I came, I saw, I auditioned

Well, it's been 13,000kms, 27 hours of international transit, one 11 hour overnight bus trip and almost two hours of waiting in a gym corridor, but I have finally auditioned for the part of Captain Von Trapp in Revelstoke's production of The Sound of Music.

Sadly, I did not get video. This is because I went to the toilet (nerves) and when I came back I was called straight in. Plus, the people there were taking it all pretty seriously, so it would have been a bit awkward. And besides, I'd already had to point out that I have no fixed address, no telephone number, and that ideally I'd like to play the Mother Superior. Setting up the camera would have been pushing my luck. And besides, I took the whole thing pretty damn seriously, so it would have just been uncomfortable to watch, rather than funny as such.

OK, so the details you're all dying for. The song was Edelweiss. They played the piano in some funny key which meant I had to sing really low, which was fine, because having succesfully completed puberty I can sing low about as well as I can sing anything, for whatever that's worth. So then they made me sing it again in a more normal range. Believe it or not they seemed vaguely happy with the results.

So then they made me read some lines from a script. The whole time they asked questions like "How well do you know the film" and I tried to convey, without seeming like there was anything measurably wrong with me, that I knew it inappropriately well.

And then they made me dance.

I had to waltz with one of the audition judge people while singing Edelweiss. Years of frisbee coaching have enabled me to completely disconnect what I say from what the rest of me does, with the result that apparently my singing improved while waltzing. And for those of you who are wondering, I can, in a very loose and vague sense of the word, waltz. It's considered an essential part of a well rounded philosophy degree.

One tricky thing about the whole experience is that I've got no idea of the context of this whole event. People seemed suprisingly serious about the production - one guy even had one of those radio headsets you see in movies about Broadway. I'm not sure whether there was anyone to talk to on that radio, but if there had been he was all set up for hands free convenience. I don't know if Revelstoke is the traditional retiring place of profession musicians from the Canadian Musical Theatre Symphony Orchestra or the place that gets left out when the judges from "Canada's Got Talent" roam the country looking for new stars.

The biggest risks so far are (yep, it feels about time for a dot-point list):

• They don't seem to have many male applicants. In fact the phrase they used was something like "Any breathing male is in."
• They seemed disturbingly happy with my audition. Much happier than my last audience, which was when I sang in a barbershop trio at a Canberra Chinese Community Mother's Day Concert (as the only member of the room not in the Canberra Chinese Community, this was awkward).
• I put down on my application form-type-thing that I was willing to cut my hair and grow/shave/change my facial hair because I was briefly feeling competitive and I wanted to beat an old guy with a beard who'd just wandered in and was making me feel threatened. Now I suspect that the old guy may have been a mole that the producers called in to hustle me.

On the other hand, there are a few things in my favour:

• I told them I would need to find work and somewhere to live. They were a bit concerned about the risk that I wouldn't be able to take on any role because of this. With any luck this could be the crack of doubt that bring my chances crumbling down.
• Surely, when a community theatre group puts on a show like this, they have someone in mind for this kind of role. You wouldn't rely on some random guy travelling across the world to fill your major role. You'd think "Well, we've got a strong male lead and a strong female lead and a thousand kids - we can do The Sound of Music!". And if you didn't have someone in mind for the major male roles you'd probably do something androgenous like Cats! or that musical about the women's football team that gets stranded on a life-raft with no men within 1000 nautical miles.
• Beard guy could be a total gun. In fact, to beat me he would only have to be half a gun, or even a well maintained club. Come on beard guy.
  

Anyway, they'll let me know in a few days. Which means I've got just a few days to be kicked out of Revelstoke by the police and to find somewhere else to go. After all, it's better to be safe than to be entangled in musical theatre.

Before I go I'd like all of the dorks out there who said this would be a good idea to know that I'm quite possibly going to suffer amateur musical theatre for your amusement. I hope you're positively soiling yourselves with joy because we all know that if the worst comes to the worst I'll have to follow this through to the bitter end.