Do kids these days, specifically in US high schools, when talking about trying to get cast in a play (in school or not), generally say they’ll “try out” for the play or “audition” for the play? Or both?
Likewise, do they tend to talk about “tryouts” or “auditions”?
Bonus points if you actually have a kid now enrolled in a US high school whom you have actually heard talking about this recently.
Partial credit for discussion of “trying out” or “auditioning” for a performance or performance group other than a play; e.g., a choir, the city junior ballet corps, the next-door neighbor’s garage band.
No bonus points because my kids are now in college. But around here, I’ve always heard the phrase “try out.” The directors may say “audition” but the kids say “try out.”
No bonus points because I graduated in 2001. But at that time, when we were trying out for the school play (which was a musical, but still), we said “trying out.” The set times when you would show up to try out were the auditions, but you were trying out, not auditioning.
I believe the correct term would be audition, but because American schools tend; to be more sports than arts oriented, many of the traditional theater terms have been pushed to the side by athletic ones.
Thus you hear “try out” for the play as you would hear “try out” for the team. Along those same lines, you will hear far more school performers refer to the time getting ready for a performance as “practice” as opposed to “rehearsal”.
In perhaps the worst example of a jockism encroaching upon the theater, I have heard people refer to intermission as “half time”.
Sorry, I thought it was clear from what I wrote that the youth of today (at least the ones I have worked with the last few years) seem to prefer non-theater (jock) terms to discribe the theater experience as opposed to theatrical ones.
I thought it would be acceptable to put the terms they use in a specific context.
We always said “audition”- and mostly we were going for specific parts. “Try out” was strictly for sports and kind of implied you were going for a general spot on a team.
I graduated in '96. We generally said “audition” and “rehearsal”, but it usally took some getting used to. Students who were new to the department tended to say “try out” and “play practice”, but would stop eventually, because it didn’t sound “artsy” enough.
Professional kids (in New York 8 years ago, anyway) always auditioned, never tried out. This was for film and Tv, commercials and industrials - I don’t know about professional theater but I don’t think it was any different. Kids who did print modeling didn’t go to auditions, they went to go-sees.
I belive LA uses the same terminology. Just a datapoint.
We (well, not me, because I don’t act/sing/dance/etc, but you get it) auditioned at auditions. I never heard anyone really refer to ‘try outs’ other than for sports. I graduated this past June (do I get partial credit at least?)
When I was in high school (93-97) there were auditions for theater, tryouts were for sports. Most people talked more about callbacks, as the initial audition was just a huge cattle call (2500 students does that) but callbacks were for “real actors”.
My high-school-freshman daughter, taking a few moments out from her busy schedule of watching Malcolm in the Middle, says that it’s “try out” if it’s just for something routine where you don’t have to put much effort into it, like a school play, or cheerleader, but if it’s something that you had to, like, actually rehearse ahead of time, then it’s “audition”.
And she wants to know why you wanna know.
I told her, “It’s General Questions, it doesn’t matter.”
Sorry about the misunderstanding, TV time; what I meant in my reply to your reply was that I wasn’t asking what the **correct **term is (a *prescriptive *question) but what kids are actually saying (a *descriptive *question).
You, Duck Duck Goose, are of course right, but if you’d like, you can tell her it’s because I was proofreading some text my company may reuse from one of our old textbooks.
Back when I was a drama geek in high school, it bugged the crap out of me to hear my (very non-jock and educated, BTW) mom refer to “play practices” and “tryouts”. "MAA-ommmm, for the hundredth time, they’re *REHEARSALS *and AUDITIONS!"
So when I saw reference in this text to “trying out” for a play, my first impulse was to “fix” it. But my second impulse was to stop assuming that all American high school kids today have the same word biases I had back in 19mumblemumble. The passage is meant to be informal, so correctness isn’t the issue.
I think that’s the key. In my school, we did not audition for specific parts - we went and tried out and, if we were accepted, were assigned a part by the director. The more “professional” (for lack of a better word) it’s seen to be, the more likely it is that it’ll be called an audition.
We did say rehearsals instead of practices, though. You practiced for the twice-yearly band and chorus concerts, but you rehearsed for the annual musical.
Thanks for the explanation of why ya wanted to know. My kids are all used to being asked stuff, “It’s for the Straight Dope, you don’t need to know, just answer the question…”
FWIW, in the early 1970s, we “tried out” for school plays, probably because according to La Principessa’s criteria, we didn’t rehearse a scene ahead of time–you just reported to the auditorium after school, they gave you a scene to read with someone, and that was it.
You also “tried out” for things like Concert Choir, which also didn’t involve any advance preparation. You showed up, sang some scales for the chorus director (who already had a pretty good idea of your musical talents, since you were already in Mixed Chorus), and that was it.
But you “auditioned” for the Talent Show (even if they pretty much took anybody…)
