Spring play announces small cast list

Three dedicated Corban drama students are anxiously awaiting the results of auditions for “Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles.” Between them, they have acted in a combined 30 plays in high school and college. While they wait that night for the email that will decide their next three months, they distract themselves by doing things such as homework, watching television, eating, and of course worrying. Although they are stressed, each one has left auditions feeling confident that he or she will receive a role in this upcoming play. Two of them are about to be very disappointed. 

Waiting for a cast list can be the most stressful thing an actor experiences. Junior Adam Fields said, “I’m never nervous during auditions, but waiting for the cast list builds anticipation,” especially considering the amount of people auditioning for this play. According to assistant director Connie Pollard, 24 people auditioned for 10 parts. Compare that to the spring play last year, “Great Expectations” where only 13 people auditioned for 11 roles.

Fields, a sophomore, has made all three plays at Corban and was confident he would make it four in a row. “I felt that I had portrayed the characters to the director’s expectation,” he said. However, as he was doing homework in the computer lab, he checked his email and saw he had not made it. “I was puzzled, and didn’t quite know how to take it,” he said.

Krystal Kuehn, a junior from Sparks, Nevada, has had quite the impact on the drama department, as she has appeared in five shows for Corban and is the president of the drama club. “Auditions went well,” she said, “I felt more confident after these auditions than ones before.” However, she too felt the sting of not making the play, and it was a feeling that was foreign to her. “This was the first play I auditioned for that I didn’t make,” she said.

Another veteran of the theatre department is 21-year-old Melanie Rice, a junior, who has been cast in the last four plays at Corban. “Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles” was no exception. “I was more nervous with this cast list,” she said. “I really wanted a role.” Even when she saw she had been cast as Perkins, the maid that provides a little comic relief, she didn’t know what to think. “[I was] very excited I got a role, but I didn’t really know the character so I was a little unsure,” she said.

As for Fields and Kuehn, their struggle lies in finding something to fill the time that the play would ordinarily take up.

Kuehn said, “I’m finding it hard to keep busy. There’s no real pressure to do anything, but almost in a negative way.”

However, one cast list does not an actor make. “You have to know it’s never personal. With art, it’s up to the painter to choose the paint. Just because you’re not the color chosen, doesn’t mean you’re not something special,” Said Fields

It’s this attitude that will bring all three actors back to future auditions at Corban.