Read Places, Please!: Becoming a Jersey Boy for Free Online

audition today probably isn’t for any current job opening. But I prepare my billion-page scene packet, two songs from the score (“Earth Angel” and “Silhouettes”), and my trusty Elvis tune. And I review all the notes I took while watching Christian Hoff. I wake early for the audition and repeat my routine: coffee, long shower, reviewing, walking to studio, re-tuning, reviewing…and I am called in. Merri is there with just an assistant and a reader. She tells me that she only wanted to bring me in because I have not done the Tommy material for her yet. Does she want me to sing? No. Play guitar? No. She just wants me to do the scenes.
    So I do them. I pretty much just copy Christian Hoff as much as I can. This seems to suffice (for now) and she gives me some positive feedback. The last scene she asks me to do is the one where Tommy hits on a reporter at a bar. Because the reader is male, Merri says that she will do the scene with me. She’s a good actress, but boy is this awkward for me! I have, through this entire audition process, presented myself as “the nice guy.” Playing Tommy, though, I have to show more attitude, cockiness, and balls. And nowhere do I have to show it more than in this scene I am doing with a famous casting director, the same casting director who holds my future in her hands.
    I dive in, and the scene goes well. I diffuse my own awkwardness at the end of it with a little laugh and an acknowledgment that it was a bit weird for me. Merri chuckles as well, but she is probably just being polite. She’s done this many times with many other actors and must be very used to it by now.
    *         *         *
    Another month passes. Regular life resumes. Well, regular life with a heavy dose of checking the Jersey Boys Fan Forum every morning. There is absolutely no hint of cast changes. In fact, I am getting the impression that Jersey Boys really just shifts people around instead hiring someone new. They are loyal to this core group of actors they have hired. Whether for financial or ethical reasons I do not know, but it is neat to see. I just have to get into that core group of actors!
    I get a call from my agent, “Dan, they want to call you back for the role of Tommy.”
    “Meg, can you still refer to it as a callback after all this time?” I ask her, but I think my joke gets lost in her sea of phone calls, voicemails, emails, and contracts being negotiated for folks much more successful than I.
    So, off I go to refresh myself on the material. (Ok, I don’t really need to refresh myself on the material because I have been carrying it around in my backpack every day for the past year. Sure, one day I switched it from the Bob material to the Tommy material, but that manila envelope filled with scenes and music has not left my side since last year.)
    The morning of the audition, I wake, drink forty-three gallons of coffee, take a thirty-six hour shower, review the material, put three vats of gel in my hair, and am ready to head on my way when my soon-to-be stepson, Mark, stops me. This is my first Jersey Boys audition taking place on a Saturday and, therefore, the first time Mark has seen me greased up and in my dark suit (and with attitude).
    “Daniel, you look tough.” Mark, that is about the greatest possible thing you could have said to me. “Where are you going?”
    “ Jersey Boys audition.”
    “Again?”
    “Yup. Again.”
    “For Broadway or somewhere else?”
    “Well, I don’t know. They don’t tell me that.”
    “When would it start?”
    “Well, they don’t tell me that either. Actually, I don’t even know if there is a part available.”
    “If there is no part available, why are you auditioning?”
    “That’s just how they do it.”
    “They have auditions when there are no parts?”
    “Yup. All the time.”
    “And you keep getting asked to come back to these auditions over and over?”
    “Yup.”
    “Even though there are no