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[0:00] Charlie Murphy: Hello, hello, and welcome to Mapping the College Audition. I am your host, Charlie Murphy, Director of MTCA. That's Musical Theatre College Auditions. Check us out at mtca.com. And today we've got Lori Kay Harvey from Otterbein University on the pod. As you'll hear at the top of the interview, I am delighted to have nailed down a time with Lori Kay. We recorded this episode a few months back before our break, and she was the last in a series of long-scheduling schools that all fell into place in the course of a few weeks. You're going to hear about another one of those schools very soon in NYU Steinhardt, who we recorded with a few weeks back. Not that the inside baseball of scheduling podcast interviews are particularly interesting to you, but we do hear a lot of feedback like, hey, have you ever thought about having X school on the podcast?

And when it's an example like Otterbein or NYU Steinhardt, the answer is almost certainly yes, we have thought about it, but sometimes scheduling is more difficult than you might think. We would always just rather have the right person on than just to have an episode out faster. Maybe a good metaphor for all of you seniors working on your prescreens as we speak. It's better to be good than early, and I hope you will find that this episode is good. I am recording this intro and takeaway a bit in advance as I'm currently on my honeymoon as you listen to this. Hopefully as these sound waves are hitting your ears, my eyeballs are eyeball to eyeball with a dolphin or something. I'm sending you love and ease from across an ocean. May you all have one deep breath of vacation air in your busy and often stressful falls. And with that, let's jump in with Lori Kay from Otterbein.

[1:47] Charlie Murphy: Well, we are so excited to be joined by Lori Kay Harvey from Otterbein. Lori Kay has a BS in voice performance/theater from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she knows my lovely wife, maybe from whence she knows my lovely wife, I guess is a better way to say that. She's had a distinguished career as a music director, directing lots of shows all over the country, and is going into her 18th year, we've discovered, as an associate professor of the Department of Music at Otterbein, which is located in Westerville, Ohio. They take about 10 MTs and 10 actors. They offer acting BFA, MTBFA, and theater BA. Lori Kay, welcome on the show. How are you feeling today?

[2:34] Lori Kay Harvey: Great. Hi, Charlie. Thank you so much. I'm feeling wonderful. I'm so happy to finally meet you.

[2:39] Charlie Murphy: We are so excited to have you on. We've been talking about this, we've been scheduling for years. It's true of a lot of schools we go, we schedule months and years, but you were maybe our longest tenured, we've been trying to schedule. And I'll say one of our most requested episodes, I think, you know, because we most of the most competitive schools we have had on the podcast. And so people go, I expect it now. Well, where's Otterbein? I want to hear about it. And I'd say not only most expected because of sort of Otterbein's reputation, but I think maybe in some ways because of, I'm going to say the unique vibe that is Otterbein as a school. I think people are very interested in like, huh, is that the right fit for me or not?

So I'd love to start there and just kind of dive into how would you describe that vibe? Now as in your 18th year, what does that mean? You know, insofar as of course you've gone to Indiana and the other schools that you've experienced, what makes Otterbein's, you know, oeuvre unique? What makes Otterbein Otterbein?

[3:27] Lori Kay Harvey: That's a great question. And we get it a lot from perspectives and their parents. It's kind of a multifaceted answer. It's a small liberal arts school. So we always say it's conservatory style training within a liberal arts education. So the students are extremely busy, extremely challenged by all things, theater, music, theater, dance, voice, as well as their daily gen eds that are part of the intense curriculum. And it's a small program. So there's a lot of individual attention for the students and a lot of performance opportunities because we are purposely a smaller program. And what's unique about it is that you're getting a wonderful liberal arts education while also being in an extremely intense schedule of the musical theater or acting BFA curriculum, especially once folks are involved in shows. So it's very rigorous, but that's also on purpose to prepare our students for what a life in the theater is going to be in a professional world.

[4:36] Charlie Murphy: Yep. What about the broader university? How would you sort of describe Otterbein as a university as you sort of think about like, not just the acting and musical theater department, but, you know, sort of what is an Otterbein student feel like, you know, walking around campus?

[4:49] Lori Kay Harvey: We have a very diverse student body. It's not a large school. I would say we're just about under 4,000 students. The campus, you can walk across in 15 minutes. Otterbein love song describes it as the quiet, peaceful village, which maybe it was when it was first founded, but Columbus is only 20 minutes away. It very much feels like you're near a cosmopolitan area, but the campus is quite small and beautiful. And the student body is involved in everything under the sun. There's your typical business and nursing and finance and psychology, sociology type majors. We have a wonderful nursing program that Otterbein's well known for. We have a wonderful equestrian program. It's equine science. And then the theater program are kind of what are considered some of the flagship majors at Otterbein.

So a typical student could be doing any number of things, but what's unique about, I think, our theater program is we really want to accept people who want to do a lot of things and try not to produce just a cookie cutter musical theater person. And that we're trying to educate them very holistically to be able to go out into the world and know a lot about a lot of things. And many of our students go in so many different directions with their lives and their careers because of that really, really strong emphasis on liberal arts, as well as the theater and musical theater training.

[6:14] Charlie Murphy: Totally makes sense. Yeah. And I think maybe you're describing in the intimacy just of the number of students, maybe this is obvious, but it's going to feel a little bit different than, you know, if you have a student who visits Penn State and then Syracuse and then comes to Otterbein, they're like, whoa, where are all the huge sports stadiums? And where's the football game? It's a different experience than you're going to get at a big campus school.

[6:35] Lori Kay Harvey: And we definitely have sports. We have a, we're a D3 school and we have a football team and a soccer team and lacrosse. It's not going to be like...

[6:40] Charlie Murphy: You're not going to paint your faces every Saturday, maybe in the same way that the Nittany Lions would or whatever. Or you had experience in Indiana, right? In Indiana probably was a much more experience of like basketball and football and that whole, you know.

[6:54] Lori Kay Harvey: Exactly. But what's unique is that some of our students, if they have time, they'll join Greek Life and then their sorority sisters and brothers are on the sports teams and then they'll come support them in shows. So it's that small of a community that it's like there's one campus center where everybody goes to eat. So they kind of all get to know each other their first couple of years at the campus center dining hall. So it's not really sex. They all, and often the theater kids are taking classes with folks from all the other majors. So you have the feel of a university. It's just not the mecca that would be a Big Ten school.

