Choosing Solo Parts

This is the time of year for cheers and also tears...

Yup, its the time of year for auditioning for special parts for our annual Holiday Program. To help prepare your child for both the excitement and disappointment that surrounds trying out for special parts, please review the following facts with your child. This will help them understand the process I follow when choosing students to do special parts.

1) Please remember that most students at Georgetown want a special part. With 550+ students wanting parts and only a handful of parts to give out, they are not alone in their anxiety and their longing to be picked. For a typical solo audition where I need to choose 1 person, I will get 75+ students trying out. Those are not the best of odds for anyone!!

2) I keep a record. I do keep an ongoing record of every student who has had a part in any Christmas program- Kindergarten through 5th grade. This includes big parts like solos and dancers as well as smaller speaking parts and narrations. If a student has had a part in a previous Christmas program, they are not automatically disqualified from getting another part, but it definitely plays a big part in my decision. If I have a tie between a few students, I eliminate those that had parts in previous Christmas programs. The bigger the part, the longer I usually wait until they can get another part. So if your child has NOT had a part yet and wants one, they have a much better chance of getting chosen than other students who have had parts.

3) Luck does play a role. With 75+ students auditioning for 1 role, it is common for me to narrow down my group to about 10-20 students who had the best audition and putting those names in a hat and drawing for that 1 part. This has seemed the fairest way to determine the "winner."

4) Older students sometimes get priority. I do look at grade level when determining special parts. If there is a tie between a 4th and 5th grader, I will give the part to the 5th grader since it is their last year to be in the Christmas program.

5) Classrooms do not make a difference. I look at the big picture when auditioning. I don't try to balance out special parts by classroom/teacher. You may see that 1 teacher has multiple students that got a part in his/her room and another teacher did not get any students who got special parts. That is because I am looking at the group that auditioned as a whole and not dividing students up into classrooms. Often, one classroom may have 15-20 students audition and another classroom only have 3 people audition. Sometimes, many students will audition from one classroom, but it just so happened that most of those students had already had parts in previous programs. When I audition, I list names and do not pay attention to what teacher a child has. It wouldn't be fair to any of the students if I limited myself to trying to balance out parts by classroom.


Finally, never give up. If your child has not gotten a part, encourage them to keep trying. I usually notice the child who auditions for everything and keeps trying year after year. Eventually that persistence usually pays off.

Good luck everyone! I'm so proud of all of you who are brave enough to try out!