Audition Ready:
Pre-Season Vocal Conditioning
Get your voice ready for the demands of audition season in this 5-week course. Each week, you’ll bring in repertoire from your book, and we’ll provide expert guidance in vocal techniques tailored to your unique needs. For the last week, we will bring in a panel of industry professionals to observe and give feedback on your final audition package. We’ll help you optimize your vocal health, build confidence, and ensure you walk into auditions with the tools to deliver your best performance.
Course Details:
Dates: Thursdays, 10/9 -11/6
Time: 12:00 - 2:00 pm
Tuition: $350 ($70 a Class)
Class Size: 8 Ppl Maximum
Location: National Opera Center
330 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001
Instructors: Cassi Mikat and William Pazdziora
Industry Panel
Get Expert Feedback From the People Who Know What Works
In the final week of class, you’ll have the rare opportunity to present your audition package to a panel of industry professionals who know what it takes to book the job.
This isn’t just about showing what you’ve worked on, it’s about gaining insight you can’t get anywhere else. Our guest panel will share honest, constructive feedback on your performance, and overall audition package, giving you practical adjustments and confidence-boosting perspective from the very people who sit on the other side of the table.
You’ll walk away with:
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Actionable notes to refine your audition material
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A clearer sense of what industry decision-makers look for
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A final boost of confidence heading into audition season
By the end, you won’t just have an audition package, you’ll know it’s been tested, polished, and industry-approved.
Dean Cestari
Dean Cestari is currently a swing for Mamma Mia! on Broadway. He has appeared Off-Broadway in Stranger Sings! The Musical (Original Cast Recording) and toured internationally in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. His national tour credits include Mamma Mia! (25th Anniversary), Fiddler on the Roof, A Christmas Story, and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Regional highlights include Kinky Boots (North Shore Music Theatre/TBTS), Footloose (Barter Theatre), The Sound of Music (Paper Mill Playhouse), and Stompin’ at the Savoy (Delaware Theatre Center). On screen, Dean has been seen in American Horror Story (FX), Law & Order (NBC), and the feature film Bashira.
Kevin Ferguson
Kevin Ferguson is the founder of K. Ferg & Friends, an entertainment production company based in NYC. It is a black-owned, gay-owned, millennial-owned business that produces not only cabarets, but also short films, music videos and other live events. He is also the Theater Arts Programming Production Coordinator at The National Black Theater. Kevin is a Columbus, Ohio native who moved to NYC in 2014 after graduating from Wright State University. Since then, he has had several adventures on and off stage including cabarets, off-broadway, international tours and special events all over NYC. More recently Kevin has worked with the Black Theatre Coalition and has focused his career more on becoming a theatrical producer or showrunner.
Jacob Ryan Smith
Jacob Ryan Smith is an award winning writer/performer living in New York, originally hailing from Atlanta, GA. His writing works have been featured on The Today Show, NPR, Playbill, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Out Magazine, and more. His original music has amassed over a million streams on Spotify and Apple Music. Jacob studied performance and songwriting at The University of Michigan. He strives in his work to faithfully bend genre, allowing the storytelling to inform what the song wants to sound like. He’s engaged in commissions for numerous organizations including Disney+, The Tony Award Winning Alliance Theater, The Tony Award Winning Pasadena Playhouse, The Dallas Street Choir, The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and more. Commissions are a passion for him– he loves to help take someone’s idea and craft it to be the best version of itself. He’s written for theater, TV, film, ballet, choral work, and more. He also DJs in his free time, having cultivated a following on TikTok for his Musical Theater rave mashups.
Testimonials
Alex Bates
“The Audition Ready workshop was really fulfilling. got a chance to work in an intimate environment with two teachers who both focused on different aspects of the voice , sometimes connecting the body and breathe and other times connecting vocal techniques and healthy vocal effects. It was a great way to prepare for auditions, it gave me so much confidence.”
Molly O'Brien
“Cassi and Will create such a great environment where you can just show up and play! They meet you exactly where you are and offer honest, actionable feedback that you can take with you. From constructing a song’s narrative to ensuring you’re accessing your full instrument, it’s all things I keep in mind since taking the class.”
Danny Blank
“Through this class, I was able to find new rep and work on it in a safe and welcoming environment that made me feel prepared for audition season!”