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[0:00] Charlie Murphy: Hello, hello, and welcome to Mapping The College Audition and our summer break. I'm hoping as you listen to this that I'm still Charlie Murphy, that I'm still director of MTCA and haven't been ousted in some kind of coup, and that we're still located at mtca.com. I hope you're enjoying some fun in the sun as you listen to this. Of course, I'm recording many weeks in advance now. This is the third of our four audio blogs. These will all be newly released audio blogs, meaning they haven't yet been released on the pod, but you may have read them already on our website, blog, or substack. This one from right after Unifieds of this year. Hope you enjoy. This one is titled, Why Do I Even NEED Coaching? Can't I do this on my own?

[0:53] Charlie Murphy: As I sit down to write this blog, we've just wrapped our whirlwind tour of the National Unifieds auditions in New York City, Chicago, and LA once again. This is my 19th year doing this process, with nearly that many times making this particular cross-country trip, and each year I leave full of crazy stories and big feelings from the rollercoaster ride that each audition cycle brings. Each year in our green rooms, at our kickoff meetings, walking through the hallways, and in our text groups, I am so proud of this amazing team of humans, not just for their talent and their passion, but for the supportive community they have created. During the green room interviews we do for the podcast, it was inspiring to hear how many of our students spoke of the warm and inclusive group they created to lift each other up and help each other out through this stressful process.

And inevitably, I am always struck each year by a guilty pang when I see students and parents navigating this difficult process on their own. Whether in the cramped hallways of Pearl Studios or the overtaxed elevators of the Palmer House, you can often spot these families by a terrified look or a sinking feeling that everyone else seems to know what they're doing, and do they all seem to know each other? While they themselves feel lost and overwhelmed. I spoke about this in my most recent intro on the pod, and I want to say it in writing too, that we at MTCA are very much against any kind of exclusivity or clickishness. If you find yourself stumbling across these words, and you're ever lost in this kind of audition scenario, I hope you will reach out to an MTCA person wearing a name tag or a button, and I know they will be glad to help you out.

[2:33] Charlie Murphy: I say all that by way of an intro to a blog about the value of coaching, because I want to start out by saying what coaching is not about. In my opinion, you should not choose to work with any person or any coaching team based on any kind of perception of access. That goes for MTCA or any other team group person out there. It's human nature to think, oh, she booked that part because of nepotism, or it was because he knew the right people, or even they cast them because they're TikTok followers. And that's not to say that such things are never the case in the professional theater world or in other professions, but as I often like to say, this college process really is a subjective meritocracy.

It's frustratingly subjective, but it's beautifully meritocratic, meaning when you walk in the room, these colleges are genuinely looking for the best people for their program without favor, and they are not giving you a boost because a coach greased the palm. So if it's not about access, which I think too many parents spend too much focus on, why do you even need coaching?

[3:33] Charlie Murphy: In my opinion, the reason for coaching is all about the value of process. At the end of the day, what an expert coach can provide you will go beyond tips and tricks and go beyond insider information. They can simply help you be the best version of yourself. And that's where I think it's essential for you to find the right coach and someone who is an expert in this specific process, because you certainly hear about the flip side of that. When colleges will talk about material being overcoached, they're describing something that is directed, choreographed, or planned within an inch of its life. And damningly, I think they are often describing a package of material that smells so much like a coach that it becomes harder to detect the nature of the student underneath.

These are the perils of what I call bad coaching. If we detect the coach's ego, the coach's forced choices on the student, then we're watching a student wearing their coach's clothing, and it becomes counterproductive to the experience of revealing the student's own unique personality and what they have to offer. And that's true no matter how fashionable that coach's clothing may be. And I think this is what leads many students to think, well, should I just do this on my own? At least it'll be me making the choices, right? And honestly, if there was only a choice between bad coaching and no coaching at all, I would opt for that option.

