Two of America's most famous stretches of asphalt, The Great White Way and the Strip, will intersect for a set of unique training sessions next week. At Broadway Boot Camp, three veteran stage actors will put aspiring talent to the test.
Adam Hunter, Dave Barrus, and Tony Award nominee Alice Ripley will offer Las Vegans the lowdown about how to land the role of a lifetime through classes and workshops.
They won't be shaving any heads or ordering push-ups, but the boot camp will be rather intense in many ways.
"We're not there to tell everybody how great they are. We're there to help people get a realistic perspective," Barrus said.
Barrus remembers when he landed his role of a lifetime. He was living in Utah and using his master's degree in acting to run a voice studio. In some ways, he had forgotten his original dream to be on Broadway.
"The realities of life sort of set in a little bit and I wondered if it was really practical to uproot my life and go to New York," Barrus said.
But he went to an audition in Utah for the travelling production of "Les Misèrables" and was thrilled to be cast. He ended up singing in that Broadway production until it closed.
"Les Mis ran forever and I sort of thought, 'This is great. This will be a long-term job,' and it ended up closing right when I got into it," Barrus said. "But that got me to New York, anyway."
Aside from "Les Misèrables" Barrus performed in Broadway revivals of "Oklahoma!" and "Chess."
He learned a lot about the sometimes gruelling audition process in New York, which often included waking up at 5 a.m. and waiting in the freezing weather to get an audition. After securing a spot, actors may wind up waiting another five to six hours before the actual audition.
Broadway Boot Camp, coordinated by The Broadway Company, which also organizes concerts and other events with Broadway stars, will school aspiring actors in these realities but also help them progress toward their ultimate goal -- landing the part.
Teachers will work with each student on their singing, acting and dancing, including some 1-on-1 time with each participant.
"Our best student is somebody who has a serious interest in pursuing this as a career," Barrus said. "We're not necessarily teaching singing lessons or acting lessons or dance lessons. We're really talking about auditioning and the realities of the business."
Broadway Boot Camps have been put on in various cities around the country, but this is the first stop in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas resident Marci Berenato signed up for the boot camp after hearing about it through her singing group. She said she looks forward to brushing up on her audition skills with people from inside the business.
"It's like when you go in for a job interview," Berenato said. "If you know what they want, it will go a lot better."
Berenato has a music degree from UNLV, but her primary role for many years has been raising her twins. She's not planning on moving to New York City, but now that her children are 5 years old, she feels she could have enough time to get involved in musical theater again and she wants to get into some local productions. She's hoping the boot camp will prepare her.
The camp will focus quite a lot on the audition itself. Singing and acting talent is sometimes different than auditioning talent, Barrus said.
"I have seen the most talented singers and actors just not do well in an audition," he said.
And the reverse is sometimes true -- less talented people give great auditions and win the parts.
"It really is a separate skill in a lot of ways," Barrus said.
He has seen some failed auditions in his day. One of the jobs he did to make ends meet when he was not on a cast in New York was script-reading. His job was to fill in the other roles while people were auditioning for a specific part. He learned a lot from that experience that he now passes on to camp participants.
The smallest thing can throw the entire audition off. He watched as one candidate's answer to the question "how are you?" completely turned off the panel. She had an otherwise brilliant audition, but when she complained about having had too many of them that week, she lost the panel's approval, Barrus said.
"People are looking for any excuse because there's so many great people out there looking for a part," he said.
Barrus said the worst thing people can do at an audition is be unprepared.
Broadway Boot Camp is one way he and the rest of the workshop instructors hope will help aspiring actors be properly equipped to ace auditions.
At the end of the program, instructors will bring in a real casting agent from New York. There will be a mock audition and then students can ask questions afterward.
Broadway Boot Camp will be held in Las Vegas in two sessions. The first session will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Monday through Jan. 27 at Backstage Dance Studio, 2330 San Jose Ave. The second session will be from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Jan. 28-29. The cost for the first session is $575 per person, and $595 per person for the second session. The price includes a catered lunch.
For more information, call Farah Chapes at 678-361-3720. Space is limited to 25 participants per session.
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