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The Best “I Want” Songs For Musical Theatre Auditions – Female

The Best I Want Songs For Musical Theatre Auditions - Female_550
Photo Credit: Huntington Theatre Company via cc
In all great musicals there is a ‘I want’ song. These are moments when we learn what a character yearns for, and from that desire we can understand their motivation for pretty much all of the following drama.
In most musicals the hero is a guy or girl who doesn’t amount to much yet but is dreaming of a brighter future – this usually becomes an emotion the audience can identify with.
I Want songs tend to make excellent audition choices because they establish character and a desire which are helpful to show you how to act the story of the song and when performed well are terrific for showing off your acting skills.
The emotion behind an ‘I Want’ song is similar to the emotions and feelings you will be feeling before an important audition and so this type of song lets you channel that nervous energy and desire correctly and you feelings will only serve to enhance your performance.
In ‘Elements of a Musical’ John Kenrick explains the ‘I Want’ song using Sondheim and Bernstein’s West Side Story to illustrate:

These tell us what characters desire, what motivates them. Most love songs fit into this category. “Something’s Coming” and “Tonight” are examples, with the ensemble reprise of “Tonight” giving a rare (and dramatically powerful) opportunity for every major character to simultaneously express what they want. In “A Boy Like That,” we see two “I Wants” clash, only to wind up in harmonious agreement on the undeniable power of love.
Best Female ‘I Want’ Songs – Musical Theatre Auditions
When you are choosing a song for an audition then remember that you don’t only want to show that you are a great singer, you are choosing a song which shows that you are a great actor too.

“I Want” songs always have bags of character and storytelling in them try acting it as a monologue first. This way you can really understand the motivations and beats,

Get inside the character and situation of the song before you approach the singing of it. I promise you that this process will helps hugely when you begin putting the words, and feelings, to music.

We would love to know what your favourite “I Want” song for a casting or audition is, let us know via Twitter@actorhub.

