Alli Mauzey describes auditioning for a reading of Cry-Baby before the musical was fully produced. During rehearsals, the cast got only lyric sheets with no music, so she drew hieroglyphic annotations and arrows to map out the vocal lines while learning from a piano accompanist.
Let's talk a little bit about when you get that job. A script arrives at your door or in the mail or FedEx. You sign for it, you open it up, and you look at it for the first time. How do you go about finding who that character is?
So the first time I probably got like a decent role in New York, and I was auditioning for— actually, it was for a reading first. A lot of times here in New York City, a piece gets workshopped before you take it to Broadway or maybe out of town and then Broadway. So I was doing a reading called Cry-Baby that I had booked I really didn't know much about it. That experience was such a trip because they didn't give us any music. So when we would go into rehearsal, we had a couple recordings of our songs. But when we went into rehearsal, we had no sheet music. We had lyrics. So I literally was writing hieroglyphics, arrows and stuff that said, OK, and then I go up on this word, and I go down. And you just kind of had to memorize it. I'm not quite sure why they did that. I don't know if they just didn't want the music out there yet. I don't know. It was so—
So you were just learning it with a piano player, and then— Uh-huh. It was really bizarre. So that was testing your skills?
Yeah, it was very, very bizarre. But in terms of the character, what's neat about creating a role like that role, besides the movie Cry-Baby, the John Waters movie, like no one had sort of done this show before, so we could kind of just come up with whatever we wanted, you know? So just the freedom alone to just be in a rehearsal and say the lines as written or give it a go and say a completely different line, you know? That's kind of how I like to figure out a role is just like play and experiment and just try all sorts of different things and just see sort of what works and what is going to work for the story and the director's vision, you know. It's a little tricky, it's a little different when you're a replacement in a show. I've replaced in Wicked in the role of Glinda and that, not to say you can't bring yourself to the role, but there's definitely like a map, I guess you could say, so there are You know, you have to stick to the blocking.
