelling via pretending to be someone else has more nuance than that.
And please review your own history as an audience member. Survey the times you witnessed an actor really feeling things. What was that like for you?
The most generous thought I may have in such a situation is to say, “Wow, they’re really feeling things.”
Yeah, nobody cares.
On the flip of this, have you ever performed a thing of any kind, felt a little struggle bus about it, experienced frustration, and got mad that things didn’t go according to your plan — only to hear feedback later that what you did really moved them?
That’s happened to me several times, and the fact that my own experience of the event was such a poor barometer really frustrated me.
I was frustrated because my MO was jacked; I was trying to engineer maximum audience adoration rather than do satisfying work and tell an honest, excellent story.
And people can smell that shipoopie.
If you’re singing “Still Hurting” from The Last Five Years, and you’re all “Better act brokenhearted now,” you’re about to be a caricature of Sadness from Inside Out, only not endearing.
And here’s a big reason for that.
Emotion is a result of a whole cascade of thoughts, hormonal interactions, and decisions. It’s not the present tense EVENT.
When you focus on portraying a feeling, you’re way behind the actual narrative.
It’s the same as singers being told to “get it forward.” Resonance, like emotions is a result, and if you try to make it the target, you’re a nanosecond behind what’s really happening. I’ll have to write about that.
This is what I mean.
I’m writing this to you. It’s 5:57am, and I’m in the FLOW.
I hear, “DADDDDYYYY! I NEEEEED YOOOOOUUUU!” above me where the boys’ bedroom is, Jude’s daily rooster call.
I feel
jarred from my focused state.
sweet in my heart because he’s cute as all get out.
annoyed that I have to stop work because every morning I think I can complete something before they wake up, and every morning I’m wrong.
I walk upstairs to their bedroom and feel
Grateful for their sweet selves.
Deeply entertained by whatever Jude’s hide-under-the-covers surprise morning greeting will be. (Today it was his signature ba-da-bing ba-da-boom. It’s hilarious.)
anxious that I won’t be able to get my checks checked on my checklist this morning.
guilty that I care so much about my checklist.
anxious again that I’m not investing enough quality time with them and forebodingly sad imagining the day when they’re older and won’t be so eager to play knights with plastic swords with Daddy.
And that’s just the top layer.
This is why when Melissa asks me, “What are you thinking about?” I’m like, you mean now or 3 seconds ago?
The point is — I don’t even KNOW what feelings are going to pulse through me. I do things. I have thoughts about them. I tell stories to myself about what’s happening, and boom, emotions.
If I train myself to open my heart and do this while being watched by a room full of folks, somehow that becomes an artful and healing thing. How terrific.
But if I’m like, “Okay, time to act nurturing and agitated at once,” I’m already outside myself trying to shellack an emotional quality on my body, and there’s no way I can be inside the story or behind my own eyeballs.
So remember — emotions will always come. That’s what they do.
Just get clear on who’s who and what’s what. Play pretend, have fun, and be surprised by what happens.
It works, I promise. No demonstrative crying required.
When Noah was 1, we took a trip to see his Uncle Rob in Albany.
Here’s little collage from that trip.
We were playing on the living room floor one day, and we opened the front door for some sunshine. I noticed the glass storm door wasn’t fastened all the way, and a gentle gut impulse said, “might be a good idea to close that.”
My brain countered, “I’m sure it’s fine. Besides, that would require you lift your ENTIRE person off of this soft carpet.”
Two minutes later, Noah decided to get some vitamin D near the door and leaned against the glass. Poor bug didn’t expect the door to MOVE, and before I could catch him, he was nose-down on the front step.
I felt terrible for not acting on that simple prompt just to click the door latch.
I can’t tell you how many times my guts have sent up a warning flare that I ignored. And every time, I could track back to the moment when the gentle nudge bubbled up followed by the immediate rationalization not to act on it.
Scientists have been learning all kinds of mind-blowing things about our gut-brain, the enteric nervous system.
And you’ve got your own list of gut-negation palm-to-forehead moments. While you don’t have to understand all the science, you and I both know all kinds of information comes from the most surprising corners of our bodies.
This is terrific news for theatre singers.
Here’s why.
When you know your gut has truth to tell, you can turn up your receiver volume when you craft a song.
You understand that your body can teach you to make any sound.
And it’s silly easy. Here’s how you do it.
Take a phrase from your song. Let’s use “My Funny Valentine” by Rodgers and Hart.
We’ll use the lyric, “Yet, you’re my favorite work of art.”
Step 1: Just say the lyric.
Like you’re a robot. Let the meaning and the image occur to you.
I saw a marble statue and remembered my voice teacher Cathy sang this at a wedding many years ago.
And then I remembered a joke that says, “How many cabaret singers does it take to sing ‘My Funny Valentine’? Apparently, all of them.”
See? all kinds of stuff can generate from one phrase. “Oh the tricks your mind can play.”
Step 2: Say it again.
“Yet, you’re my favorite work of art.” And let more images come. Open your heart to your personal connection to the images.
Now I think about the times I look over at Melissa in the kitchen when we’re in the trenches, and she just looks beautiful. It’s usually when she declares she’s in the depths of frumptastic, but there’ll be a smile line on her face or a little sarcastic aside she’ll say, and I’m grateful we get to share our life.
