By Lindsay Price

A Unique Audition Experience: Hoodie

Relevant themes, easy-to-connect-to characters and fun, fun, fun! Hoodie by Lindsay Price examines appearance and image in middle school, allowing students to immerse themselves in subject matters and issues that they deal with every day.

Middle schoolers face a tornado of questions every day. What do I wear? What if I wear the wrong thing? What is she wearing? What do I look like? Stop looking at me!

Hoodie examines image and appearance in the vignette style and poses what may be the most difficult question of all – Do I stay in the clump or do I stand alone?

The incredible middle school student performers at Gill St. Bernard’s School in Gladstone, New Jersey had an amazing experience with their production of Hoodie. Director Todd Ross shared how the show and performance really resonated with the entire cast – starting with a unique casting experience that really started off things on the right foot:

Some of the interesting and unique things I did with this show was to “audition” by having all 18 kids pick a character out of a hat. They were all like WHAT???? Are you serious??? To tell the truth, it is amazing how certain people got characters that were exactly like them, I don’t think I could have cast it better that what happened randomly.

Several kids came to me after the show and told me that at first they didn’t like the play but by the end they loved it. They felt awkward at first (too close to reality) but through the process gained the confidence and comfort to be in those type of places. Wow, we (you, me, the show) did our job. The head of the middle school thinks this show should be on tour at schools all the time.