The­atre De­part­ment Host­ing On­line Au­di­tions for the First Time

MISHAWAKA--The Bethel The­atre De­part­ment is hav­ing video sub­mis­sion au­di­tions for the new plays, FLUX and Obelisk, writ­ten by a stu­dent play­wright, Au­tumn Owens. The au­di­tions are due Mon­day, Jan. 18, by mid­night for any­one want­ing to turn in a last-minute au­di­tion tape.  

What the au­di­tion calls for is fill­ing out a Form­stack, which has all the in­for­ma­tion that would ap­pear on an au­di­tion sheet if they were to be in per­son, in­clud­ing your name, height, times you are not avail­able, and what your pre­ferred role is in the play. And since it is a new play, the the­atre de­part­ment pro­vided copies of the two new plays to be read if you so de­sired be­fore au­di­tion­ing to see what you would pre­fer to try out for.  

There are two op­tions prospec­tive cast­ings have when turn­ing in a video sub­mis­sion: they can ei­ther pro­vide a YouTube link or up­load the file of the video di­rectly to the form. In the video, the per­son au­di­tion­ing must per­form two con­trast­ing mono­logues which are no longer than two min­utes. For the rest of the form, they can pro­vide the­atre ex­pe­ri­ences or a re­sume for the di­rec­tor to pe­ruse. The di­rec­tor for this show is Der­rick Null, one of Bethel’s ad­junct pro­fes­sors.  

In ad­di­tion to the on­line au­di­tion­ing, Grace Cole, the ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant for the The­atre De­part­ment, said the shows will be livestreamed on­line as well, with a lim­ited in-per­son au­di­ence.  

“We’re plan­ning to do a com­bi­na­tion of livestream­ing and in per­son [seat­ing] up­stairs with seats so­cially dis­tanced,” Cole said.  

This means that this show will be in the Chapel au­di­to­rium. She says she is ex­cited to have shows on the stage again. Cole said this process of seat­ing and on­line au­di­tions might also hap­pen for fu­ture shows. 

An­drew Cora, a the­atre ma­jor, said the biggest chal­lenge for this will be the fact that it has never been done be­fore for an au­di­tion process at Bethel, but he says this is a great ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause this is how some au­di­tions are done in the act­ing world. For some open calls, which An­drew has been a part of, use video au­di­tions. This is an im­por­tant skill to learn for im­ple­ment­ing in the fu­ture, as it can be dif­fi­cult to craft a video sub­mis­sion of one­self in an au­di­tion mind­set.  

One thing Cora ap­pre­ci­ates is that this keeps many per­form­ers safe and pro­tects peo­ple with health is­sues by en­abling them to au­di­tion from their homes or dorms. It stays the risk of trans­mit­ting any dis­eases, COVID-19 or oth­er­wise.  

This is a novel ex­pe­ri­ence that the The­atre De­part­ment is work­ing around. They are con­tin­u­ing to adapt, cre­at­ing a bet­ter learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment for their stu­dents and mak­ing it a safer space to per­form.