Do you know the way...

...to San Jose? Believe it or not, I don't even know where that quote is from, but I say it all the time!
Bret and I are now on our 2nd night in San Jose. We are staying with Bret's aunt and uncle, and they are taking such good care of us! We are well fed, well rested, and well everything else.
Yesterday we went to an open call for American Musical Theatre of San Jose for Little Shop of Horrors. It was a pretty full open call, though there was room for everyone. Several people had even driven up from LA! After singing my signature song, I was handed a bunch of sides for callbacks tomorrow for Audrey.
Few people know this, but when I was little I was obsessed with that movie! My sister and I watched it ever day for several weeks one summer (we used to watch one movie with lunch in the summer). I used to waltz around our house belting "Suddenly, Seymour" at the top of my lungs. All that training finally paid off.
So today we had three auditions, two appointments and one callback for me-and I spent last night and this morning working on two Audrey scenes (including the New York accent) and one song (Somewhere That's Green).
We are exhausted! The travel adds to it, I'm sure, but it is also being in a prolonged state of readiness. When I have several auditions during a day, I feel I need to be in that state all day, and it is exhausting. Today, as we walked to our first appointment, I said, "Well, I suppose we should get the video camera out" and Bret said, "Yeah, I guess". Then we laughed about how tired and unenthusiastic we were at that moment.
But just when you start to sink down, something happens to raise you up. Our first audition went well, and we were even met with a sign that said "San Jose Repertory Auditions--Mr. Jaspers and Ms. Zempel-->"
Our second audition was even better. Although the secretary was fairly unfriendly, the artistic director was great. We chatted a lot, and he really enjoyed our scene. He said he knew where he was right away, and based on our work suggested other places we could get work. He basically told us he would call us in if we were in town, and perhaps even if we weren't.
Between our appointments and my callback, Bret and I went to Starbucks to work on my sides. He was very helpful, although I was a little touchy. We are just a little on edge before auditions, and therefore we are always much nicer to each other when we are finished.
The audition was good, although they changed the audition song just before we went in. We sang "Suddenly Seymour" instead. I knew they would do that, I had a feeling, because it has the higher belt note in it. I know the song well, but it is just a little bit harder for me to sing than the other song.
In the room I read with another actor, which is strange, but the scene went well and I got quite a few laughs. Before the song I said a little prayer and I just went for it. It came out. It didn't sound amazing, but everything came out! (For those of you who don't know, belting is still fairly new to me)
And finally we were done and were able to spend a beautiful relaxing night in San Jose. Tomorrow we will be tourists in San Fran.