[7:36] Charlie Murphy: I love it. Well, I know I saw you've done your homework. You have your curriculum printed out already. So you're really ready to dive into the curriculum. But I'd love to start with, as we get into some of the curriculum stuff, I love that you mentioned the balance of, you know, BFA liberal art experience, meaning you're getting conservatory style training within liberal arts. What is that balance in terms of like a percentage? How much of your time are you spending doing acting, singing, dancing as for the MTs, especially versus how much time in a day? You can talk credits, but I think sometimes it's harder for high school students to hear credits as much as to hear like, am I 75% of my time? Am I 50% of my time? What does it feel like in terms of how much time I'm in the theater school versus taking other classes if I want to?

[8:11] Lori Kay Harvey: I don't actually know the percentage, but let me just give you like a day in the life. Another really, really unique...

[8:17] Charlie Murphy: We can do our own math percentages based on hours.

[8:21] Lori Kay Harvey: One of the other really unique things about Audubon's program is we offer dance every single day of the week, five days a week, 8 a.m., all four years of an MT curriculum. A lot of our students come here because of that rigorous dance training. We also have a BFA MT with a dance minor, and that adds a little bit more in the realm of dance history, choreography, one and two opportunities to do dance workshops. So that's...

[8:50] Charlie Murphy: Are you dancing twice a day if you're getting the dance minor then? My God, how much more can you dance? Your whole body.

[8:53] Lori Kay Harvey: It's a lot of dance. The dancers do, it's not every day, but if they're taking a choreography class or if they're taking a dance history class, they are in leotards a lot.

[9:05] Charlie Murphy: That's awesome.

[9:06] Lori Kay Harvey: I guess no one wears leotards anymore, Charlie. I feel like...

[9:08] Charlie Murphy: I wear leotards sometimes, but we can talk about that later. That's just a different...

[9:12] Lori Kay Harvey: But no, there's a ton of dance, and the purpose of that obviously is to really train wherever someone comes in at their dance level as a freshman, really help them to progress over their time. And so we have placements at the beginning of each semester in four different levels, beginning, advanced, intermediate, advanced, and advanced of all the different dance styles. So that say someone comes in and they're a fantastic tap dancer, but they've not had as much ballet. They'll start at a more advanced level for tap, a more beginner level for ballet. And then each semester, they're reevaluated and placed again into the next level, depending on where the teachers think they should be. So that's really great.

It starts every day at 8 a.m. with dance classes, depending on the day, or either an hour and 20 or an hour and 40. Then they go to either a gen ed or any one of their other curricular courses. It could be for freshmen music fundamentals, which is theory, keyboard skills, aural skills. It could be speech and dialects. That's typically like a morning dance and then a gen ed or one of those theater classes. Almost all of the afternoons then are filled with acting class. And depending on where you are in the curriculum, it's focused on something different. Freshmen all start together as a combined cohort, acting and musical theater with theater fundamentals. And then their first sequence of acting, voice and movement.

And then it just progresses from there. As they kind of move on in their years, they'll separate into more musical theater focused classes, more acting, which might be more film and television kind of stuff. So all those acting classes are typically afternoons. Those finish around four o'clock and then all the voice lessons happen after that. And then all of our rehearsals typically start at seven and go to 10:30 p.m. And we rehearse shows six days a week, Monday through Friday in the evenings. And then on Saturday afternoons, usually one to five is a typical schedule. So it's very full. It's rigorous in the, you had asked earlier, what was the percentage in all of the performing arts stuff, because we want to get them really integrated into everything quickly and learning all the things at once, the dance, the voice, the acting.

There's also choir for musical theater performers called the Audubon Singers. And a lot of our courses are music prefix. A lot of our courses are theater prefix. So technically my faculty line is in the Department of Music, but everything I teach is with the musical theater majors. But we call it a combined major because so many of the courses come from both departments. All the voice lessons are music courses as well, that kind of thing. It's really interesting how schools structure. Sometimes it's all in the theater department, all in the music department. Sometimes they have their own music theater school. It's very interesting. But also I think interesting to hear the different curricula.

Sometimes people think, well, musical theater means it's going to be basically the same courses in general. It's like maybe a lot of the same material, but a lot of musical theater schools, you're not dancing five days a week. I mean, some schools you're dancing two days a week, even in a BFA. And maybe only for two years. And it's something so many of our perspectives when we're auditioning them say, this is what drew me to Audubon's program and why I wanted to apply. Because so much of Broadway, I mean, let's be real. If you want to work right out of school, if your dance skills are really strong, you have a higher percentage of getting hired more frequently anyway. Right. Certainly a higher percentage of the jobs also are dance focused.

If you think about the number of people at a Broadway musical, most of them are doing more dancing than they're doing talking and singing when you have a 40 person cast or whatever it is. Right. And we do offer like ballet, tap, jazz. Sometimes there's a rotating day that could be a hip hop or a ballroom. And then of course, modern. So what's nice is you have, depending on the day, a different

[17:13] Lori Kay Harvey: The focus is on musical theater history. So there's a year-long course taught by two of my colleagues that is academic as well as performance-oriented, so they're studying the whole history of the art form from an academic perspective and then applying it to a performance perspective. They're assigned songs about the different eras and then learning about the history of the art form.

[17:36] And then later in their year, there's something called the junior musical theater studio, which is a year-long course. Typically, one semester is focused on putting on a musical just within that class. And it's staged, it's choreographed, it's totally musicalized. And that's performed at the end of the semester. The second half of the year, because we're now getting close to graduation, is really focused on rep work, book building, acting through song to make sure that audition skills are really ready to go because senior year we only have them for the first semester.

[18:11] And the reason for that is there's an internship that most of our students do the second half of senior year. So, it's really technically only seven semesters that they are here on campus with us because most folks go to New York; a few sometimes will go to LA or Chicago, dependent on where they want to focus their career. But that end of that junior year really needs to be focused on professionalism, fine-tuning the audition skills because senior year we put together the showcase in the fall.

[18:44] And then there's a big performance at the end called the senior launch, which is a fundraiser for the showcase and kind of a greatest hits of all the things they've done in their time at Irvine. That last semester is more focused on that than any additional acting work.

[19:02] Charlie Murphy: And I want to hear all about that kind of launch into the business. So both tell me a little more about the showcase in terms of that seems like a little bit unique timing in terms of, you know, more people are doing it later in that second semester, depending on different places in the second semester. But to talk about the showcase and then I want to hear about that internship as well or that semester is like.

[19:20] Lori Kay Harvey: So the senior showcase is put together again with a combined class. So they start out freshman year together acting, and then they come back together for that last semester in this senior year. And probably like a lot of schools, we try out lots of different things on every student to see really what's going to highlight their skills the most and bring out their personality the most and market themselves to the business in the best way.

