Last Saturday, July 25, 2009, We drove to Seattle for an Open Audition. If you know our family, you know that auditioning isn't new to us....over the years we have all presented our talents several times in many different situations. Even Jim, who is not a stage performer, attended baseball try-outs several times in his past, which were quite successful for him.
Traveling to Seattle with me were our daughter Maria, age 26, Broadway-type singer and previously trained in acting and commercial work; and James, age 17, a devoted musician and singer being guided by David Archuleta’s vocal coach. They are our youngest daughter and youngest son; we have two other daughters and two other sons in other parts of the country at present. (Six children aged 30-17, awesome people.)
We learned of this audition opportunity from on-line info seen by Maria. The information regarding this audition sounded interesting--a Seattle acting school would be choosing a team of performers to take to a convention in Los Angeles. At the convention would be agents, producers, and record label reps. This convention is called "iPOP" (International Presentation of Performers). It is held every 6 months and is sponsored by John Robert Powers Modeling and Acting Academy (JRP). JRP seems to be a franchised school which is also located in different regions throughout the USA, I really don’t know anything about it yet.
My mind was open to possibilities during the drive up to Seattle, and having dabbled a bit in the entertainment world when we lived in Las Vegas years ago, I was already aware of flaky practices and schemes in the Industry. Luckily, I ended up avoiding most of them and had wonderful learning and performing times in Las Vegas. I was curious to see which way this iPOP audition went—legitimate or not. Either way I knew that auditioning is always a great experience, generally a learning time, and was sure we would all learn “something” from the day. Here is a link to the iPOP convention, http://www.ipopconvention.com/ (copy/paste the URL if the link doesn’t work)
We arrived in downtown Seattle in just under two hours, not too bad traffic-wise. Living in a small town, nearly equidistant from both Seattle and Portland, we are used to the drive, though it’s not my favorite activity. It was easy to locate the large Macy’s department store and a nearby parking garage. The audition was held in a large, beautifully appointed meeting room on the Third floor of the building. Side note—we had never had occasion to enter the downtown, multi-floored Macy’s store before this day and the three of us drank in our classy surroundings like….well…like people from a small town. It was also impressive to note that the Macy’s employees were excessively cheerful and helpful, a contrast from the busy mall-employed Macy’s personnel we are used to near our hometown.
The JRP presentation and those presenting it were much more down-to-earth than I anticipated. Of course there was exciting build-up while waiting for the program to begin---intense bass-driven music and a large screen looping a DVD showing cuts of movies and print ads from previous iPOP-attending agents. We were given a packet of information regarding iPOP, an (impressive) list of “typically” attending agencies, and a very up-front list of the schedule of events and a break-down of the cost for the convention.
Then the Vice-president of the national convention spoke to us. She, apparently, doesn’t attend all regional auditions but tries to attend the Seattle ones because the Seattle JRP performers “do really well at each convention”. She was very specific regarding what they were looking for at the audition as regards the level of skill and confidence in a performer. That interested me; if they were only trying to make money surely they would determine “everyone” to be talented--more people, hence, more money intake.
The reason that JRP is so selective, it turns out, is because that makes the convention a strong draw for legitimate agencies. The agents like to attend iPOP because they know that all the performers that come there are pre-screened, trained and ready to start working immediately. Makes sense.
I felt a bit apprehensive as I looked around the room and also watched the DVD. Auditioners and performers alike all seemed to be aged 4-to-late 20s. Yes, you guessed it, I am a “baby boomer”, several decades older than 25. Oh well, if I couldn’t audition, at least I knew that Maria and James would have a good experience being able to audition. Then, I noted that on the entry forms were places to list the JRP classes we had attended. We had attended none. Hmmm, I hoped we hadn’t driven all this way for nothing.
Our entry numbers were called and we spoke first with the JRP director briefly. He was very friendly and reassured us that, Yes, this was an open audition, we didn’t need to be affiliated with JRP or their classes; and Yes, iPOP does have a competitive division for adults as well as children.
We were passed on to one of the two judging stations. I was pleased to note that we were headed towards the national VP guest judge for our auditions. She took us one by one, and filmed each audition. We each presented the dialogue of a commercial that we had previously memorized, and then each sang part of a song we had chosen; there was no background music. A nerve-racking experience for some; I was more jittery giving my commercial about the benefits of Panasonic Toughbook 30 than I planned on. But, having performed for the last decade as a singer with a big swing band I was happily in my element singing to the judge.
James and Maria both delivered their parts very well. Our judge was warm, and reassuring and said that both James and Maria would be very marketable at the convention. She noted that James especially was at a “perfect age” for this, that he had the looks, intelligence (she had asked his GPA), and a gifted singing voice, and most guys his age weren’t interested in performing because of involvement in sports and other activities.
She also praised my performance, but said that she needed to do some checking on the Convention situation regarding me. She said that most of the agents there were interested in children and teens, though there were some groups looking for adult talent. She said that it didn’t make sense for me to go through the expense and stress of being part of the JRP team if there were not going to be many agencies at the convention to see me.
They gave no definite acceptances or rejections at that moment. We were told we would get a phone call the next day after they all reviewed our audition tapes. I was feeling happy with the experience, I had just enjoyed singing. Many of you out there know I am just coming out of a medical situation which was very traumatic for me, not being able to sing at all for more than a year due to vocal chord paralysis. Plus, I knew that I definitely did not fit in the “young adult” age category for the audition that day so if it didn’t work out for me I was okay. It would be fun to see how things turned out for James and Maria.
