Last week, we had the “kickoff” for this year’s Glorious Christmas Nights show at West End Assembly of God (WEAG). That’s 
where they introduce this year’s show, and the leadership in various aspects of the production: the producer and director, choreographer, set and prop teams, and tech crew. Aspiring actors, singers, and dancers are invited to submit participation forms indicating what they’d like to do, and their expected level of commitment with respect to time.
This week is the real start: auditions. Folks who are interested in speaking and singing roles come to sing for the director and producer. If you’ve been in the show before, and had a singing role, you don’t have to do the singing part – they already know what you can do. I’ve sung in the show since ’03 (I think), so I don’t normally audition for singing. I have, on occasion, done the vocal auditions when I felt like that year’s show called for a style or type of song that I had not done before. Not this year. I did get there near the end of the vocal auditions, and heard some pretty good singing.
Lauren did her first GCN audition
After the vocal auditions wrap up, they have group-style reading of sections of the script. They pick out a couple of scenes that have a number of actors involved, and they (more or less) randomly pick out folks to read the parts. They’re looking for timing and interactions, and how people can throw themselves quickly into a character. It’s a lot of fun, and there were tons of laughs. This year’s show, “Sincerely Yours”, is pretty light-hearted and comedic (compared to “No Man’s Land” last year – which was set in WWI), so there were lots of opportunities for laughs.
Opening scene from "Sincerely Yours" in 2005
There are more auditions this weekend. Today, they have some dance workshops as preliminaries to the dance auditions. Make-up auditions will be held for adults that couldn’t make it last night, and also this weekend, they’ll hold the strength tests for aspiring flying angels. My daughter Lindsey has flown as an angel in the past, and it’s a little tougher than just hanging in the air in a special harness. It takes a lot of strength in your core, so angels have to prove they have the physical stuff to play the part successfully. There’s a lot more going on, with costumes, sets, and music – all of this will get rolliing in earnest in the next few weeks.
Casting will be announced in about 10 days, and then the rehearsals will begin. I’ll be posting about some of the other aspects of the show as we move toward December. Check out the show site: Glorious Christmas Nights