[19:46] And that's put together, it's team-taught with the chair of our dance department, Stella Kane, and one of our acting teachers, and then I'm the music element. So that's built in the fall to then be performed on campus for all their friends and fellow professors and family come and whatnot. So we do it here on campus in the fall before they leave for that senior year internship.

[20:12] And the internship is a 10-week professional internship, usually with a casting office, a talent agency, a producer, a choreographer. It's really specific to what each student wants to do and where they want to learn that behind-the-scenes stuff. And that's built in combination with the showcase in the fall. There's a senior year internship prep course that is taught by one of my colleagues, and all of that is coordinated through him and his class.

[20:43] In addition to professional stuff, building websites, learning how to really perfect your self-tapes, all your marketing stuff, headshots, resumes, actors access, all that stuff so that once they're in New York, they've heard those things and then they're seeing them in practice when they're in their internships. And we've had people with Telsey casting, we've had them with talent agents, we've had folks who maybe want to do more film and TV, work for NBC or work for Law and Order. One gal one year was really, really interested in pop music. So she went to LA and she interned with the Jackson Five, or what is now the Jackson Five and their company.

[21:27] Other folks, maybe if they were interested in choreography, will intern with a choreographer. We had a student intern with Andy Blankenbuehler when he was kind of in the building stage of Hamilton. And so she kind of got to see what that process was like. Fast forward a couple years later, she was cast in the Cats revival that Andy choreographed and then has now been a part of Hamilton for, oh my gosh, I don't know how many years. And so that was a direct result of that internship.

[21:57] Charlie Murphy: It makes so much sense. And, you know, we tend to talk about the ways in which school or academic environments can be a bit incongruous with acting training, or at least how it's been. And something really cool about that, it's almost an apprenticeship model or almost sort of the old version of how we used to learn acting was like by doing, by watching, by being part of it in the same room with professionals. That's a really cool mix there.

[22:18] Lori Kay Harvey: And they also, they're required to keep a journal while they're doing their internship so that their professor is seeing this is what I did this week. I monitored this audition. I watched so many callbacks for blah, blah, blah, or many other things that they might have to do. And then so then I go to New York with one of my colleagues who does the showcase in April to present the showcase. And that's where I hear them say, you wouldn't believe how much I learned in the last 10 weeks just by being on that side of the table and seeing all the things that we've heard you guys say, but actually now in practice, in the real world, in the professional world.

[22:54] It's so cool. And what a little nice setup to be lifelong learners to have, like, when I'm in a professional world, it should be learning. I should continue growing, not just 22 and I'm cooked and I'm done. Right. But so then just to explain that timing of the showcase. And so there's an internal showcase in the fall, but then the external showcase still happens in April, which is a little bit more typical with the other showcases.

[23:12] And typically, we'll meet up a couple of days beforehand to brush up everything that we put together in the fall. So it's not just a, hey, do you remember what we did five months ago? And then we'll perform the showcase, usually at a theater somewhere in Midtown for all the industry professionals. And what's also neat about the internship is because our students have been building those relationships over that 10-week period. Then they invite all their folks from their office or anyone that they've met in that internship process.

[23:41] Charlie Murphy: Totally. Andy, come see the show. Come on in.

[23:45] Lori Kay Harvey: And we also send out a virtual version of it. So all of their material has been taped on campus before they leave to do their internships. So that once that showcase is done live in New York, we send out a virtual reel of the same thing.

[24:00] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, I love it. We talked a little bit about the sort of liberal arts and some of the other stuff people do in school. Do you have a sense of like, again, you don't have to give me exact percentages. I don't mean to make this all a math podcast, but do you have a sense of like what percentage of kids are going to get a minor or any kids who get double majors? Like how do people use the academic environment of Otterbein with especially the MTs when you have so much, so much dance to be doing, so much acting to be doing, so much singing to be doing? What does that look like in terms of your students' academic profiles?

[24:26] Lori Kay Harvey: So the dance minor comes automatically with those MT dance people. And let me just clarify, there's a musical theater BFA and then there's the MT musical theater with the dance minor BFA, and they're separate. To be honest, Charlie, the schedule is so packed that it's hard for a lot of people to get an additional minor or a double major just because the schedule is so full.

[24:50] However, those that do typically come in from high school with college course credit that they've already completed or they've taken an AP exam and passed with a four or five. And so that can count for one of those gen eds that I talked about. And then they have room in their schedule. And we've had students do it, but they typically have come in again with college credit and they're used to being on overload and just being super, super driven academically. It's hard, but it's doable.

[25:22] Charlie Murphy: The schedule you described is crazy enough on a daily and then also you only get seven semesters. And that's also what makes it really tricky, unless you're taking some virtual class or something else during your eighth semester. But that's tricky.

[25:32] Lori Kay Harvey: That's tricky to figure out. And folks do, I will add, folks do it in sometimes adjacent kind of majors, like an arts administration major. Or folks who play an instrument might want to get a minor in guitar performance. And so if they have time in their schedule and they've come in, like I said, with some other credits, then they can work those lessons in and graduate with that kind of stuff. But I'm not going to lie. It's hard to get it all in in seven semesters.

[25:59] Charlie Murphy: Totally. You mentioned most of the musical theater majors end up sort of graduating and moving to New York or, you know, some, of course, will go other places too. Do you have a sense of from the incoming, like where your students tend to come from? Like how many come from the Midwest, come from Ohio area versus how many come from across the country and across the world?

[26:17] Lori Kay Harvey: Oh, my gosh. I have folks from everywhere because some of my colleagues do a lot of the moonifieds and the...

[26:27] Lori Kay Harvey: SUTE, the different sort of college prep courses in the summer. And one of them in particular, Lenny Leibovitz is such a rock star, and he's such a fantastic acting teacher that he'll meet students in these places. And then they all are drawn to our program because of working with Lenny. So we get folks from all over the country. We've had folks as far as Hawaii come to Otterbein. We get a lot of people from Texas. We have relationships with some of the regional theaters. So folks will work at one of those theaters, hear about an Otterbein student, come see a show, and then want to come and audition for us. So I would say it's from all over. We certainly get a lot of Ohio applicants, but for a small school, it's typical that people are coming from the East Coast, from Florida, from Texas, from California, from Washington State, like I said, from Hawaii.

And it makes it a really fun, unique, diverse group of people, because even though we are a small liberal arts school in central Ohio, the students are drawn to the program because of the reputation of the school. And it ends up being really fun to get to know folks from all over the country.