On another day, something else might come up. Biscuits. Or the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Notice these images may or may not be logically related to the lyric.
Step 3: Notice where your body lights up when you say the lyric and see the things.
You’ll feel emotional energy well up somewhere. It’s often subtle, so tune in. Dial your attention to where your body experiences “you’re my favorite work of art.”
Right now, I’m cozy in my solar plexus, and my throat gets an excited twinge.
Step 4: Now just witness that place with the energy, and sing the phrase while you look at it.
You’ll get key information about your personal relationship to the lyric, and you’ll notice how your body has a clear opinion on how to sound that phrase.
Your head brain will be a little frustrated, too, because the knowledge lives deeper down, and it can’t put it in a spreadsheet.
As you do this work, the phrases become part of you, so when you sing them, they’re arising from images emanating from your own psyche.
And here’s the secret sauce to this whole thing.
You have to open yourself to all the crazy dream-scapey things your subconscious mind tosses up. Just like in life.
You may say, “Yet, you’re my favorite work of art,” and you remember your dad telling you to stop using the front counter railings at the Mt. Airy Burger King as parallel bars when you were in 3rd grade. Brains are like that.
Sometimes you feel blindsided, and you can handle it. You’re a courageous storyteller, and you chose to stand on stages and tell the truth.
And guess what — when you open yourself up to that kind of input rather than trying to traffic-direct every image you meticulously crafted in your homework, you let yourself be a human.
Your brain recognizes that you’re humaning, and you can relax and let the story flow the way it wants to that time. It’ll be different the next.
And who knows — maybe you’ll clear up your gut-brain highway so much, you’ll readily respond when your wise body tells you to close the storm door all the way.
But your consciousness well is going to offer up buckets overflowing with images singular to you, because after all — there is only one you, and folks need to hear the story only you can sing.
The Actual Way to Audition for Musicals and Stand Out from the Confusion Crowd
I had a shoot-myself-in-the-character-shoe habit back in my busy audition days.
I hid.
I mean, I was physically there. In the room. But I was playing a high-level game of hide and seek.
Only the table people didn’t know.
They thought I was coming in to share my ideas and preparation for a role. Silly.
Nope. Not my purpose.
I wanted to show a teeny facet of my skill set that I felt comfortable about. And then I wanted some wise person shuffling resumes to notice the ember of performance genius smoldering inside me just waiting them to get the bellows and provide the oxygen.
Like Pinocchio’s Blue Fairy, they’d say, “You know, you’re really terrific. The world needs what you have. We’re going to give you a lead role in our show because you’re so good. And when we do that, you’ll finally know that you’re a real boy.”
It never happened that way.
I mean, auditions led to roles, and I worked, but I lost count of the times my soul played possum in the audition room.
I obscured my energy. I didn’t share a clear point of view. I didn’t know what my point of view was.
Performers have this problem. Often, what draws us to the stage is people clapping for us. This was a big magnet for me.
We get the back pats, and so we set out to get more of them.
I did this in life too, always assessing what was going to garner approval from the big people around me. I wanted connection and support, so I paid attention to what got me that.
So, in the audition room in front of a table full of folks you probably don’t know and who aren’t there to develop a deep friendship, the cues for how to get the ‘at-a-boys are limited.
But I still looked.
I mean, I was still trying to figure out how to order in a NY Diner without losing my mind. Making integrated choices about a character’s psychological world was going to be a few years off.
But the problem was that I believed one central falsehood:
It was about me.
I mean, yes, my self-person was the one coming in the room singing the songs, but that’s not what the casting folk were concerned with.
They wanted to know if the B-flat on “Maria” was going wrong because I was sick or because my technique fell apart under pressure.
But it wasn’t about my eternal soul.
It was a simple question: Can this guy do the things we need in this show, and does he seem like a reasonable human to work with? Add to that all the other sausage making that goes into getting a show on a stage, and you see real quick that you’re the last thing they’re thinking about.
It’s liberating info.
And once I had a chance to see a few casting processes from behind the table, it became clear how fleeting an actor’s time in a room is.
Again, this was liberating.
Trying to guess what someone wants is a road to crazy town. In the audition room and in your relationships.
I mean, if you know your friend loves Magnolia Cupcakes, and it’s their birthday, you know what to do.
But trying to crack the code so you can win the approval prize is never a great setup. It tells the one you’re trying to please, “You’re above me, and you control my wellbeing.”
Nobody wants to be in charge of that.
The other thing this does? It makes what you’re offering cloudy. Instead of a clear proposal, you’re wasting time with the equivalent of, “It doesn’t matter to me. What do you wanna do?”
Instead you can take the risk to say, “Let’s go for Thai.”
They maybe looking for Ethiopian that day, but at least you made a bid. And who knows? Maybe they hadn’t considered how delicious a Panang curry might taste.
And think about what your brain does when someone says, “Oh, I’m fine with whatever.”
You’re immediately annoyed at the cognitive load you have to take on.
So, when you go into an audition, answer a question. Have an opinion. And prepare the hell out of demonstrating how you’d solve the problem.
Michael Kostroff says, “Always take care of them. Never ask them to take care of you.”
That sums it up.
Make your offer clear. If you’re confused, they will be, too, and as a smart marketing person said a long time ago (and like it or not, if you’re auditioning, you’re marketing) “a confused mind always says no.”
