"You Gotta Fight to be Legally Blonde!"

by Jason Kappus, Ensemble in LEGALLY BLONDE THE MUSICAL

How I Got the Job - Part 1: The Real Audition
or "You Gotta Fight to be Legally Blonde"

My life changed at the Starbucks on 43rd and 9th in Manhattan... but that's jumping a little far ahead.

This past summer, I had the amazing privilege of spending most of the beautiful Seattle sunny days in basement rooms rehearsing Catch Me if You Can at The 5th Avenue. Spending two months working with some of the best in the business (on both sides of the table) was a dream come true and stands out as a highlight of my Seattle career.

Our choreographer for Catch Me was the brilliant Jerry Mitchell, one of the foremost Broadway choreographers today - who had recently made his Broadway directorial debut with Legally Blonde The Musical (he also did the choreography).

Jerry and I had a couple of talks over the summer about my career: about my "type," some advice, some ideas on projects and roles for which I should angle. In one of these talks, he mentioned that I could be a good fit for the national tour of Legally Blonde. I said "That would be awesome!" or something similarly ecstatic while trying to sound calm and cool.

Now, I was already determined to do a good job and make a good impression with "the New York folks" coming into Catch Me, so now with some extra motivation, well... needless to say, I worked my butt off. (Literally. I lost almost 10 pounds just doing Jerry's crazy-fast high-energy choreography.)

As any of you who saw Catch Me can probably imagine, we had a blast. The whole process was an amazing experience, and everyone's hard work and love paid off in many ways. For my part, Jerry and I talked a couple more times about New York and the future, and he referred me to the casting director for Legally Blonde (one Justin Huff). Through talking with the both of them, it became pretty clear that they were interested in looking at me for the show, and that I would get a call to come to NY to audition once the right spot opened up.

Then Catch Me ended, we all went our seperate ways, and I waited...

(to be continued...)