With the excitement and anxiety in the air, everyone in the auditorium was ready to give their audition everything they had. “I feel really nervous,” Arely Perez-Gomez (10) expresses before her audition. “But that is typically what happens before auditions- you feel like you might mess up.” 

One by one, students crossed the stage, entering Mrs. Gehrke’s room through the scene shop for the first of two auditions. Different emotions and feelings come from each student as they exited the audition room, some people being very happy with how their audition went, and others feeling their audition could have gone better.

In groups of three, students were paired up to choreograph and perform a cold read from a scene in the production, each reading for a different character. Some of the groups rehearsed on the stage, while others rehearsed in the house of the auditorium, trying to perfect their group audition with the little time they had.  

“I feel like this production is going to be a breath of fresh air,” sophomore Aicha Beye recalls after her audition. Beye has had several experiences with auditions and theatre productions at Liberty such as last year’s one-act, “Anne-Arky”, and the student-directed musical, “The Trail to Oregon!”, as well as working as crew on “The Crucible.” “This will be my third show at Liberty if I get cast,” she adds.

Later that night, after the second day of auditions, the callback list came out, making everyone slightly more anxious to see if their name was on the awaited list.

With callbacks done on, the suspense was now slowly building up, waiting anxiously until 5 p.m. for the cast list to be published. Then, a few minutes after 5, the cast list came out featuring 12 names: 

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” is scheduled to be open to the public on November 18-20, 2021, at 7 p.m. each night. More information about the show and tickets will be available soon.