Sweet rejection: auditioning at Kenyon
Matt Crowley
Issue date: 9/11/08 Section: A&E
Jamal Jordan '12 was no stranger to the audition process when he came to Kenyon in August. He had been involved heavily in a theater program, Mosaic Youth Theater, in his hometown of Detroit for a number of years and had auditioned for a variety of shows.
At Kenyon, though, auditioning was not quite what he had expected.
"It was the first week I was here," said Jordan, "and I wasn't really prepared for an audition."
When he found out that he was not cast, the stress of being in a new place, away from family and old friends, made the rejection particularly hard to deal with.
After a few days, however, Jordan was feeling a bit better about the situation. He found support from classmates and Kenyon theater veterans, and this sense of community softened the blow.
"I realized that people here take theater very seriously but are not cutthroat about it," said Jordan.
In no way discouraged from further auditioning, Jordan intends to pursue theater at Kenyon and is considering a drama major.
Jordan is not the only student to be rebuffed from an organization in the past few weeks. Kenyon College boasts over 120 student organizations, including six a cappella ensembles and more than a dozen theatrical groups. Many of these groups hold open auditions.
With such a large number of groups, it is inevitable that many people will not get a spot in the organization they want. For incoming students, the auditioning process may be entirely new, and certainly Kenyon's unique version of it may be different from anything they have encountered before.
Jack McKean '12 certainly found this to be the case. Though theatrically experienced, he, too, found the College's audition process to be unusual. In his audition for this year's first faculty-directed show, Three Penny Opera, which he named as his scariest audition here so far, he was surprised to be expected to sing while everyone else who was trying out looked on.
"That really threw me for a whirl-I'd never done that before, auditioning in front of everybody," he said.
At Kenyon, though, auditioning was not quite what he had expected.
"It was the first week I was here," said Jordan, "and I wasn't really prepared for an audition."
When he found out that he was not cast, the stress of being in a new place, away from family and old friends, made the rejection particularly hard to deal with.
After a few days, however, Jordan was feeling a bit better about the situation. He found support from classmates and Kenyon theater veterans, and this sense of community softened the blow.
"I realized that people here take theater very seriously but are not cutthroat about it," said Jordan.
In no way discouraged from further auditioning, Jordan intends to pursue theater at Kenyon and is considering a drama major.
Jordan is not the only student to be rebuffed from an organization in the past few weeks. Kenyon College boasts over 120 student organizations, including six a cappella ensembles and more than a dozen theatrical groups. Many of these groups hold open auditions.
With such a large number of groups, it is inevitable that many people will not get a spot in the organization they want. For incoming students, the auditioning process may be entirely new, and certainly Kenyon's unique version of it may be different from anything they have encountered before.
Jack McKean '12 certainly found this to be the case. Though theatrically experienced, he, too, found the College's audition process to be unusual. In his audition for this year's first faculty-directed show, Three Penny Opera, which he named as his scariest audition here so far, he was surprised to be expected to sing while everyone else who was trying out looked on.
"That really threw me for a whirl-I'd never done that before, auditioning in front of everybody," he said.
Be the first to comment on this story