Erick Garcia walked purposefully out the door — and promptly crashed to the floor. He’d just auditioned for the rock-opera “Rent,” and although his knee-buckling drop was just a tease, the 22-year-old Lincoln Park singer and music promoter was visibly relieved.
“This was my first big audition,” a breathless Garcia said after singing the plaintive “Will I?” from the show for New York-based casting director Bernie Telsey. “The adrenalin’s still rushing.”
Adrenalin was pumping furiously last Thursday not only for Garcia but for hundreds of other performers who tried out as potential replacements for the New York cast of “Rent,” for new productions opening this summer in San Diego and next fall in Toronto, and for a touring company now in Boston. (That company will come to Chicago’s Shubert Theatre Nov. 5. Tickets go on sale in late spring.)
Of the 700 who turned out, three got a big-time nod. Scheduled to fly to New York to audition Thursday for “Rent” director Michael Greif were 20-year-old Jody Shelton of Lake View, a part-time Columbia College music student; 21-year-old Northwestern University music theater student Randy Meyer, from New Hampshire; and Matt Davis, 20, a music theater student at Roosevelt University who’s originally from Michigan.
“I was screaming and crying and shaking after I found out,” said Meyer, who has appeared for three years in Northwestern’s popular Waa-Mu variety show.
Telsey said all three singers seem promising for the lead role of Mark, which must be filled right away for the West Coast production. But he added that he was very impressed with another 17 or 18 singers and may ask them to meet with Greif later.
The all-day auditions took place at the Chicago Academy for the Arts, 1010 W. Chicago Ave., where would-be “Rent”-ers waited on line beginning at 6 a.m. Melissa Young and her roommate, Jennifer Willison, both 22-year-old residents of Wicker Park and former theater classmates at Point Park College in Pittsburgh, brought sleeping bags, blankets, bagels and Aleve. “We watched the sun rise,” said Young, a singer and sales coordinator who was determined to be first in line.
“I went to a casting call in New York for the show last summer, got there two hours before they began, and was No. 752. I waited 9 1/2 hours to audition.”
Why the crush of eager young singers in New York, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and other cities where tryouts have been held? “Everybody wants to be in `Rent,’ ” said 28-year-old Chicago actor and singer Guy Adkins, who has appeared at the Goodman, Marriott’s Lincolnshire and Apple Tree theaters. “It’s the hot new thing. It’s urban, it’s groovy, it’s very romantic with a great story, and anybody who’s a struggling artist can relate.”
Added Garcia, a University of Illinois at Chicago graduate who sings rhythm and blues and studies acting: “It deals with issues our generation is facing like AIDS, poverty and homosexuality. And the music is not what you hear in a typical Broadway show. It’s like stuff on the radio — cool and eclectic.”
A hit from the start
Staggeringly successful, “Rent” opened off-Broadway in February, 1996, and moved to Broadway two months later, where, according to Newsweek, it delivered “a shocking jolt of creative juice.” Its energetic, powerfully poignant score — a mix of rock, techno-pop, rhythm and blues, gospel, salsa and tango — was written by Jonathan Larson, who died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm at age 35 just hours after the final off-Broadway dress rehearsal. The show won the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year.
Inspired by Puccini’s “La Boheme,” the gritty musical love story is about creative young residents of New York’s down-and-dirty Alphabet City area, including songwriter Roger, filmmaker Mark and exotic dancer Mimi. “The characters are homeless or HIV-positive or recovering from heroin addiction,” said “Rent” casting director Will Cantler, “but they have tremendous hopes and dreams and are trying to create something on this edge of society. It’s phenomenally different from (traditional) musical theater.”
That difference makes “Rent” difficult to cast, said Telsey. “Every character sings 10 to 12 songs a night. In a traditional musical, it’s just two or three. This show was written to be performed like a rock concert, except a rock concert lasts for only one night. In `Rent,’ all the characters have to sing their lungs out eight times a week. We’re looking for voices like Tina Turner’s and Aretha Franklin’s, because they have to sing out like you expect their voices to die the next day. The show is also very culturally specific, so you may need someone with an incredible voice who is also Latino or Asian.”
During the Chicago auditions, some performers had appointments arranged by agents, but for those waiting on line, like Garcia, the tryout was a three-part process. The first stage was a 30-second “type in, type out” meeting with Cantler, who looked for certain physical types and heard a few bars of a tune.