[27:40] Charlie Murphy: Totally. Yeah. And I mean, your reputation does precede you. I mean, with the years of people in the business, of course, not surprising at all that you get people from all over the country. Let's talk about some cost issues. So our crack research says about $35,000 for tuition, which means we're talking about an all in total of about $48,000 is what at least listed on the website. Do you have a sense of like, how does that work with scholarships? Like what is a typical student pay in terms of, I imagine most people aren't paying completely sticker price, but do you have a sense of like how that works with academic scholarships, talent scholarships? How does that work with you?

[28:19] Lori Kay Harvey: So I did some research ahead of time because I knew you were going to ask me this and I'm not the scholarships person. I'm not the numbers person. And what I know is everyone auditions and if they're accepted, they are offered both scholarships from the music department and scholarships from the theater department as well as academic scholarships. Then of course, students can qualify for need based financial aid. So nobody in the theater program in my 17 years of being there has, as far as I know, has ever paid full price. What that actual final number is, is something I don't know. I would have to find out for you, but I just know that no one's coming in paying full price and all of those scholarships are offered depending on where people come in with grades and GPAs and all the other needs. It's like you're getting scholarships from all angles. We like that. Some schools that it's really only academic or it's more talent based. So that's good to know.

[29:14] Charlie Murphy: My last question is before we take a little break is I want to talk about as people are deciding, you mentioned a lot of people specifically say, Hey, I want to come because I like dancing five days a week. What do you feel like the most typical reasons that people end up signing on the dotted line and saying Otterbein's the school for me? And then are there any reasons where you feel like you sometimes hear someone say, I choose a different school because Otterbein didn't give me this, right? Are there reasons people say final yes or actually decide to go in a different direction?

[29:40] Lori Kay Harvey: Sure. What I hear a lot is that students, number one, will audition because they hear about our graduates. They hear it's a good school, the reputation pursues itself. And then they come and audition and hopefully get a chance to visit. And they realize that the community is very welcoming, extremely hardworking. Our students are the best, best, best ambassadors. When we have perspectives come and visit because they'll follow a student for a day and shadow their classes and get to know what the students are like. And the students are honest about this is a tough program. This is how crazy the schedule is. This is how much academic work I have to do for my gen eds. And they really sell the program on what they love about it.

Most folks who want to come to school here want a smaller school. They don't want a big, huge, big 10 school. They don't want to be in a big city like New York or LA. They're like, we'll get there eventually with our career. So I want to have a college environment that's a little bit more, just more intimate, I would say. And they also really love student teacher ratio that our classes are small and they get so much individual attention. And that is something all of my colleagues and I focus on is you are right in front of me. What do you want to do with your career? What are you interested in building? And we will help you do that and foster everybody's individuality and specific interests. So it's not just, yes, you have to do this. And we're going to produce this stamp, send you on your way.

[31:09] Charlie Murphy: Yep. And when you have 10, 12, whatever the number is, students in a class, you really can get to know them in a different way than you can when there's a hundred kids in a class. It's just a different experience. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a short break and on the back end of the break, we'll dive into the audition process. So back in a flash.

[31:27] Charlie Murphy: Okay. We are back with the wonderful Lori K Harvey, and we're talking about sports on the break. We were talking about sports. I was like, we got to get this back in so we can talk to some Olympics, talk some sports. As we record this, it'll be the Olympics. The Olympics will be over by the time this is released. So hopefully it's just stuck in my brain. That Olympic theme song. Before we dive too deep into the sport world, which I definitely want to do. Let's talk a little bit about the audition process or the tryouts. If we're going to do it that way. Let's talk about the audition process for Otterbein specifically. I want to hear about just generally what you're looking for in an audition. And then maybe we can also talk a little bit about how that looks in pre-screens and how it looks in different mediums in terms of different ways that people can audition. But just first in general, what do you feel like makes a great audition for you?

[32:10] Lori Kay Harvey: Love to see an audition where the person who's performing absolutely exudes joy for what they are doing. And that is the kind of performer that I will instantly sit up and want to hear more. And everyone's always nervous in auditions. That's such a natural thing. But when I see someone doing anything, singing, dancing, monologue, it doesn't matter. And you can just tell with every ounce of their being that they love the performing arts and they love what they're doing. That to me is an instant. I will pay attention more than any, anybody. And I, I'm a nerd. I love musical theater so much. And then when I see someone else have that kind of passion for it, it just fires me up. It's so much fun.

I also love to see just creatures of the theater, people who can take up a space and be bold and make bold choices and not apologize for anything about their performance or who they are. And that they're just individual and unique and original. I think that for me makes it a wonderful audition and usually a really memorable audition.

[33:15] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. I would say, how does that, how does it vary with a prescreen? You know, as you're looking at, and maybe again, not to make you have too many numbers, but if you have a sense of like as you look at the prescreens, how many that are getting a yes versus how many are getting a no. So how many getting invite from the prescreen? Are you looking at those at all differently or is it the same criteria in that prescreen and then in the callback audition?

[33:36] Lori Kay Harvey: I don't do the prescreens and my colleagues do, but I know what they look for. Everyone submits through accepted because we can only see so many people in person. There's just not enough time. And I know they typically receive upwards of 800 submissions on accepted. And then in person we typically invite around 400 to audition in person. So cut in about half of what we're doing that month. And what they're looking for are similar things I think to what I just said, people who really love what they're doing, but of course, or maybe not as important, but just as important is the skills. Singing, dancing, acting, if you play an instrument showing that. So we'll have specific requirements that we ask for depending on your degree track that you're applying.

And then there's always a wild card video. And those are some of the really fun things where I see people sharing their own art they've created or playing a didgeridoo or an accordion or some like weird off the wall instrument that often you see more of their personality when they're doing those wild card videos. And then we invite about 400 or so to audition in person and those come to us in all the probably typical ways. We do the unified auditions in New York in January, in Chicago and in February and then in LA also in February. We have typically three on campus audition days in December, January, February. And then we through COVID had to do everything virtually and we have now kept a virtual audition day as part of our recruiting season to be able to reach folks who maybe can't get to us or get to one of those unified auditions.

[35:22] Charlie Murphy: And what do one of those callbacks look like for you in terms of, you know, of course they're gonna do their material. Are you giving an interview? Are you giving adjustments often? Are you giving them sort of those redirects? How does that work in the room with Audubon?

[35:33] Lori Kay Harvey: Yeah, they all come in and they perform what they've prepared. If they're acting, it's typically two monologues. And I know my colleague on the acting side, if they have a Shakespeare, always wants to see a Shakespeare in addition to a more contemporary piece. The musical theater do typically two songs that are contrasting. And there's also a dance call that is led by a chair of our dance department, Diva Stella Kane. So she has in some course of that audition process, either seen their dance prescreen or held an actual in-person dance call. So they dance, they do their two songs. And then sometimes we will ask for monologues as well. It really just depends on what we see in front of us and what we want to work with.

