Personal Narrative: The Play The Music Man

During my junior year, all high school students of the Coachella Valley were given the opportunity to audition for the All Coachella Valley Honor Band, with a guest conductor H. Robert Reynolds. This was a significant educational opportunity I took advantage of. The audition consisted of a couple of scales, and excerpts from the music that was going to be performed on the day of the concert. When the day came I sat in front of the judge with my music and clarinet, where my nerves began to rise. Before I began to play my heart began to pound along with my hands beginning to sweat. Throughout my audition I had a few mistakes,but I stayed persistent and completed my audition. After I finished my audition, the judge said I had done great, I was

I auditioned for my school's play Harvey freshman year. I worked intensively on my audition. Anticipation flooded my body when I heard the cast list was posted in auditorium days after the auditions. Immediately after my last period class, I dashed to the auditorium to look at the list and see what part I got. I scrutinized the list multiple times and didn't see my name. I felt incredible sadness, disappointment and embarrassment, but figured the director decided this because I was a freshman and did not know the school very well, and the upperclassmen were more experienced and deserving than I. So, I accepted my failure and decided to try again next year.

"I’m so nervous,” I complained to my mom as we walked into the Waukesha Civic Theatre. “What if I’m not good enough. I haven’t even prepared that much!” It was a crisp September day and some leaves had already started changing color. On the way home from school my mom told me about a play that the theater puts on near us every year and thought I would be good for it. Since I had only heard about the audition that day, it gave me a few hours to pick my song and be prepared for whatever part they wanted me to read. The next song that came on the radio was the song “Edge of Glory” by Lady GaGa and because it was in my vocal range I thought it would be good for me. Little did I know that this audition would change my view of theater.

I had to get that audition, if I did I was in. Honor band always had at least one kid from our band in each section. All I had to do was get past Mr. Higgens. I had been stressing that whole week and now it was time. This year the clarinets would go before the saxophones. After everyone had played was when the audition sheets would be handed out. The clarinets played and it was clear who would be given a sheet and who would not. Then it was time for the saxophones, first chair went first as always, that meant I had less time to freak out. Before I knew it, it was my turn. I was just as nervous as I was last year, yes, I had improved but I still had an immense amount of self doubt. I pushed everything out of my mind and began. I got through smoothly, but of course it was hard to determine if I had done well since I was hard on myself. The rest of the saxophones played through and we all waited as our conductor jotted down notes. He picked up the honor sheets and began to pass them out. Only a couple of the clarinets were handed a sheet, he then turned to the saxophone section. He passed one to first chair, then there was a second in between that I swear lasted for hours, my heart seemed to drop but also was under attack at the same time. My mind went to chaos. “This is silly, I'm in sixth grade and stressing out over this?” “ Life will go on if I don't get it.” “ But if I don't I'll always remember.” “This stupid piece of

Fifth grade was the year, the year everyone at Oak Ridge Elementary School looked forward to. This was the year we got to ditch the recorder, and pick up a real instrument. A violin. As expected, we learned the basics; nothing more than the names of the parts of the instrument, and how to play the open strings. But ever since that day in 2011, I have been irrevocably in love with playing the violin.

The musical Hamilton took the world by storm when it was performed in 2015 on stage at the Richard Rogers theater in New York City. I had heard about it many times from my friends and I had been to many musicals, but I didn’t really have enough interest to check it out. All that changed when I saw Lin-Manuel Miranda and the entire broadway cast perform at the 2015 Grammy awards in March. After seeing the highly engaging and energetic cast singing and dancing about one of the lesser known founding fathers I thought, “Hey! This looks cool.” Now eight months later I have memorized every song and line of the entire musical. One of the many amazing things about Hamilton is that it’s all about a man who literally started from the bottom and fought his way to the top.

Orchestra has always been one of my favorite classes to go to during the day. After choosing to play the cello in middle school, I continued playing the instrument in high school. It was in this class that I had made most of my closest friends, many of whom I still love to this day. I also loved how the rich deep tones that came from playing each note of the cello and how they were able to blend with the rest of the orchestra. I knew from my freshmen year that I wanted to get into the top class, Chamber Orchestra. I thought that I would have done everything in my power to get into the class, however when the time came I could not even bring myself to audition.

