On Monday, Sept. 8 and Tuesday, Sept. 9, auditions for Community Ensemble Theater’s (CET) fall show, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” were held.
Following CET’s mass meeting on Sept. 4, audition materials, cast forms and audition sign-ups were released to new and returning members of CET. Students across Ann Arbor Public Schools who wanted to participate in this play either prepared a monologue or a scene with a partner. After a few stressful days of rehearsing scripts for auditions and signing up for slots, auditions to determine what roles everybody would be assigned for the fall show took place.
On Monday and Tuesday, students filled the hallways around Community High School’s Craft Theater, where auditions were to be held, doing last minute rehearsing for their auditions and helping others to prepare. At the same time, actors filed in and out of the audition room. Students from all grade levels felt a wide range of emotions prior to and after their auditions.
Juniors Mags Porter and Phoebe Milligan prepared a scene together for their audition. Both rehearsed a lot and both had prior experience acting with CET. Since they had already performed in two CET plays and rehearsed a lot, they felt confident going into their audition and afterwards.
“I feel like [our audition] went very well,” Milligan said. “It was the least stressed I’ve ever been for a CET audition and I think it went possibly the best. As of my junior year, I’ve been acting for way longer than I had in freshman or sophomore year, and I feel like I practiced [our audition] enough and got it to a point where I actually liked it.”
Having played small roles in her past two plays with CET, Milligan hopes that she’ll get a bigger role with more lines this time.
Many seniors who auditioned for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” have been acting in CET’s shows since freshmen year. They found themselves auditioning for their very last high school play.
For senior Mathias Takacs, CET has been an essential part of high school. Like many other seniors involved in this production, Takacs has participated in every CET show since their freshmen year. They want to be involved in the show again this year but hope to be assigned a relatively small role.
“I’m going to be very busy this year, especially during the first semester,” Takacs said. “I’m taking a lot of challenging classes, so I specifically asked for [a smaller] role.”
As Takacs reflected on their senior year, they look forward to what’s to come: getting to hang out with everybody for all three of the annual CET productions: the play, the musical, and Just Desserts (a play produced in 24 hours).
Takacs felt overwhelmed because of their busy schedule, so they didn’t have much time to prepare. But coming out of their audition, Takacs felt confident that their audition went well.
Maia Geinisio, another senior, walked out of her audition feeling proud of the way she performed. As a fan of Shakespeare, Genisio is more excited than ever to perform in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“I love Shakespeare,” Genisio said. “I have been waiting years and years for this play. I have been asking Emily [the director], ‘hey, when are we doing Shakespeare?’ since I was a freshman. I think I have more of a chance for a bigger role, which really excites me. I also think that I’ve grown a lot as a person since freshman year, and now have the capacity to take on more responsibility, more lines and more presence.”
Lots of new CET members also entered the Craft Theater on Sept. 9, for their very first CET audition.
Freshman Calliope Gilroy felt excited to begin theater at the highschool level. From first through eighth grade, Gilroy participated in class plays every year, which everybody in her class was required to take part in. But starting her journey at CET, Gilroy knows that she’s going to be acting with people that all choose to participate in CET and love acting.
“I’m excited to join CET because this is the first time when I’m going to be in a big play, and I’m finally going to be surrounded by people that want to be here too,” Gilroy said. “That was the most awful thing about my old school plays. Not everybody wanted to be part of it, so it was very hard to actually focus on the play.”
While she waited on the second floor ledge outside the Craft Theater before her audition, Gilroy didn’t feel nervous. Instead, she reflected on how excited she was to be in CET, and how she didn’t feel like the stakes of her audition were high as she wanted a smaller role for her first show.
“Honestly, I’m not that nervous for my audition because I don’t really care what role I get,” Gilroy said. “I don’t want to have a bigger part because I’m just starting high school, so I have to adjust to lots of transitions.”
However, freshman Azalea VanderElzen felt very nervous before coming into their audition. Having participated in one of their previous school’s musicals, and other musicals and plays outside of school, VanderElzen expected to do their audition in front of everybody auditioning for this show, and was terrified by the prospect.
“I’m used to the kind of style where you have to memorize a song or set of lines and then do it in front of most of the class or the people in the play,” VanderElzen said. “That can be really nerve wracking.”
However, as CET auditions for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” were held only in front of Emily Wilson-Tobin, the director, and this year’s assistant director, senior Bee Whalen, VanderElzen was pleasantly surprised to see that they wouldn’t be performing in front of a huge crowd.
“[My audition] was actually pretty relaxing,” VanderElzen said.
VanderElzen also felt really excited to be in their first CET show and is especially looking forward to meeting new people.
“I’m pretty excited [about starting CET],” VanderElzen said. “It’ll be pretty social and the people seem really nice.”
After all the auditions were finished, Wilson-Tobin sent out an email stating a list of people she’d like to see perform again at callbacks. The materials for callbacks included a monologue and two-character scene.
Callbacks were held on Thursday, Sept. 12, and the cast list is estimated to come out sometime on the 14th or 15th of September.
Some people are feeling anxious to find out the results of this audition, while others say they’ll be content no matter the outcome. With CET’s no cuts program, everybody who auditioned for this play will get a role, big or small. After a stressful yet exciting round of auditions, CET members are thrilled to kick off the 2024-2025 CET season with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