If we see someone, or if I hear someone has a magnificent voice and I can tell they can sing the phone book, one of my colleagues might say, do you have any monologues? What did you bring? Let's hear blah, blah, blah, just so we can see a little bit more of that performer's portfolio. And then we also want to see what they're like. So we might ask them a question. Why did you audition for Audubon? Or if we see something on their resume that sparks a conversation just to get them out of, Oh my gosh, I'm performing. I'm nervous. I'm doing my thing. I'm prepared. And actually see the real person and what they're all about and kind of the essence of the auditionee.

[36:53] Charlie Murphy: Yep. I love it. What does the phone book sound like? Is there a tune to it or something that I should know about? I'm like, isn't it a great audition song? People should be bringing in the phone book. My gosh, no one ever does it. I feel like I always see that someone loves a great voice and like that person could sing me the phone book.

[37:08] Lori Kay Harvey: I definitely say that with like with monologues. So yes, you could act the phone book. I've never heard sing the phone book. What about in terms of academically? So if you like a person artistically, what do we need in terms of academic admission? Is it just a passing a bar? Does the academic department sort of get to weigh in, in terms of the office of admission? How does that work in terms of grades, SATs, all those essays, other parts of the application?

[37:30] Lori Kay Harvey: I'm so glad you asked because we always have on our recruiting days, an admissions counselor with us. And that person is there to answer anything related to admission to Otterbein University itself. Oftentimes if folks have submitted on accepted, they've already sent in their application to Otterbein and they'll know whether or not they've been accepted to the university. Sometimes they haven't. And then if we really like someone and we want to offer them a spot, we'll say, please follow up with our admissions representative and make sure you do the academic side of this. As far as SATs and grade point averages, I'm not actually sure what that bar is, but I could certainly find out.

[38:14] Charlie Murphy: And for you, when you're talking about sometimes they haven't, you're talking about a walk-in audition where someone might walk in having not applied already to the university and not knowing, and then they would talk to the office of admissions?

[38:24] Lori Kay Harvey: To be honest, Charlie, we used to do a lot more walk-ins and anymore, we are just so packed that we don't have to, sometimes we go through four days in Chicago with a 45 minute lunch break and that's it. It's just jam packed. So every once in a while we can work in walk-ins if there just happens to be a day where someone cancels or doesn't show up because they're sick and there's an opening and you know, people will walk by and drop their headshot and resume and say, Hey, I'm interested. Can you have your team look? And we certainly look at them if we have time, but it's definitely not guaranteed. You heard here folks do not rely on a walk-in at Unifieds for Audubon. They're saying they'll be full and we're believing them.

[39:05] Charlie Murphy: I'd love to hear like what else you think about as you're filling out a class, especially, you know, it's an intimate class. You're thinking 10-ish MTs and 10-ish actors. That's a small number of human beings. Of course, you're looking for talent. You're looking for joy, those things that you mentioned, you know, as you're filling out a class, are you conscious of stuff like gender balance and height balance, size, racial diversity, you know, neurodiversity? Are you thinking about, Hey, what is this group of 10 people I'm putting together and how will they fit as an ensemble? Or is it more the 10 people I want who are the best? I'm just going to say yes to them kind of regardless of how that shakes out.

[39:35] Lori Kay Harvey: That is a loaded question because I think it's yes to all of that.

[39:40] Lori Kay Harvey: We certainly look at the world and see what the world is and want to be able to represent that in our classes and in our productions, most importantly. And if everybody looks the same, you can't do that. So, yes, we want to look for people with the skills, because it would not be nice if I accepted someone who just can't do the thing. I'd be wasting their parents' money. But we certainly then also want to have, and we're in Central Ohio, folks often say, like, you guys are not as diverse as you could be. But I also say, we're not in a big city; we don't necessarily get folks who want to live in a smaller town when they're going to college. That being said, we have made a huge effort, I would say, in the last ten years to really expand what our classes look like from everything you just mentioned.

Because that's what the theater is doing, and that's what the plays are doing, and that's what the musicals are doing, as far as the roles and what they're writing for. And we, I mean, Audubon itself is extremely focused on diversity, and we just hired a diversity officer, I think it was last school year, for recruitment in general, just so that our school looks like the world. And we try to do that with teachers, as well, to make sure that there are teachers of all different backgrounds, and orientations, and genders, and all that, so that students can feel comfortable.

[41:05] Charlie Murphy: I love it. What about waitlist movement? You mentioned, as you don't get the class sizes exactly, because, of course, you offer more spots than ultimately people are going to say yes to, and sometimes you overyield, right? But how does it work if you were to have openings? How does sort of waitlist movement work for you as that happens?

[41:21] Lori Kay Harvey: Typically, it will happen around this time of year, where we know we have our class, but then someone will book a job and decide they don't want to go to college right away, and then there's an opening. So then we'll go to our waitlist and make calls sometime in the summer before that incoming freshman year or freshman class would come to orientation. And you see this time of year, but people may not know, we're recording this on August 1st, so this time of year being pretty late in the year.

[41:45] Charlie Murphy: Right, like middle of the summer. I mean, we typically, I know this past year, there was an issue with FAFSA, so lots of folks couldn't get their financial aid packages in a timely manner, so our acceptance date was pushed back a little bit. But typically, we want everyone to tell us by May 1st if they're coming. COVID, that all got a little changed as well, but for the most part, we know who our incoming class is by the beginning of May. And then we have the summer months if folks decide to go elsewhere or do something else to make offers off of the waitlist. It's just great. I mean, some of the people who are listening to this are sophomores who are thinking, I'm done May 1st. And of course, you are done May 1st. But then hearing, yeah, I mean, I had a classmate join us on August 7th because someone took a recording contract and there was a spot open and someone joined. I mean, it's like, it can go as late as that. It's crazy.

[42:35] Lori Kay Harvey: You mentioned that you guys are doing those online auditions. Those are just one day as of now for online auditions if I wanted to look it out of mind?

[42:39] Charlie Murphy: Yes.

[42:41] Lori Kay Harvey: I love it. And how do you look at those differently if you do in terms of the audition experience? Or I guess, how does that work differently than it does for the in-person auditions?