The guy that had just walked out of the audition room right before me looked like he was taking out his trash or walking his dog. My mind started to race with hope-killing questions like “ How am I going to do this?” I walk into the classroom to see two judges sitting at a table. The first judge asked “Have you auditioned for the District Honor Band before?” I started to wonder if he could see the pools of sweat pouring from under the arms of my cheap button-up dress shirt.

The day after the Fall Play auditions my sophomore year, I went up to my drama teacher who also happened to be the Fall Play director at the time. I was curious and sad that I didn’t make the cast and if I’m being honest with myself, I was a bit humiliated and angry that I didn’t make it. In my mind it made sense that because I was in the play last year, I would automatically make it. However that was not the case. When I went up to my teacher, Mr. Boles, I asked as calmly as I could, “Mr. Boles, I just want to know what I did to not make cast.” I will never forget what he said to me. He turned to look at me, crossed his arms and said, “You weren’t good enough.” Plain and simple. Cut and dry. Just like that.

The auditions were in January of 2012. I did not know of the results of my performance, and neither did Mr. Carter. I began to put it off until for the rest of the day. I really did not know what to think. I believed that it was a successful audition, but my doubts had come into play, and the thought of it all started to just make me nervous. I mean, how could a child, who knew little about music, possibly accomplish such a

I came into my audition only auditioning for the ensemble, leaving the audition I ended up receiving the titular role of Pippin. There was also a dance audition, where we were asked to learn the choreography to All that Jazz from the musical Chicago, this was a challenging experience because I have had no professional dance training but I ended up doing very well and responding well to the choreographer and her teachings. This whole process helped me to develop my confidence and social skills. The auditions were the most like professional auditions I’ve ever attended, and therefore allowed me to better understand what the real musical theatre industry is like and give me a taste of what it would be like if I continued onto large productions. I was very lucky to receive the lead role, as I didn’t even audition for it, despite not seeing this at the time. There was a long break between auditions and the beginning of rehearsals, almost three weeks. This seemed like a very long period of time due to not being able to tell any of my fellow cast mates that I had received a

Working with music takes a certain type of patients. That’s why when I knew this project was present, I had the perfect person in mind because I worked so close with this person once before. So, I decided to gather my resources and get in contact with our family friend Dr. Snodgrass who is the superintendent of the Fort Osage R-1 School District and ask if I could receive her email so I could set up a facetime call with her and get this interview on the road. Her name Is Erica Gregory and she is a high school band teacher at Fort Osage located in Independence Missouri. The reasons I decided to interview her were simple. First, she was my star time teacher which meant she was my study hall teacher. As a freshman coming into high school and being placed in a study hall class

Ever since I was a young kid, I was extremely fond of music. Music was all around me: on the television, in school, at the store, and especially in the car. Not only did I love to listen to music, but I loved to play it as well. I am not saying I was any good at playing music, because I was not. But to a young child, hitting their hand on anything could be music, and to me it definitely was.

She tried to help me remember what to say and what to do, but I didn’t. And so I just went in front of the people and pretended to be the little girl that said and did the things that Mommy wanted me to say and do. And the people at the front of the room smiled. Didn’t they know that it’s rude to laugh at people when they don’t remember what to do? I got mad at them and stomped off back to where Mommy was waiting and demanded my ice cream, but she said that we had to wait until after auditions were over to see if I got the part. I didn’t want to wait because I didn't want to stay there when the mean people sat there and I didn’t want to have a part of anything that they

I think that as a whole choir we did really well. We made sure to sound like one whole choir and not a bunch of random voices singing random parts of the same song. We flowed through our songs smoothly and made sure not to go too fast but also not going too slow. I think that our best diction came from Obwisana. We made sure that the audience knew the words we were singing especially well because that song can definitely be difficult to understand. Even though some of the kids in the audience were making fun of how we clapped or how many times we sang Eh-Oh, I knew that we were impressing our choir teacher. In between songs when I looked around to the audience filled with parents, all I saw were happy faces and clapping hands. I surprisingly didn't see anyone asleep at this concert. I think that since we had such different tones for each song we thought it was going to be extremely hard to transition from a joyful, young