[5:01] Charlie Murphy: Faculty members absolutely try to look hard at raw students and see the talent underneath, even if a student's ill-informed choices may be juvenile or inappropriate. And honestly, for the phenomenally talented student, they really could sing the Star Spangled Banner and monologue the Pledge of Allegiance and still get into school. You know, from the faculty members' perspective, they're not accepting the student's choices in the room, but the human being who comes along with those choices. But why then would I spend all this time and money on coaching? Don't you run a coaching company, Charlie? Well, for the 99% of our students who aren't Lady Gaga in A Star is Born at 17 years old, going through this audition process with integrity and expert guidance can be a huge advantage in a young person's ability to access their truest, most authentic version of themselves and consistently bring that person in the room.

[6:21] Charlie Murphy: For those of you who are just starting out with this process, I cannot accurately describe how hard of a thing it is to ultimately do. Imagine the experience of walking into a room of strangers, going up to an accompanist who's a stranger, singing two contrasting songs immediately followed by two contrasting monologues, potentially followed by interview questions and adjustments on your material, the specifics of which you cannot know in advance. It is a Herculean feat. We often use the Olympics analogy for this process, but it really is like doing a full floor routine. Each individual aspect of it takes a lot of practice, and you have to put it all together and stick the landing with confidence and ease.

And I know some parents feel like, well, if my kid was really talented enough to do this, why should they need a coach to tell them what to do? And I certainly understand that instinct. But if you think about that Olympics analogy, how many of those athletes are getting to that elite level without a coach or really a series of coaches? Or my regular readers and listeners will know my favorite basketball player is Steph Curry, an NBA player widely acknowledged to be the greatest shooter of all time, and he has a shooting coach. Does that mean Steph Curry isn't great on his own? Of course not. But he sees the benefit of an outside eye with expertise and perspective that can help him be a better version of himself, even though he is the best in the world.

[7:00] Charlie Murphy: And pivotally with MTCA, or in fairness, any expert coach on this process doesn't just have to be MTCA, we are never going to actively make choices for our students. We know these are not our auditions, but yours. What we can provide for you alongside that expert outside eye and mirror to your artistic instincts is a process by which you can explore your growing and evolving personality and make choices for yourself that may feel more you than the choices that you actually would have come up with on your own. The same way a great therapist isn't going to tell you what to do in life, but may be able to help you discover smart life choices and see situations with different perspectives. In listening to your goals and dreams for yourself and presenting material to you that you might not have encountered on your own, you'll see possibilities for representing yourself you may not have seen before.

It's still always going to be you in the center. You always decide on the material and the artistic choices you want to make, but having an expert eye on the outside who's been through this process before, we can help you see your truest intention better than your initial perception of it.

[8:04] Charlie Murphy: In the arts world, we often talk about freedom within structure. Having a bit of structure and guidance is often the thing to unlock real freedom, as opposed to the experience of staring at a blank page of infinite possibilities. And honestly, when doing it on their own, most students don't take themselves through a distinct process at all, but instead tend to mimic the experiences of the one or two friends they know who've gone through the process, or even worse, resort to the terrors of social media for guidance. It's not just that they will not have ready access to a vast library of songs and monologues at a young age, which of course few students do, but that they will zero in on a singular answer of the perfect song based on what they can Google.

So instead of being themselves, they're now going to be engaged in mimicry of the last student they know who got into their dream school on YouTube, or the tips and tricks of what TikTok tells them to do. And that is not a recipe for artistry, but a recipe for disaster.

[9:03] Charlie Murphy: All of which is to say, there are many benefits to coaching and to working with expert educators in general, from skill building growth to helping navigate this vulnerable and harrowing process in all of its myriad ways, from material selection to strategic guidance based on your goals. Now, does that mean you need a coach? No, I don't believe it does. There absolutely are those unique people who can succeed in this process on their own. I think they tend to be truly remarkable and frequently talented, but they do exist. And I would not choose a coach based on any perception of access or because you think they have unique insider info, or this is the only one way to do this or anything of that nature. But instead, you should choose a coach that will help you make this process your own. A coach who will help you become a more distilled and authentic version of yourself.

[9:48] Charlie Murphy: All right. I hope you enjoyed that audio blog and please come back next week for some more summer break content. And we'll be back with season six in August. Until then, enjoy your summers.