Some personal recommendations (general information) FOR ROCKY STUDENTS

I would recommend not doing any of the following: --DO NOT pick from musicals you’ve already done pieces from in high school --For example, I didn’t do anything from Seussical ever because freshman year I used “Notice Me, Horton” as my audition song and I didn’t want Davey to think I only knew like 4 musicals. --DO NOT pick from musicals we’ve already done as a department. (We’ve only done like six so not a big deal.) --This seems pretty dang obvious. Don’t be busting out with “I Know Things Now” from Into the Woods because Kara absolutely tore the house down and it’s inevitable that people who were in it/saw it will compare you to her. Same applies to guys. Don’t be trying “Don’t Walk Away” because Chris Blaser did that literally only last year and had 8 weeks of rehearsal to nail it. It’s a poor choice. --DO NOT pick songs that have already been done recently and well (or recently and badly) in the department. --Ask around a bit for this one, but a couple examples are “Cell Block Tango” which made it to finals at State in 2012 and was a really genuinely good piece, due to the insane amount of hard work the performers put into it. Also, “Masquerade,” which is maybe the worst piece to grace the Rocky stage, at the fault of a lot of people, myself included. You do not want to be compared to the good, but you also do not want to bring up memories of the bad. --DO NOT pick really recent musicals. -- Kinky Boots won the Tony in 2013 and I heard someone the other day say they’re taking it to competition. Why. Why in the world, when everyone is still talking about a musical, when the original cast album is fresh in everyone’s hearts, would you EVER pick a Tony winner from last year. I really can’t tell you what to do but for the love of everything, if you listen to one thing I say—DO NOT do this please. It leads to comparisons from the original freaking cast which is so much worse than comparisons to Rocky students. However, I am not going to tell you not to do really well known musicals, all right? I’ve heard/been in pieces from Les Miserables, Mamma Mia, Phantom of the Opera, and Wicked. All I am going to say is you either have to do it perfectly or you have to do it differently. You cannot, I repeat, CAN NOT attempt Wicked in the exact same way as Idina. Do or do not, there is no try, and you have to make dang sure that you are perfection. Here are some pieces or ideas that I would recommend for high school: -- DO look at Tony winning and nominated scores… just not recent ones, necessarily. If you find out that Kander & Ebb each have three Tonys to their name, maybe look at some of the musicals they did. (I’ll go into this more later.) A super easy way to find this is go to the Wikipedia page called Tony Award for Best Original Score and look at the bottom part of the article, where it names the multiple Tony winners. (Sondheim takes the cake with 6.) --DO look at your favorite musicals and find out what else the composer has written. --Example: My favorite musical was, for a long time, “Legally Blonde: the Musical.” Come to find out, the composer also wrote “Heathers: the Musical” which is fabulous and just completed its Off-Broadway run.) --DO look at performers you like. --If you liked Laura Benanti in Gypsy, look for other plays she’s done and go from there. --DO look at Off-Broadway. -- The Last Five Years, Heathers, and bare: a pop opera are all amazing. --DO look at bad musicals. --People will stay away from things like Merrily We Roll Along because they were poorly received but the song “Old Friends” is an incredible trio that also works as a swell audition song. While other people are scrambling not to do a “well-known” musical, you’ve got your really good song from a really crappy musical all set. Also, just because a musical looks really dumb and bad doesn’t mean you should overlook it. (A perfect example is Shrek.) --DO look at older musicals. -- If you’ve heard of an older musical they obviously have some staying power and more than likely it’s due to their awesome score. (But sometimes not. Like Oklahoma.)