[42:50] Lori Kay Harvey: Well, because everyone has submitted through Accepted for the pre-screening process anyway, we've all seen singing, dancing, acting on Accepted before seeing that person in the virtual audition. But then when they come in to the virtual room, it's just like we're doing right now. You would see the person on the screen and then my colleagues and I would be the smaller boxes underneath. We would introduce ourselves, tell them what we want to see, and then they would perform their pieces. And we would have, just like we would in person, a conversation afterward about some of those similar questions I already mentioned.

[43:22] Charlie Murphy: It's a virtual dance call as well, or would it be more of a just...

[43:25] Lori Kay Harvey: No, because we're not in person, our dance director will just look at their dance submissions. And the other thing is, if she sees something that she really likes, she'll say, do you have more videos you can send me of this type of thing? Or if it's just a ballet combination and a jazz combination she's seen, she'll want to see modern or tap just depending on what they've already sent in. And then she'll just say, get that to us through our admissions counselor, and we can adjudicate a little bit better on that in that way. I will honestly say though, virtual auditions are harder because you don't get the energy in the room like you do when someone is in person. And I know it's impossible for people to travel all over the country to audition for sometimes 15, 18 schools.

It's insane to me how many people audition for so many schools. But we do our best to keep that in mind and just know we're on a computer and we're on headsets, and we're going to do our best to give all of our attention to this person and give them the best opportunity to succeed.

[44:28] Charlie Murphy: It's so true. It's so true. I mean, they're here to stay, they're inevitable, but definitely from an acting perspective, it feels worse. It's not as fun to be in the room, but boy, it's the professional world. I mean, it is 95% of your auditions when you first get out of school. I mean, who knows four years from now, maybe it'll adjust a little bit back, but it's a huge percentage that you're going to start off doing self-tapes. And then maybe you get a call back in person, but so much of it is self-tapes to start off. Okay, let's dive into some of the juicy stuff. I mean, really, it's only if you have any fun juice. No, I just wanted to talk about sports. You said you and your husband are always making sports to theater metaphors, which is basically the entire purpose of this podcast.

What you got? What's your favorite sort of way in which you think of sports? And you mentioned here we're in the Olympics. What feels like you're like, this is how these two things are the most related.

[45:09] Lori Kay Harvey: We did some of this on the break, but I want to get it into the record. Okay, so my husband played college football. I went to music school, but we're always talking in parallel words when I'm talking about my work, and he's talking about sports and how much he loves sports. So for sure, a pot of array is a grapevine. Halftime is intermission. Rehearsal, play practice is just three days. Like, come on, it's just three days, especially with all that you guys are dancing. You're basically doing three days. My God. I mean, yeah, between dance class and then in a musical theater class, you're probably dancing at some point and then rehearsals every night, three days. You're all ice baths and PT in the same way. You got to cool off those muscles.

[46:01] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All the chiropractic and kinesiology references. We have so many hilarious, I always have neck issues because I play the piano and conduct and head bop all day. And he talks about his sports injuries and I'm like, yeah, okay, well I need a massage because I've been doing this conducting lame this for three hours. What else do we talk about with sports? Just, I guess the more serious stuff is like the discipline that is required for sports is to me entirely what is required to have a successful performing arts career because you have to keep your physical self in shape, your mental self, your vocal self. All of that has to be in fighting condition, athletic position, we like to call it so that you can do your best in any given scenario.

Whether it's trying to book the job and the audition or the callback, or once you get the job and you're in the rigorous rehearsal schedules and tech and eight out of tens. And I had a tech rehearsal once where I was in Beauty and the Beast and I had a grapefruit on the top of my head for be our guest with pin curls and my mic pack in the back of the wig with the grapefruit. I'm not kidding, it was this big for 10 hours one day in that costume and it hurt and I had to recover. But it's just part of that rigor and the discipline that's required for a performing arts career I think is so similar to sports and the dedication that's required.

[47:28] Lori Kay Harvey: And so much of what we talk about on the podcast because we do these takeaways after the interviews, the psychological similarities too, in terms of both the team psychology of what it is to be in an ensemble and work together on stage, but then especially for the longer career, some of that individual psychology of what it is to compete. The Olympics just happened and there's the great men's gymnastics triumph where the guy was sitting there visualizing and silent. His whole team is celebrating, but he's really just kidding. He's like, I got to go in and do that pommel horse. I'm like, that looks like someone outside the room about to prepare for an audition. That's exactly what he did.

[48:05] Charlie Murphy: Literally. He had his glasses on and he was just in his zone and prepping and knowing that I got to go and do and clinch this thing at the end of all of it, to wait a whole day to just do that one thing. It's pressure. We've all seen that at Pearl Studios in the hallway and be like, leave that guy alone. He's in his zone. He's been waiting for two hours to get into that room. He's about to book this thing. I love it.

[48:28] Lori Kay Harvey: I'm so glad you asked about the longevity of the career too, because we often talk to our students about, yes, you're here for four years and you're training rigorously for this thing you want to go out and do that's very competitive, very difficult. What are you going to do to fill the rest of your life with things that bring you joy, things that challenge you, people that build you up, that kind of stuff? Because like you just said, Charlie, the psychological part of it is a huge, I think it can be a huge challenge for folks who aren't ready for it, especially at Audubon where we're a smaller program. Our students get a lot of opportunities to perform to then go to a big city like New York and have that many more thousands of people competing.

And so we really try to be honest and direct with them about fill your life with other stuff that is going to bring you satisfaction and challenge and joy, because you're not all going to work all the time every month of every year. And what else can you do so that you can be creative and be artistic and fill that part of you and your personality? And I think that's a big component of our liberal arts degree that's helpful because our students are taking all these other classes, developing other interests, and many of them keep that performer essence, but they do other things with it. One girl, MT graduate, just got her law degree. I'm like, you are Elle Woods, but she still performs a lot. So, and a lot of them do that.

They'll find their way into other areas because in our liberal arts degree and in the rigorous curriculum that we deliver, it's multifaceted in so many areas that they develop interests and can pursue those beyond college.

[50:08] Charlie Murphy: Well, yeah, we definitely talk about all the transferable skills of a BFA, but I mean, I do think there's something, I love that word fill, because I think it's something that can be kind of shocking for, especially our high school listeners. A lot of our listeners are, you know, 16, 17, kind of looking at this process. If they've been at a rigorous high school, you know, and then they've been doing musicals out all night and they've been just like filling their schedule and then they go to a competitive BFA program and they fill their time and it's so full of acting, singing, dancing all night, every night, and then you can graduate and there can be this real void of like, it's not happening for me.

My schedule's not like made for me anymore. So how do you fill your life and hopefully keep filling it with your art if it's something that's important to you, because it sort of happens for you for a period of time and then all of a sudden it doesn't and it can be really hard to like self-fill if you need to go like, do I have to get in class? How do I keep dancing? I've been dancing five days a week for four years and then what do I do? Just keep at my art when I don't have a job, because you're not going to have a job all the time. It's really tricky.

