By Kristi Casey Sanders
On the morning of Nov. 10, two Dillards employees took the elevator from the Atlantic Station parking garage up to the home goods department. As the glass-walled lift came to a rest, the doors opened with a chime, but they didn’t get off. Instead, they tensed imperceptibly. One of them breathed, “My God … look at that.”
What gave them pause was a line of more than 100 girls, age seven to 13, and their adult chaperones, snaking from a makeshift stage in the children’s clothing department, through the home goods section, and ending somewhere among the china and crystal gift displays. Girls of every color, every size; cute girls, surly girls, shy girls, loud girls; girls in fake tatters and polka-dot bows; girls brushing their hair, playing peek-a-boo around party dresses, chatting nervously with friends. All of them, Annie girls: adorable, hopeful adolescents determined to audition for Theater of the Stars’ (TOTS) biennial production about a scrappy orphan who finds the perfect home in an imperfect world.
Conducting the auditions were TOTS producer Christopher Manos, the show’s director/choreographer Norb Joerder and children’s musical director Bill Newberry. As he gazed over the crowd of young hopefuls, Newberry mused, “We may have over 200 … to fill seven spots.”
What the Annie girls were about to experience was a Broadway-style audition: Each girl was assigned a number, by which they would be known for the next few hours. In small groups, they marched courageously onto the black wooden stage, arranged themselves in two lines and sang “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” as one.
Then, the front line moved to the back, the back line marched forward, and they sang again. Finally, each girl was given a chance to sing a few measures alone over a musical track, which played whether or not lyrics were remembered and paused for no one.
The Annie girls came from all over. There was a whole caravan of child actors from Birmingham’s Red Mountain Theater, where they were under contract for the season. Mother Anita Miles explained, “This doesn’t conflict with the other shows they’re doing. If they get cast, we’ll just stay over here for two weeks.”
She waved her hand, indicating her daughter Annie (No. 37), and three friends and their children who had been up since 3:30 a.m. to come in from Mississippi and Alabama for the auditions, and said with a shrug, “We all home-school.”
A short distance from the Red Mountain girls, sat Melissa Struppa and her daughter Hannah. They saw the audition on the actorsequity.com callboard and had flown in from Ann Arbor, Mich., the night before. Waiting for the auditions to start, they chatted up an Annie girl and her mom from St. Louis, Mo. “Since it’s a short run, we figured it would be a fun vacation for our family,” Melissa said. “We’re willing to go anywhere if Spirit Airline’s having a good sale.”
Hannah, like some of the Red Mountain girls, recently had been to the Broadway auditions for Annie in New York, but hadn’t made the cut. Although, as fellow New York Annie hopeful Alison Nichols pointed out, “It was a really great experience and really fun, and we went for it. And, that’s what counts. It’s not about placing, [it’s about] just going for it.”
That’s what leaves the biggest impression watching the Annie girls: How brave they have to be to put themselves out there. No. 47 started off strong in her solo section, but got derailed by a forgotten word and couldn’t recover, even with Newberry singing the words to her. Her lips continued to move, but her voice wound down until all that emerged was a sad breath acknowledging the start of the girl on her left’s turn. She wasn’t alone. Many of the Annie girls succumbed to this shrinking paralysis, kicked off by a late start, a forgotten word, an unreachable high note or plain self-consciousness. There were just as many who confidently bleated lyrics in voices ill-suited for the stage. But, in every group, at least one Annie girl was spellbinding – able to ride over her nerves and demand attention, fully engaged in wringing the meaning and music out of her eight-bar solo.
It’s an open secret that regardless of how many spots they say are available, TOTS usually ends up casting more kids. Director Joerder explained, “We’re looking for seven principal orphans, including Annie, and an ensemble of 20 to 25 kids. We usually see how many kids we have, and if they’re really talented, we try to make it work.”
From the auditioners’ table it was obvious who would make the first cut. “The music is written for very specific voices,” Joerder said. “If they can do it vocally is what we look at first, then we look at dancing. Then, we’ll read them.” Music director Newberry chimed in, “All of us have some people here in mind. There are a lot of people here who have worked with us before. They’ve done the show before, but they’re getting older, and we may not be able to use them. There are strict height and age requirements.”
In the end, 24 plucky Annie girls made the final cut after a long day of singing and dancing, and none of them came from Red Mountain, Ann Arbor or St. Louis. Two returned from the 2004 cast, Hannah Wilkinson and Brittany Portman. But regardless of whether they made it or not, all the Annie girls took memories home with them.
Annie plays The Fabulous Fox Theatre Jan. 9-13.
