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Star Potential
Author: Penny Falcon
Position: Staff Writer - December 1, 1998
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Playing the local circuit:
A pint-size talent pines for something more
"Shazzam!"
The young girl bolts forward and flings her arms wide.
"Not quite, honey, try again." the director says.
"Shazzam!"
The child leaps into the air, an unsure grin playing across her face.
"Almost."
It is the audition for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and more
than 90 children are vying for a couple dozen roles.
On the other side of the closed doors of the Waubonsee auditorium,
a dozen youngsters crowd around a videocassette version of the
Pageant, then turn to Kallie Childress for pre-audition pointers.
"Sometimes you read by yourself," she tells them. "Sometimes you
read in a group. Everyone does it differently."
The Aurora girl should know. At 10 her resume is impresesive. She's
been in almost a dozen plays; this spring, she held the starring role
in a local production of Annie. The day after the show closed she was
trying out for another play.
Kallie wants to be a star.
She could be.
Her number is called and Kallie steps on the dimly lit stage.
"Now," director Jo Leidig says, setting up a scene, "I want to tell
you a little bit about the Herdmans. The Herdmans think they rule
the world..."
'I can do it'
To make it as a child actor takes talent, luck and an honest love
of performing.
It also takes a parent willing to shuttle the child from school
to practice to home a dizzying number of times.
Kallie started the actor's commute when she was 5, playing a street
kid in Annie for a now-defunct theatre group in St. Charles. Since
then, she's been in such local notables as Alice in Wonderland,
Sound of Music, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Is it hard to learn the lines?
"Not if you really want to be in the play."
Then, what is the hardest part?
"The lights shining in your eyes."
The saddest?
"When it's over."
Do you get on-stage jitters?
"I feel a little bit nervous. But when the curtain opens, I'll say
a line, I'll see my family sitting there, cheering. I say, in my
mind, 'I can do it.'"
Catching a director's eye
With every show, Kallie learns a little more.
Stage directions. How to pause for effect. Keeping her face to
the audience. Speaking out. Speaking clearly.
"In every play, they always tell me little stuff," the younger of
two Childress girls says.
Their children have strong characters, Chris and Teresa Childress
say. But where Krista, 13, is reserved, takes a second look, Kallie
takes the lead, charges ahead.
That self-confidence catches directors' eyes, according to T.J.
Charlson, a production coordinator for Missoula Children's Theatre.
Kallie has performed in several of the Montana-based production company's
shows at the Paramount Arts Centre.
"We look for a loud voice, an expressive body, someone who can
follow directions," Charlson says. "The talent part is kind of an
innate thing. It comes from their self-confidence."
Other stand-out qualities: listening carefully, not being excessively
nervous, knowing the importance of learning. (I know of no good actors
who are stupid, he says.)
Charlson shies away from the child who is obsessed with being cast in
a certain role.
"It shouldn't be life or death to have a part," he says. "That's not
real healthy."
Striking a balance
"I wish I could travel all over the world and be in a play."
"I gotta get an agent."
"I want an agent for Christmas."
This was Kallie, post Annie.
After the Laughing Rainbow Children's Theatre production, the pint-sized
actress dreamed of bagging the school studies and heading for stardom.
"That was big for about six months", Dad says.
Chris understands where his daughter is coming from. As a student at
Marmion Military Academy, he acted in plays at Rosary High School.
Teresa, whose public performances came as a high school cheerleader,
claims one not-too-noteworthy role in a junior high play.
The Kallie her parents know is always the first to get up and dance at
parties. She's animated, outgoing, has a sparkle in her eye.
"She always commands a presence with her friends or up on stage,"
Teresa says. "I've gone as far as looking for a talent agent for her."
A certain something
That search was sidelined, though, when a Naperville talent agent
told Teresa to give Kallie a couple of years to grow and mature.
Agents will take younger children, Susan Sherman, director of Ambassador
Talent in Chicago, says, but it takes the right kid and the right parents.
"The child has to have iniative on his own. He can't be pushed by the
parents," she says.
Most talent agencies aren't in the grooming business, aren't into buffing
the rough edges off raw talent. And no amount of coaching will bring
some children to marketability, Sherman says.
The ones who make it have the "certain something."
It's unbelievable. There's just some kind of chemistry that clicks," she says.
Most agencies make their selections from photo submissions received in
the mail. Personality upstages a promising face when it comes to actual
auditions she says.
For those looking to strike out on the professional circuit, Sherman
offers this advice:
"Sign with two or three of the best agencies," she says. "This is
not a city where you can be exclusive."
Or too hasty. For now, Kallie is content with the local stage,
playing Gladys in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. But she's
still looking ahead.
"When I get older, I'd like to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz,"
she says. "But if I didn't make that part, I'd just be in the play."
"And, if I didn't make it in the play, I'd just try out for another play."
And she still pines for big-city stardom.
The hard part, her father says, is strking a balance in "providing
your child a normal childhood, yet not squashing her dreams."
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