Theater 3 and 4 students performed audition packages for professional adjudicators in Paly’s second Annual Theater 3 and 4 Audition Showcase at 7 p.m. on Oct. 28 in the Haymarket Theater.

The evening mimicked a professional audition. The students auditioned for Leslie Martinson, the casting director of TheatreWorks, a local professional theater company, and Mary Sutton, director of education and community programs at TheatreWorks.

Each of the 23 students introduced him or herself and then performed two monologues. After each student performed, the student received feedback from Martinson and Sutton.

Junior Hannah Crown, one of the evening’s auditionees, found the experience of performing her monologues for Sutton and Martinson very different than performing the same monologues for her classmates.

“There was definitely more stress performing for the adjudicators because I’d heard that they could tear you apart,” Crown said. “Classmates that you know are a lot more sugar-coated, and the adjudicators told it like it was.”

Junior Mark Olson, a classmate of Crown’s, felt additional pressure to perform well in front of Martinson and Sutton.

“We were all scared they would hate our monologues,” Olson said.

According to Stephanie Spector, a sophomore in the combined Theater 3 and 4 class, the students have been working hard on these monologues for most of first quarter.

“We spent about two months on these, just sort of working on character development at the beginning and then once we were memorized, really working on the full package from the introduction through each piece,” Spector said. “We mostly worked in small groups or in pairs and then on the last two days before the project, we did the entire program for the class.”

Junior Emily Barry, a member of the Theater 3 and 4 class, found Martinson’s and Sutton’s advice useful.

“The adjudicators gave us a lot of helpful advice such as using breathing to make your voice stronger, and choosing actions that better related to our characters,” Barry said. “They also took time to give us each individual advice about our monologues.”

Senior Kelsey Swezey, a Theater 3 and 4 student, disagrees with Barry about the usefulness of Sutton’s and Martinson’s feedback.

“Personally, it felt more of a grill session than a constructive session,” Swezey said. “Their criticisms toward me did not help me to better my acting skills. Rather, for me, it was more discouraging, if anything.”

The idea of the Audition Showcase came from a student at Saratoga High School, where Theater teacher Kathleen Woods taught before coming to work at Paly in Fall 2007.

“It [the Audition Showcase] was started by a student at Saratoga as an honor’s project,” Woods said. “It was clear that it [the Audition Showcase] was very important. It continued every year until I left and then I brought it to Paly.”

According to Woods, this showcase may not be the last time the Theater 3 and 4 students get to work with Martinson.

“Leslie Martinson does do audition workshops,” Woods said. “She may come and do that at some point.”

Woods found the growth in the students who also performed in the first Paly Theater 3 and 4 Audition Showcase remarkable.

“It was exciting to see the students who performed last year and how much they improved,” Woods said.

Sam Bromley-Coolidge, a junior in the Theater 3 and 4 class, found the Audition Showcase rewarding.

“It was a fantastic experience…and it gave me a real insight to what the theatre world is outside of Paly,” Bromley-Coolidge said. “As for their [Martinson’s and Sutton’s] advice, it was fresh and focused on a lot of different aspects that peers usually skip over or don’t notice.”