BWW Blog: Beyond My Wildest Dreams

Hello there everyone and welcome to my first blog post on BroadwayWorld! I am more than thrilled to have been given the opportunity to talk about all things theatre, my education, and life as a young red-headed woman pursuing theatre as a career! I want to start with a little bit of an introduction so that you all can know me before we dive right in to the main subject of today's blog.

My name is Jessica Medley and I am currently a junior in the B.F.A. Musical Theatre program at the University of Central Florida. I have also recently finished all of the credits in my Music Minor track, and I will be graduating THIS December! To be honest, I am still in disbelief that it is coming up so fast. I grew up about two hours away in Tampa, Florida and attended high school at Steinbrenner High School where I really started to realize how much I loved theatre and where I could take it if I put in the effort. Flash forward a few years past my high school graduation, a year spent abroad in Belgium as an exchange student, another year having moved to Orlando to work at both Disney and Universal, and we hit the crux of what I'm going to be talking about today: AUDITIONS!

I spent a few years after high school floundering around a bit. I knew I loved theatre, but I tried to force my mind to think of other career paths that would be more 'stable', more 'realistic'. Inspiration hit during the Thanksgiving holiday of 2014, and I just knew that I had to try. The only school in my field of vision was UCF. It was in Orlando, so I could still keep all of my theme park jobs (which I LOVED!), they had a renowned Musical Theatre program that I'd been looking at and researching for years, and it was at a public state university... which basically meant that I could actually afford it with some scholarships, loans, etc. By the time my parents and I were driving back from my sister's home in North Carolina that Thanksgiving, I had already looked up audition requirements, school stats, and was in the process of going through songs on my phone that I could use for pre-screens.

I spent the next month and a half or so finding material, recruiting my longtime friend James (NYU, B.M. in Music Theatre) as my accompanist and basically audition coach, and getting my roommate to film my dance prescreen in the basketball court of our apartment complex. The process wasn't what anyone would call perfect or precise, but it was a labor of love from the people in my life who wanted to see me succeed, and I will be forever grateful.

I sent in my materials through Acceptd a few weeks before they were due and was walking around the Magic Kingdom when I found out the magical news: I had been asked to come in for a live audition! We're going to skip past the next few weeks because although interesting I'm sure, all I remember is trying to pick a song that contrasted with my prescreen's "Princess" from A Man of No Importance. I eventually settled on one I thought would be a good choice, and then it was audition day.

I woke up early. Like really early. Well, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I actually got any sleep at all that night. But I digress. I got ready, packed my bag with all of the essentials (Throat Coat, cough drops, dance clothes, the works) and started the hour drive to the University of Central Florida.

Once I got there, everyone was very kind and helpful. I signed in, filled out some forms, attended a meeting with some introductions from the faculty and a few current students, and then began the waiting game. Luckily I knew one girl, Lexi, from a show we had done the previous year at a community theatre in Tampa, so that helped to calm my nerves a bit. I was one of the last people to go and sing my audition piece, so when it was my turn, I took a deep breath and followed the stage manager into the room where it happened. You're welcome for that reference, by the way. I slated, performed my little 32-bar cut, and in the next minute I was out and getting changed for the dance call.

I'm just going to say right now that I am not a dancer. I'd like to think of myself as one after the amount of classes I've been through in my three years at university, but at the time, I barely knew a pirouette from a time step. So, for my mental sanity, we're going to skip over the dance call portion of the audition. Because it was hard. It was so fast. I couldn't figure out my right foot from my left, and then it was over. We were released for the day. I gathered my things, sat with Lexi to watch the advanced tap call, and then left after shaking hands with the faculty. I walked out to my car, called my parents to let them know how it went... and then proceeded to have a cry session right in the parking lot of the school I so wanted to go to because I was absolutely without a doubt convinced that there was no way I was getting into this program. My audition didn't go how I had imagined, I cracked a bit in my song, my dancing was nowhere near where some of the other kids were, and I began figuring out what to do next in my life.

A few days after the audition, after I had stopped feeling sorry and collected myself, I wrote a few 'thank you' cards and sent them to the faculty that had been at the audition. A couple months went by without a word (we were the first of two program auditions after all). It wasn't until I was in my car driving to my job at Universal that I got an email. I had been placed as 3rd on the Alternate List! I couldn't have been more excited! I still had a chance. And in my mind, a fairly good one at that.

Another month or so passed by, and I received the one email I thought would never come:

So that concludes today's blog entry! I have many more topics in mind to discuss about life at UCF, getting professional work in Orlando, and other BFA related things, so stay tuned for next week's post!

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