At 12:30 Wednesday morning, Steven Rausch’s plane landed in New York City, having been delayed on the departure runway for two hours. He arrived at his friend’s apartment at 2:30 a.m., practiced his lines until 4:00 a.m. and, after having slept only a few hours, sang until 9 a.m..

Following a hectic dash to four different Kinko’s in a frantic attempt to print his resume — each run, for various reasons, produced no copy — he stepped off the elevator and onto the 16th floor of the Ripley-Grier Studios. There he saw three other men, each of whom was hoping to take on a new title by the end of the day: Simba in the Broadway production of The Lion King.

“I had expected there to be a thousand other guys who looked like me, but it was just the four of us,” Rausch, a senior in international studies, said. “It was absolutely nerve-wracking and quiet, completely quiet.”

Though his audition for The Lion King was his first on Broadway, Rausch began his acting career four years ago at his high school. On a friend’s dare, he tried out for the spring production; on that friend’s dare, he went through with the audition and received a role.

“Theater became my thing,” Rausch said.

According to Rausch, auditions for his first University performance, Cabaret, were to be held on the first day of class. He moved in the day before class started, auditioned the next day and was cast in the play.

“I was so excited to come to State [to audition],” Rausch said.

Since that initial role, he has performed in several University plays, including Not About Nightingales, The Colored Museum, The Apple Tree and Sweet Charity, in which he starred as Oscar Lindquist alongside Quinn Henderson.

“The program here is phenomenal. We have world renowned teachers,” Rausch said. “I feel prepared.”

Rausch said his performance in Sweet Charity was his favorite because he had the liberty to take his character, Lindquist, where he wanted him to go. However, his passion for acting exceeds personal preference, because he cannot name a show that he didn’t love being involved in.

“Even the performances that weren’t as much fun as the greatest theater were still a blast,” he said.

Having discarded his original desire to become an aerospace engineer, Rausch now plans to pursue a career in acting. Upon graduating this May, he said he intends to move to New York City in the near future, but plans to stay in Raleigh and save money before he heads north.

“There is an audition for something every day in New York City,” Rausch said.

According to Rausch, his primary job as a New York resident will be to audition at every opportunity in an attempt to launch his career further.

“The way you need to approach acting in the real world, your actual job is the auditioning. The money you get from shows is payment for that auditioning,” Rausch said.

Rausch estimated he has approximately a three-to-one chance of being cast in a role in Raleigh. He predicts that, though he will be auditioning on a constant basis, his auditions in New York will bring in far fewer roles.

“There’s less theater in this town, less people auditioning for things,” Rausch said. “My chances of getting a role in New York are probably fifteen-to-one, or even less than that.”

However, according to Rausch, these statistics don’t daunt his aspirations of becoming a Broadway actor. Instead, he said the challenges he will face in the acting profession compel him to endure rejection with the knowledge that it does not matter how wonderful of an actor one is; casting directors oftentimes have specific characteristics in mind for roles. Actors, Rausch said, are incessantly aspiring toward a higher goal.

“Acting is something [in which] you never really reach what you want. It’s something you have to work hard at, every single day,” he said.

Rausch has been working toward becoming a Broadway actor for years, and though he has several auditions under his belt, his first Broadway experience is something he deemed “unbelievable.”

“I introduced myself to Mark Brandon, the casting director. He said, ‘Are you ready to sing?’ I said, ‘Of course,'” Rausch said.

According to Rausch, Brandon expressed his admiration and requested that he sing a second, third and fourth time, each repetition expressing a different tenor. At the end of his performance, Rausch said ‘Thank you’ and walked out to where his friend was waiting, having snuck in to the studios and listened outside the door.

“He told me he got goose bumps, and I said ‘I hope they got goose bumps, too,” Rausch said.

However, according to Rausch, the theater industry is always looking for something very specific. Call-backs were to be received on Friday; for Rausch, the day passed with no call from either Brandon or the casting staff.

“That’s all right, though. That’s the way it is,” Rausch said. “I consider it an honor to have auditioned for a leading role.”

Rausch said he does not consider the audition as unsuccessful; in fact, it was the first encounter with New York auditions and, because directors keep actors’ resumes on file, he hopes he will get a call from a casting agent who believes he is the right actor for another part.

“If anything, it was a starting point. My past training was for that, preparing me for Broadway,” Rausch said. “Broadway is my big goal. There is no deterrence whatsoever.”