Still Keeping Calm… Soiree 2015?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, teachers, students and anyone else who happened to wander into the school, or onto the website, the auditions are over! Cue the collective sigh of relief. Now, it wasn’t that bad, was it? That, I leave up to those who auditioned. However the latter is in fact, what I am writing about today! The highs and the lows, the dos and don`ts, and how exactly the Soiree` team managed to pull it all off, so smoothly.

First things first, it is necessary to give credit where credit is due, so I would like to give a big round of applause to the Soiree` team for all their work, and for organising such a smooth and efficient process. Transparency was first provided by the general meeting they hosted in one of the Fridays gone by, and the actual auditions had quite a relaxed atmosphere, at least on the team`s part. A good number of people, including myself, were obviously quite nervous, however, for no good reason generally. Anyone auditioning had to prepare a short song of their choice which would show off their vocal capabilities, which during the audition had to be sung A Capella. A number of hours before the audition, students were also asked to give up a portion of one break to learn a dance of roughly six eights and finally, a short while before the audition everyone was given a short script to work with, just so the team can get an idea of your acting. The team`s system worked really well, and kudos to them for not instructing everyone to come up with their own individual pieces - they saved everyone a lot of heartache and worry.

Regarding the choice of the musical, at least my personal thoughts: Aladdin is a childhood classic, a musical loved by almost all. It has a good number of mains and the parts are fun but, the one down side is the glaring lack of female lead roles, the only one being Jasmine. Obviously it wouldn’t exactly be fair on the girls, since the majority of people interested in performing tend to be female. Solution: open Iago, the parrot, up to both males and females. Changing the gender of a character tends to be a weird thing, even in a purely comedic piece. You would have to bring said character down to earth, change the stereotypical characteristics to the other gender, and then rebuild the character. It is a difficult process in its own right, and Iago is one of the harder characters to play. He walks a fine line between stupidly ignorant and simple genius. We don’t really know whether he is just one of Jafaar`s servants or rather, if he is smarter than Jafaar and has his own plan which never reveals itself in the film. Watch the sequel Aladdin films for Iago`s true nature.

I would also like to discuss Aladdin as a show - contrary to popular belief, it is not just a child`s comedy. It a fairy-tale story of a young peasant conquering social classes first, through deceit, then through heroic acts. The heroic act only comes along as a result of his deceit, fair enough, but his heart is in the right place. All this falls between the huge juxtaposition of the kind-hearted, generous Genie who at the end of the day wants to be his own person. He is contrasted to the evil Jafaar, a man who in a position of power, is constantly attempting to gain more and more power. Despite eventually becoming more powerful than the Genie himself, he ends up being trapped in a dark, black lamp, showing off a stark contrast between power and the freedom it entails. If someone has power they have responsibility, if someone has little power, they have little responsibility.

To round off my article, call-backs are already in the process, and the cast for this year`s event is slowly but surely starting to shape up, and even if someone is disappointed that they didn’t get a call back, it was because of good competition.

Overall we were very impressed by what we saw, and it is remarkable that each person that auditioned had something unique about them – Matt Micallef St. John, Soiree Stage Manager.

We all brought something to the table. Now the challenge of the show is to put them all together in the mould of Aladdin, a show which originally only ever had 5 songs! Good luck to all and, let`s make this the best year yet!