Hair

So today marks our official day of going to an open call audition on Broadway. Whit and I got up at 6am and got ready for the day to commute to Manhattan to wait in line for auditions for the musical "Hair" on Broadway. We arrived there a little before 7:30am and could not believe that hundreds of people had already been there. I mean, it looked like we were standing in line getting ready to audition for American Idol. People were camped out on the sidewalks of NYC with sleeping bags, pillows, and warm coffee from Starbucks. The line followed along some buildings, crossed a street and wrapped around an entire building!!!! We found out later that the first couple of people in line had been there since 1am! Apparently, people are obsessed with the musical Hair and they haven't had open calls in awhile. While we waited in line for 3 hours - we talked to guy next to us who has been auditioning for a year and a half and said that he has never seen an audition this packed. That made us feel a lot better. We estimated that there was at least 1200 people there - and they were... we're pretty sure... non-union/non equity. We ran into our colleague Gabe Violett who was in "Spring Awakening" on Broadway - he was there for a friend. Since he's apart of equity - he already auditioned with an appointment = lucky duck!!! Also, I saw a long time friend Adam Cerny who had been in "A Chorus Line" with me back in 2004 at Countryside Community Theater in Iowa. It was crazy to see him after 6 years and he was way way back in the line.
    After standing in line for about a half an hour - our feet started to freeze. The short story of it all is that we waited in line for 3 hours and were told that they were done taking appointments and that if we wanted to, we could sign up for the alternate list in case other people didn't show up. How the system works - you wait in line and then when 9am roles around, they put your name on a sheet of paper and tell you to come back at a certain time to audition and they give you a number. Well, by the time hundreds of people got through, the list of times were all taken - so they made an alternate list. But since there were still about 200 - 300 people still in front of us when they told us that - we decided to just give them our headshots and resumes and leave. By that point... we could barely walk because we no longer could feel our feet. As crazy as all of that sounds, we oddly came away feeling somewhat accomplished because we now know that the audition coming up for "South Pacific" we will have to be there no later than like 4am. Which is next week - so we'll keep you updated with how that goes...

Whitney and I wore our long john underwear - and this is what happened when she took hers off:)