BWW Blog: Rebecca Salzhauer and Yanniv Frank - The 5 Stages of Waiting for the Cast List

The stages waiting for the cast list are those that are very familiar to all theater geeks around the world. When we channel our inner Princess Fiona and spend all day singing "I Know It's Today" because it is oh so applicable to our current state of mind.

In the suspense, confidence turns to desperation and desperation turns to banging our heads into a wall while continuously refreshing our emails. We spend lengthy amounts of time working through each second of our audition and realizing what we did wrong and why we won't get cast.

1. There Are Big Tall Terrible Giants in the iCloud:

The first stage is always the hardest. This is when all of your friends tell you "There's no way the cast list is coming out today." But you still feel like your director gave his/her word that it would be out today. I mean clearly if you rearrange some pattern of letters in a code given to you by the page numbers of the audition sides you should clearly get that the email will be there at 4:53 p.m., so it has to be then, right? No? 400 texts later at 4:54, your friends are sick and tired of your optimism and stop talking to you. You are isolated.

2. I'm NOT Willing to Wait for It (wait for it wait for it)

Now the end of day one is nearing and you realize that your friends might have been right. You are angry that the cast list isn't out, but even more angry because you were probably wrong. You start obsessively checking your email and when you see there are no new emails in your inbox, you throw your phone across the room and burst into tears. Not tears of sadness. Tears of anger. You then proceed to throw a full on Sue Sylvester tantrum minus the hurt locker part.

3. Rivers Belong Where They Can Ramble and that Cast List Belongs In My Email

After calming yourself down you start to do the only thing you can think of. Bargaining with fate. You say out loud "Dear all powerful universe, if I get cast I promise to hold the door for an old lady once a week!" You continue to do this until you reach "Dear all powerful Patti LuPone, goddess of song and beauty, if I get a line I will ______!" Despite your tireless efforts, the cast list still does not come out.

4. Don't Do Sadness...wait who am I kidding?

Now you are just sad. The cast list didn't come out and therefore will never come out. You start ugly crying (tears of sadness this time). You feel like your life is empty. You curl up into a ball in your bed and turn on your playlist of melancholy songs from various Broadway shows--the first 4 bars of "What I Did For Love" and you are a pile of tears. You half sing along/half cry/half eat ice cream (that's too many halves). You cry until all liquid has been drained from your system.

5. No Day But...Today?!?!?!

By this point, you have done everything you can. At this point you just accept the fact that the cast list is not coming out today, but that's okay. As a wise person once said "all dates roll around." Okay, so the cast list isn't out today. Maybe it will be out tomorrow. As you begin to belt out a cast list parody to "Tomorrow," you get an email notification...