We NEED more efficient ways to categorize audition material
by Ashley Griffin
In addition to being a contributing writer for OnStage Blog, Ashley Griffin has appeared on and off-Broadway, as well as in T.V. and film in New York, L.A., London, Stratford, and Chicago. As a writer, Ashley's work has been developed at New World Stages, Broadway's Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights Horizons, and more. Ashley has taught at NYU and is a member of AEA & the Dramatists Guild.
There’s been a hushed question whispered through audition halls and between performer friends at coffee shops growing ever more frequent especially in the last five to ten years…
“What exactly do they mean when they say they want a ‘Contemporary Musical Theater Song?’”
For those not in the know, musical theater performers have what’s called a “book” – literally a binder of music they’ve cultivated and perfected over the years that they bring to all auditions. It’s carefully broken up into “types” of audition songs, so they have something that fits the bill regardless of what they’re asked for.
Basically, those categories are as follows:*
*Note – there is obviously variance to this, and everyone has a slightly different definition of these categories. This is not meant to be definitive but merely to give an overview that most people can generally agree upon (and keep in mind, many of these overlap – for example, you can have a Golden Age Legit song, a Comic Belt song, etc.):
Golden Age/Traditional Musical Theater – Generally any musical theater from the 1920s to 1960s (with the exception of “Hair.”) This is mainly the category you’d pull from when auditioning for shows by the following writers:
Rodgers and Hart
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Lerner and Lowe
Block and Harnick
Cole Porter
Meredith Wilson
Etc.
Legit – Most often this refers to songs for women that fall in a high soprano range. You would use this for everything from auditioning for Luisa in “The Fantasticks” to the Bluebird track in “Shrek.” This, in special cases, can also include Operetta.
Belt – Most often this refers to songs for women that fall into a “belt” – the definition of this has changed over the years, but basically means when a woman is singing very high in her chest voice/mix (just think Idina Menzel.) But what qualified as a belt in the 1970s is not what qualifies as a belt today – so now these songs more often specifically refer to music that falls in a belt range written past the year 2000.
Comic – A funny song. (Though there is nothing worse than walking into an audition where the team looks at you and goes “make me laugh.”)
Dramatic – A not funny song.
Torch Song – I honestly have never been asked for a torch song in my entire career, yet it is still counted as a category. It is technically defined as a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love. “The Man That Got Away” is probably the ultimate example.
Disney – Anything you could use to audition for a Disney show, or a show based on an animated feature. Generally, any Disney song would fit the bill as, potentially would songs by composers who wrote for Disney such as the Sherman brothers and certain songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, etc.
Oldies – Pop songs pre about the 1970s…potentially good for shows such as “Little Shop of Horrors” or even “Hairspray.”
Pop/Rock – Generally songs written in the 1970s or later that were not written for musicals (this is KEY – Pop/Rock songs are, traditionally, songs that were not written, or never appeared in a musical.)
Contemporary Musical Theater – Traditionally this is any song written for a musical after about 1980.
But let’s take a closer look at those last two categories…
The definitions as I have listed them were accurate back around the early 2000s when there was a decently clear divide between Pop/Rock shows, and most new musicals – on the one hand, you had “Rent,” on the other you had work from brilliant up and comers like Jason Robert Brown and Jeanine Tesori and you needed different kinds of songs to audition for each.
But then things changed, relatively quickly.
It started in a somewhat grey area. Take “Spring Awakening.”
In 2006 “Spring Awakening” was a new, original musical. But its score had a unique folky, rocky sound that sat somewhere in between Jason Robert Brown and the top ten. Its lyrics were poetic and abstract – these weren’t storytelling, plot-advancing songs, they were closer to the kind of music created by Regina Spektor and Ingrid Michaelson in a lot of ways. So what do you bring into a “Spring Awakening” audition? A poetic Pop/Rock song? Or something from “Songs From a New World?”
And then Pop/Rock became a mainstay of most Broadway scores. We got a plethora of Jukebox musicals where narrative stories were being created from the music catalogs of non-musical theater musicians combined with original shows that either had a Pop/Rock sound or were actually being written by Pop/Rock musicians – take “Next To Normal,” “Spiderman” and a host of other things. Now when you look at the Broadway landscape you have shows like “Six,” “Hadestown,” “Jagged Little Pill,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” etc. Sara Bareilles was a staple musician to pull audition music from – her songs were not “musical theater” but they still had narrative elements. You could sing a Sara Bareilles song for practically anything. But now that she’s the composer of “Waitress” she has in effect slipped firmly into the “musical theater” category and you sometimes get the side-eye when singing her solo material for a “we don’t want a musical theater song” audition.