[51:08] Lori Kay Harvey: I think that's important for high schoolers to hear because educators can deliver information. We can teach you how to do something that you don't already do or help you progress and get better at that thing, but we can't make you love what you do. That has to come, I think, from the inside and I think that's the hardest thing I see is when students get out and they're talented, but they just don't pursue it as much because it's the rejection is hard. I had a teacher at Indiana, an acting teacher, who told us the statistics and he said of every professional actor who graduates from college, one percent of them work consistently over a 12-month period. Now, this was a while ago, Charlie, but I'm not sure if those statistics are all that different because I feel like there are so many BFA programs now putting out wonderfully talented people that the competition is just as fierce, if not more.

[52:00] Charlie Murphy: The competition is really fierce and that love, sometimes it's also like you can have the love of the art form, but does it mean you necessarily have the love of this lifestyle? There's a different thing going, I love acting, singing, dancing. I will show up to rehearsal, no problem, but to go, do you love what it takes to audition and book the part and keep yourself competitive all the time? It's a different love. It's a different grind than it is in the scholastic world. I would say one other thing just because you made me think of it. We do have a BA in theater and the reason I want to talk about it is kind of where some of those students end up. So folks, we can think of it kind of as a generalist theater degree and we'll get students who come and they want to do a lot of things and so the BA seems to be a good curriculum for them and a lot of them will go on to do arts administration, company management, stage management, all of those or like being an assistant to the artistic director at a...

[52:54] Lori Kay Harvey: And those folks, a lot of our BFA performers will see and say, oh, that is an interest of mine. I want to see how they're doing that. Or at least, you know, sort of steal some of their interests and use that once they graduate because they'll see our BA students doing that while they're here. And I think that's a really neat kind of blending of our students' interests and how they see each other pursuing different things. Sorry, go ahead.

[53:22] Charlie Murphy: No, that was it. I just want to wrap with a little bit of, I also know you're a parent, so I want to give a little advice to the parents of this process. Your kids, I guess, are not yet doing this collegiate process, but from the students that you've watched going through this and parents you've talked to, you know, any advice to the parents of sort of how they can help their child navigate this process, how they can help support them? What have you found is the most sort of successful from a parental perspective?

[53:42] Lori Kay Harvey: Sure. For sure, I can only speak to Otterbein's audition requirements, but I imagine most schools are like this. Everything is really well spelled out on our website about how to apply, how to submit for the audition process through Accepted, and then how the in-person things work. And then if you are then invited to audition, and I know a lot of parents then travel with their kids all over the place to see these, to do these auditions, my advice to the parents would just be to let them shine. Let them prepare your kid in the best way that they could be relaxed, rested, but also enthusiastic and energized about pursuing a career in this art form. Because I know the kids that look like they've been polished to the nth degree tend to have so much stress in their auditions because they just want to be perfect.

And people screw up a word; we love that. We love it when someone starts something and it goes awry and they start over because then you see a little bit more of the real person because we're all human beings. None of us get perfect all the time. So just preparing your kid to enjoy the process, even though it's a tiresome one because there are so many places you have to be in. I know every school might have a little different audition criteria, but to bring their energy and their joy to it. As far as Otterbein, I would say a lot of students end up coming here because they visit. They come and they do one of those shadow days I mentioned. They'll see a production of something or a rehearsal of something, and they'll see our students at work and the faculty at work doing it.

And that I think is a wonderful way to really experience what an Otterbein education could bring their child in the most organic way because you're seeing a day-in and day-out kind of situation. And then you also can see the facilities. You can see the town. You could drive around and feel like, okay, I'd be comfortable with my kid being here or not for whatever reason. And that I think parents who can sort of see where their kid's going to be for four years in play is helpful. I know if I were a parent, that would make me feel better about where my kid was going.

[56:02] Charlie Murphy: Totally agree. Lori Kay, this was so fun. Where should people check out more information if they want to? You mentioned the website. Is that the best place for information? Do you like us on socials? Is there anything else that we should sort of places where people should check out if they want to hear more about Otterbein?

[56:13] Lori Kay Harvey: Yes. So our website has all the information about our BFA programs, our BA programs, and how to apply. It has bios of all the faculty. And I would tell people to check both the music website as well as the theater website because we do do so much crossover teaching between the two departments. As far as socials, we have lots of Instagram and Facebook action. And our students are typically running that because we have a staff person who's managing it all. But then the students do it because they're like, we're the ones in rehearsal. We're the ones in the performances. And so they're constantly doing, what do they call it? Instagram takeovers, where someone, we're opening night of a show. And so one person is following the whole day to tell them, this is what I did from eight to four.

Then I went and ate, and I'm getting ready for this show. And here it is. I would also say if folks are looking for where our students are after graduation, Otter's in the Apple. Otterbein, Otter's in the Apple, is a really great Instagram page. And that's managed by one of our alum. And it gets updated all the time about where our alumni are working in all sorts of environments. Broadway shows, regional theater, cruise ships, company management, stage management. And it'll just say, blah, blah, blah, BFA from 2016 is performing here at this theater or in this show. And that's a great way to just sort of see what our current alumni are doing.

[57:39] Charlie Murphy: I love it. Otter's in the Apple. All right. Well, thank you, Lori Kay. Really appreciate the time. This was so fun.

[57:44] Lori Kay Harvey: Thank you, Charlie. So nice to meet you.

[57:53] Charlie Murphy: Yes, yes, yes. So cool to chat with Lori Kay. Anytime we can do a sports metaphor on a college episode, you know I sit up higher in my chair. And, you know, listening back, I'm not sure exactly what I was hoping to hear in that vibes answer about Otterbein as an overall school. I asked it kind of twice at the top. It feels like I'm pressing for something specific, but honestly, I just have that noted in my head because it's feedback we've gotten from a lot of students who have visited Otterbein over the years, that it is a very specific vibe, which some people are huge fans of and some less so. I mean, this, of course, is true of all schools and their vibes and always funny to try to parse out, you know, what is more unique than other schools' uniqueness.

But I do think there's something there. And as Lori Kay says, nothing can replace the experience of a visit, especially as an admitted student. But we're going to keep searching for the vibes on this podcast, for sure.