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  • Chanson (click to view video)
    The Bakers Wife
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    The Baker’s Wife is a Stephen Schwartz musical which has never had a succesful West End or Broadway run, yet remains hugely popular amongst musical theatre afficianados.
    The story revolves around a small Parisian town which is enamoured by bread produced by the newly arrived middle aged baker and his beautiful young wife. The wife has an affair with a handsome gigolo and the baker loses his will to bake.
    Chanson opens the show and is sung by Denise, the Bakers Wife. She sings first in French then in English. She sings of how she sees the same faces every day, but sometimes, things can happen that change you, making life different and new.
    This is a terrific song and is overlooked for musical theatre auditions for the more popular, but overdone, Meadowlark. It is great for auditioning for drama school because it contains all the emotions you will be feeling about moving on and finding something new.
  • Fly Into The Future (click to view video)
    Vanities
    Vanities is a musical by David Kirshenbaum and a book by Jack Heifner, based on the book and 1976 play of the same name. It played off Broadway in 2009.
    The show tells the tale of three best friends: Kathy, Mary and Joanne through high school, college and professional life
    Fly into the Future is sung by Mary, the most flamboyant of the three as she decides to quit college and explore everything which life has to offer her.
    Mary is outwardly flamboyant but deep down insecure – this song allows you to show off and belt and inject fire and fecklessness into your performance.
    ” I’m sick of this sorority. Think I need some distance, A place to disappear. So it’s adios and away I go,
    and I’m kind of scared – But the moments here.”
  • Somewhere Thats Green (click to view video)
    Little Shop Of Horrors
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    This seems to be one of the most popular audition songs for Pantomime. From the Menken and Ashman B Movie musical about a man eating plant!
    Audrey the ‘pretty blonde with a fashion sense that leans towards the tacky’ whose sadistic dentist boyfriend beats her is secretly in love with her timid co-worker Seymour and dreams of their dream 1950s life together, complete with plastic on the furniture and frozen dinners.
    This has all the elements of a great audition song, it also can be played completely straight or for laughs. It is a classic ‘I Wish’ or ‘Dreaming’ song, and only narrowly beat ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid to make the list.
  • How To Return Home (click to view video)
    Tales From The Bad Years
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    This beautiful song is taken from the musical Tales From The Bad Years by contemporary musical theatre writers Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk.
    The show is about a group of acquaintances and strangers who are entering their twenties with great expectations. Over the show they connect, meet, argue, fall in love and collide with each other until they start to grow up and realise that the bad years make the best stories.
    The song is about the mixed emotions felt when you have to return to your family home after you feel you have ‘failed’. This is surely a feeling that we have all experienced at some point in our lives.
    The song can be powered out and you can choose to give it some real belt moments, or you could keep all the emotions controlled and play it much smaller and really try to internalise the emotional content and give a more ‘real’ performance than you often see in musical theatre.
    “The house is pulsing with an alien heartbeat, Was it always here but you never listened?
    It’s calling you to be the girl that you were way back then… again.”
  • More To The Story (click to view video)
    Shrek (cut song)
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    Shrek The Musical played in the West End until 2013 and played Broadway between 2008 and 2010 and has since toured both countries.
    This song was written for the character of Fiona to sing – but was cut before the show opened.
    This is a beautiful and simple song about realisation and discovering who you truly are. These are sentiments which would fit with any young actress learning who she is and where she fits in this industry. A perfect audition song.
    “We play our parts, We follow every rule. This is by the book I knew it from the start.”
  • I Want To Go To Hollywood (click to view video)
    Grand Hotel
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    Grand Hotel is based on a 1932 film telling the story of a weekend in a hotel in Berlin and the intersecting stories of the eccentric hotel guests.
    I Want To Go To Hollywood is a fun song sung by Flaemmchen a secretary who is dreaming of fame and fortune.
    The song is full of fun lyrics and is a typical dreamer number, giving you plenty of room for character and storytelling as you sing of the life you have and you life you dream of, also some room for a bit of 1920s dance to sneak in!
  • Wouldn’t It Be Loverly (click to view video)
    My Fair Lady
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    My Fair Lady is a musical based upon Shaw’s Pygmalion. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower seller who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist, so that she may pass as a well-born lady.
    The musical’s 1956 Broadway production was a hit, it was followed by a hit London production, a popular film version, and numerous revivals. It has been called “the perfect musical”
    ‘Wouldn’t It Be Luverly’ is sung by Eliza in Act One when she gets some loose change thrown into her basket and she dreams of what it would be like to lead a comfortable, proper life.
    A lovely audition song for Cinderella or Snow White, or one of the more tomboy style panto heroines.
  • Waiting For Life (click to view video)
    Once On This Island
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    Flaherty and Ahrens took inspiration from the novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy and also sprinkled in some elements from Romeo and Juliet.
    The story concerns a peasant girl on a tropical island in the Caribbean Sea, who uses the power of love to bring together people of different social classes.
    Waiting For Life is sung by the lead character Ti Moune. She is a peasant girl and in this song (early on in the show) she prays to the Gods to let her know her purpose in life and to let her be like the ‘grandes homme’ (people from the city) she has encountered racing past in their white cars.
    A song full of innocence but bursting with desire to be something better than you are today – perfect for a casting.
    ” Even the fish in the sea – Must be longing to fly – Catching a glimpse of a stranger – In white racing by.”
  • Dear Daddy (click to view video)
    W2ML (Welcome to my Life)
    ‘Dear Daddy’ is a terrific song from the musical W2ML by Bobby Cronin, which is wonderful for auditions.
    The show is set at a Wilderness Intervention Program and tells the story of Cody Gilmore a troubled 17 year old’s poignant and emotional journey as he battles with his demons.
    Lily a 17 year old NYC girl has been sent to the intervention program because she has been hiding her pain in drugs, sex, cyber-bullying and beinga typical ‘mean-girl’. She has been lying to everyone about how her Dad is a big-wig in the TV industry.
    When the teens are tasked with writing a letter to someone who has wronged them she sits alone under a trap lit by the fire in the rain and admits to herself that she is in pain and that her father is actually dead.
    The song is soft, emotional and full of hurt and realisation – there is a tonnes of character and story behind the song which you can use to help you play the song. Keep it real.
    “I can still hear your voice – It plays over and over inside my head – Now I have to make the choice
    To say “No more denying that you are dead.” ”
  • Somewhere Over The Rainbow (click to view video)
    The Wizard of Oz
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    The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy adventure film starring Judy Garland.
    Surely I dont need to tell you what this story is? Young Dorothy Gale (played by Judy Garland), her dog, Toto, and her three companions: a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion journey along the yellow brick road to the magical land of Oz.
    Somewhere Over The Rainbow is the classic dreamer song, it has become a benchmark for most musicals and they will often have this kind of song near the beginning of Act One where we learn what it is the hero is dreaming, wishing or searching for.
    It is a perfect song for pantomime but everyone will already have a interpretation in their minds, so my advice really play it for the truth of the story – a young girl hoping there is more to life than what she currently knows.
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