Suddenly “Pop/Rock” and “Contemporary Musical Theater” seem like one big jumbled category.
But one that still, often, remains differentiated in audition breakdowns.
If I’m going in for “Jagged Little Pill” and they ask for a Contemporary Musical Theater Song, Jason Robert Brown technically fits into that category but that’s definitely not what they’re looking for in the room. Likewise, if you’re going in for “Les Mis” and they ask for Contemporary Musical Theater I guarantee they’re not looking for something from “Six.”
It’s almost like there should be a third category that differentiates contemporary musical theater from the 1980s-2010s from contemporary musical theater from the 2010’s-now.
Because leaving the category so vague is doing a disservice to both performers and those behind the table. One of the most frustrating things for a casting director is when a talented performer walks into a room and sings something that is just wildly off base for the show they’re auditioning for. Likewise, it is always a panicked moment when a performer gets an audition and they just have no idea what to sing or what the auditioners are looking for.
This issue only gets exacerbated if you’re auditioning for/casting a brand new musical that no one’s heard yet. If you see a breakdown for…let’s make something up…”Fish Hamlet on Mars” and there are no YouTube clips, no song recordings, NOTHING, and the breakdown says: “Prepare a contemporary musical theater song…” well, hey, what are you supposed to do? Should I bring in an 80’s mega-musical song? Or, wait, is it supposed to be funny? Maybe I should bring something in the vein of “Something Rotten?” Then again, it could be an angsty rock show, but they didn’t ask for Pop/Rock – so do they want something like “Six?” Maybe something like “Hadestown” would walk the line…or is this really more of a traditional musical theater piece and I should bust out some Adam Guettel. Help!
On the flip side, I have seen breakdowns that go the opposite direction and get so specific they’ve basically locked the auditioner out of having any appropriate material. I saw one breakdown that was along the lines of “Please prepare a comic, high soprano/operetta song that’s up-tempo and was written between 1931 and 1936” – I kid you not. I’ve taught musical theater history. That song doesn’t exist.
We need to have a more efficient way to categorize audition material and give performers the best chance of succeeding with the least stress possible. Performers quite literally spend YEARS on their book so they can theoretically walk into any audition confident that they have a great piece to sing for whatever the requirements are. So, for what it’s worth, here are my suggestions:
- Please do not make performers learn new material for the audition unless: 1.) You need them specifically to learn music from the show and 2.) It is some sort of callback situation. If you’re having an open call there’s no need to send several hundred auditioners into a blind panic by requiring them to learn a Tears For Fears song from 1982 (but a lesser-known one because you don’t want to be singing what everyone else is…)
- Be as clear as you possibly can about what you need to hear vocally from the performers for this particular show. Especially if it’s a brand new piece. Even something like “Please prepare a contemporary musical theater song in the style of Jason Robert Brown” is SUPER helpful! We can do that!
- Since Broadway is expanding its definition of what a Pop/Rock score is, maybe we can expand our audition definition too. There’s been an unspoken prejudice about Pop/Rock songs from musicals not being “authentic” enough. i.e. if a team is trying to look for a Pop/Rock artist and they sing something from “Six,” well, they’re not a REAL Pop/Rock artist, they’re a musical theater person who wants to do Pop/Rock. That may have been somewhat true once upon a time, but it’s absolutely not now. You’re not more of an authentic Rock artist because you sing a song by someone who’s never written for Broadway. That would mean that the entire catalogs of Michael Jackson, Carole King, The Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Alanis Morissette, and many more suddenly just “don’t count.”
I think we need a new category. Like, for a bad example, we could have Golden Age musical theater that could take us up through the sixties, Traditional Musical Theater which could cover (most of) the seventies through the early 2000s, and Contemporary Musical Theater which could cover everything from around 2006 till now. Keep in mind, in our current breakdown the Golden Age category covers about 4.5 decades. Contemporary covers 5.5 decades. We’re due for a new category. It may be astonishing to believe that so much time has gone by but we can’t keep going decade after decade without realizing something has fundamentally changed musically on Broadway. Are we still intending to use the Contemporary Musical Theater category forever? Keep in mind, in less than forty years it will be 100 years since the “end” of the Golden Age. That means “Contemporary Musical Theater” will be the moniker covering 100 years of material.
Maybe it’s time to pause, reexamine the remarkable musical changes that have taken place within our lifetimes, and adjust our requirements and expectations accordingly. It could mark the start of a, quite literal, new chapter in musical theater history.