Students try to bring CU some ‘Glee’

For the past month, Fox’s “Glee” has held a contest on MySpace to search for the next cast member, and at least two Columbians have joined the fray—Joey Goldberg, CC ’10, and Emily Alpern Fisch, BC ’11.

Alpern Fisch and Goldberg come from singing backgrounds and have been involved with Non Sequitur, a coed a cappella group at Columbia. Alpern Fisch also performed in an off-Broadway show when she was a teenager. The pair auditioned for “Glee” because they loved the show, but there was also something more to their decision than that.

“The moment I knew this was an extraordinary show was during the episode with deaf students signing and singing along with the McKinley High Glee Club to ‘Imagine,’” Alpern Fisch said. “This show really resonated with me, having spent eight years of my life performing in a deaf theater company. In fact, I have been performing that exact song, using sign language, since I was 12 years old.”

Similarly, Goldberg said that he feels “a connection with the themes of the show and what the characters go through. It’d be a dream come true to be a part of such an awesome production.”

With such a great prize, the competition is fierce. There are over “30,000 submissions,” Goldberg said, while the last submissions were still trickling in by the Monday deadline. It is possible to view the entries online, and to award “gold stars” to the entrants one would like to see on the small screen.

But regardless of whether his videos receive few or many gold stars, Goldberg said he will not let the number bother him. “The voting isn’t really how they’re deciding who will be chosen,” he said, “so I’m not thinking too much about it.”

The contestants submitted a one-minute monologue and a song that was once sung by the cast of “Glee.” Fox gave the contestants a choice of the top 10 songs from the show for karaoke. Both decided to sing “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” a song from “Funny Girl,” most often associated with Barbra Streisand from the 1968 theatrical release.

It was a coincidence that Alpern Fisch and Goldberg chose the same song. Alpern Fisch decided on it because she had “tape cassette recordings of me singing that song … in my car seat when I was a little kid.” Goldberg chose “Don’t Rain On My Parade” because it “is not typically sung by a guy” and “it allowed me to have the most fun.”

The monologues were a little more difficult to film because of the strict guidelines. The videos had to state “your name, where you were from, how long you had been singing, [and] why you wanted to be on Glee,” Alpern Fisch said. Goldberg’s goal was to show his “goofy personality [that] I feel fits with the show.”

But regardless of the outcome, they are both happy with the work they put forth. “I think I’m doing a good job of reminding myself that the chances of anything happening are extremely unlikely,” Goldberg said. “Even so, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

Alpern Fisch echoed a similar sentiment. “I am keeping my hopes up,” she said, “because you can’t even be considered unless you put yourself out there and give it your best shot. And I believe I did that.”