“I sang exactly one word — `Michelangelo’ — for him,” said Garcia, “and he gave me a ticket and said, `Go on to the next
room.’ “
Those with tickets had the opportunity to sing music they’d brought — selections included songs by Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Eagles and Drifters — for another casting director. If the news was good, they were given music from “Rent” to sing for Telsey.
The 37-year-old casting director, wearing green jeans and a white “Rent” cap backwards, sat behind a table, stacking resumes and head shots and fixing a laser stare on performers. Chicago rock singer Rick Beech, 34, with shaved head, pierced eyebrow and ripped jeans that showed off his blue and red boxer shorts, sang powerfully but, outside the door, looked worried. “I was a little stiff,” he said.
“So was I,” consoled Jason Hackner, 24, a Chicago singer-songwriter and University of Michigan musical theater graduate who said he lives a “Rent”-style “bohemian life. I record dance music for a small label, work in a bar at night and I’m struggling to pay my rent.”
Nerves and gumption
Sloan Just, 22, who lives in Bucktown, said she doesn’t worry about getting behind with her rent “because my roommate’s not an actor.” The professional singer and dancer, in tight black leather pants and black lipstick, auditioned for Telsey with “Take Me or Leave Me,” sung in the show by the sexy performance artist Maureen. “She is so cool,” said Just. “She’s really passionate and fiery, and the fact that she is a lesbian is a breakthrough.”
Some performers were admittedly nervous. “I couldn’t eat lunch. I’d vomit,” said Cory Grant, 18, who along with fellow seniors Jon Runnfeldt and Brandon Tesar ditched class from New Trier High School in Winnetka to audition.
A few performers went out of their way to nail Telsey’s attention. Christine Hewitt, 25, a New Yorker now appearing here in “Sunset Boulevard,” got down on her knees while belting “Take Me or Leave Me.” Beth Manning, a 20-year-old musical theater major at Northwestern, perched on Telsey’s table for an in-your-face rendition.
For many performers, Telsey had tips. “Try to lose this sense of, `I’m singing out,’ ” he told Joseph Enderson, 28, of Chicago, who’d just sung “Will I?” “The trick is to let it float out.”
Enderson, a retail stock manager with a gorgeous voice and big range, took the song down a notch. Outside the audition room, he gushed about “Rent.” “It’s incredible, it’s religious. I stood in line 11 hours to see it in New York.”
Some performers apologized. “I panicked,” confessed Joshua Sutcliffe, 28, of Chicago, after missing his opening note. Wilmette resident Brian Mahoney, 30, who plays in a rock band called Don’t Look at Jim, said he was sorry for sounding “scratchy.”
Shelton, one of the fortunate three flown to New York, said he not only sang during the Chicago tryout but also answered several questions for casting directors. “They seemed to want to know a lot about my personal life, because I think your own personality sort of becomes the character you’re playing in the show,” he said. The self-described “struggling” songwriter and pianist who’s sung at the Beat Kitchen also works part time at a tanning spa.
Meyer said he felt his singing was right for the broad vocal demands of “Rent”: “I can do both loud rock belting and airy ballad stuff.” Noted Davis, “A lot of my friends who are just as talented as I am tried out, but I think I have a physical look that’s a fit.” What’s the look? “Sort of struggling and bohemian, maybe. I’m wiry, though not quite emaciated,” joked the 6-foot-1-inch, 145-pound singer.
The search never stops
One wild-card audition entry was Cheryl Siler, who came into Telsey’s room unprepared. “Just sing anything,” he told her. She sang a few bars of a song she’d written, then a few more of “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
“She was our waitress last night at Cafe Absinthe (at 1954 W. North Ave.),” said Telsey. “Everywhere we go we ask people, `Do you sing?’ She’s had her own rock band.”
Five hours into the auditions, Telsey still listened with full attention, tapping his foot in time to “Rent” tunes he’d heard over and over, taking notes and offering a polite “Very nice; that’s all, thank you,” or a more encouraging, “Want to do another song?” (Nobody said no.)
Even those who didn’t get Telsey’s invitation to meet the show’s director still dream of being in “Rent” someday.
“A year from now, I’d love to be working in the New York cast or touring with the show,” said Hackner. “I like Chicago because it has such great diversity and that’s what this show is about: gay people, street people, black, white and Latino people. We’ve all got to make it through together.”