[58:37] Charlie Murphy: And that's actually another note I had from listening back. Is that difficulty of me asking schools to describe what makes them unique in general? You know, I think I'm just going to try to avoid and kind of rephrase that question and at least not ask it exactly that way in the future. This certainly isn't something that was unique to Lori Kay or this interview, but I do think it is really tough for any faculty member who's worked primarily at one school to describe what makes their program unique when they don't know the whole landscape. I remember encountering this with my old professors when I was just like a few years into working on this process, now many moons ago, 15 some years ago, just being amazed at how little they understood the process outside of their own school.

You know, what other schools were asking for in the process, how the different students navigated their audition seasons. They were all really fascinated in asking me questions. And I was like, you don't know this. This is like the most basic stuff about this process. But often the answer was no, they knew their process. They knew how Carnegie Mellon worked. But then that came up in the interview a bit, you know, some conversations like we're conservatory style within a liberal arts environment or, you know, this cross-pollination between our actors and our musical theater majors, with both of which Lori Kay mentioned makes Otterbein unique, but we know certainly are present at other schools as well.

And I'm not overly parsing that word, right? We can certainly hear the unique in a more colloquial way as something like special rather than needing to be singular. But I think even with that generous reading, frequent listeners to the pod will note that neither of these elements are particularly unusual in other schools. And worth noting for those keen listeners, as we recently did a takeaway on how people use the words conservatory and liberal arts just as terms in general, whereas I think in general, it's more helpful to study the credit hours in a typical day rather than saying, is this a conservatory style or is it liberal arts? This is a great example of hearing the word liberal arts, but you can see based on the curriculum, this wouldn't be a school on the far right side on that liberal arts end of the BFA spectrum, where some schools do offer the possibility of a double major, and they say really encouraged non-theater related minors.

And Lori Kay described the difficulty of getting a minor. So it's just a bit tricky using that language to try to place a school rather than looking at the actual daily schedules. Again, not unusual to offer those non-major classes, but then still have it be very difficult in a full schedule to actually put together a minor when you're, for instance, in this case, dancing five days a week in a BFA program. Something's always got to give schedule-wise, and no school has extra hours in the day to give you. So if you're spending more time on one thing, academics, you're spending less time on something else. That's true within the disciplines as well.

[1:01:20] Charlie Murphy: And we've talked, I think, a decent amount about school size recently, but I also just want to note when we talk about Otterbein that this is a great example of a very small class in terms of the amount of attention you can get. And then we've talked about the positive and negatives of bigger schools, smaller schools, all that stuff, I think, is stuff that we've hit before. But this is really a pretty small class when you talk about 10. I cannot possibly go by all of those delicious sports metaphors and not grab a few of them and go a bit deeper into them, right? So let's do that. I really like that Lori Kay brought up transferable skills in this section. I've often used the metaphor of doing a competitive BFA program is kind of like playing D1 in college, D1, the Division 1 sports, that is.

It's certainly not a guarantee that you're going to be successful in the NFL or the MLB. In fact, statistically, more people who played D1 don't make the majors than do, but it is still a real accomplishment in and of its own in terms of what it brings you to your life, right? To be at that level and train for excellence, I think it really does transfer positively in a way that a lot of D1 athletes parlay their skills into other careers, often, very often related to their sport in some way. I mean, like a lot of our BFA theater people often will work in the theater industry, even if they don't end up being professional actors, but not necessarily so. I think there is real value to training and discipline and knowing what it is to strive for greatness in so many aspects of life, no matter what you end up doing.

[1:02:25] Charlie Murphy: And also, I just can't go past that Olympics metaphor in terms of psychological prep. We've talked about it a bit on the pod, but I actually don't know how deeply we've dived into it. We may have to do a little bit more on it at some point. It is now long enough ago that I think people are not going to remember that specific men's gymnastic moment. I think that was made now two or three months ago now. But you can imagine what we described in that interview, and maybe you remember at least the meme of it, right? The value of visualization and being truly prepared for this moment. Now, as a professional actor, you're hopefully getting to audition more than once every four years. I hope so. Sometimes it feels like it's that long between auditions.

But when you're auditioning for college, you're often spending two years preparing for a one eight-minute audition that you're going to get with a school, right? If you get a callback from the pre-screen. And some auditions are longer. Of course, some auditions have multiple parts. Some really could be multiple hours between all the different passing back and forth of rooms, but still not hours of you in the room ever, really. And you do get a lot of cracks at the apple. That's why we talk about the strategy of setting up your process in a way that you're in really tip-top shape by the time you're auditioning for your favorite schools and not putting too many eggs in your basket of one favorite school.

So you do have the ability to have multiple cracks and extend those eight minutes over as much time as you possibly can. But for those students who do have that one dream school, and again, we don't encourage you to have one dream school, but we do encourage you to dream. But if you do, you say, I tried to dream and I only have this one school in my head. It really is months of preparation and then one shot, which can be really quick. That's part of why we talk about psychological prep in the way we do. How can you do everything possible to ensure that you're in the best headspace to do your best work? The technical skill you've been working on, of course that's important, but are you able to center yourself and really show up for yourself in that room with the fullness of what you can do?

That takes practice and not just repetition, right? Some of that, of course, you're going to learn by doing. Some of it kind of comes naturally just with more experience. Certainly nerves will get easier by doing it just naturally, but I do think most actors end up wanting to have a dedicated process and a dedicated routine of what works for them that gives them comfort and consistency so that they're peaking at the right moments. How do you psychologically cool down and then ramp up in short order? It doesn't have to be the visualization exercise of that pomelo or sky. See, now I've forgotten his name. I don't remember what he was, but we'll call him pomelo or sky for now, but it should definitely be something that is tailored to what you need.

Don't let some random nervous friend and their desire to chat about high school be the reason you fell off center for your big audition. You want to take control of what you need so that you can consciously step into those big audition rooms.

[1:05:03] Charlie Murphy: Okay, I'm cutting myself off for more takeaways. I got thoughts. I wanted to write stuff about injuries and recovery from an ACL injury and the passion that you need for it and all these different things, but I could do another 20 minutes on the sports of theater metaphors, and I don't want these takeaways to turn into 20-minute episodes of themselves afterward. That's just going to become something a little bit different. I got to leave some meat on the bone for the next 200 episodes, I guess, is another way of putting that. So, that will do it for another episode of Mapping the College Edition, produced by Kelly Prendergast and Megan Courtier. Rate and review us if you want to give me a honeymoon present, and follow us on Instagram at mappingthecollegeedition, however you follow people on Instagram.

And as always, check us out at mtca.com. That's mtca.com. M-T-C-A dot com for help with your individual college prep needs. To my young artists out there who are wannabe social media aggregators, please don't clip out me saying I wear leotards a lot and use it out of context. We'll talk to you next week!