If you want to become a better auditioner… hold your own auditions! I swear I am still learning so much from being on the other side. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, someone throws me for a loop.
For instance,
Show up! If you’re given an audition appointment- you honer it. And that doesn’t mean 25min after your scheduled callback time. Sorry, buddy, got other things to do! And, no, I wont reschedule.
Make a choice! Now I really know what acting coaches, casting directors and the like mean when they say how important it is for actors to just make a choice, any choice, when they audition. After seeing auditioner after auditioner just come in and give this lukewarm read that was more or less the general mood of the piece, the actor that came in and did the work of coming up with a choice would undoubtedly stand out. Even if that choice was weird, or didn’t follow the logic of the rest of the sides, it didn’t matter. We were just excited to see someone commit to something! To watching something actually happen on stage.
No excuses! When we give you a re-direction please don’t get defensive. Usually it’s a good thing, anyway, because it means we actually want to see more of your work. But if we say “try it like this…” and you say “well, how am I supposed to do that if I don’t know the rest of the play!” then we think “have you never auditioned before?!” Usually sides are just that, sides, not a whole script! You don’t have to tell me that you haven’t seen the other pages– I know, I’m the one who sent them to ya! I don’t care if what you do doesn’t make sense in the rest of the play. All I care about is that you show me something, anything. Like I said before, make a choice.
Hold your script! These are callbacks, so yes, it’s best if you’ve memorized your lines. But if you don’t know the lines 110% then, please, spare us. We wont hold it against you that you’ve got your script in hand. A solid performance with a script is better than a rocky performance without the script.
Bring energy! Don’t suck it out of the room. There were some people who, maybe they were good, I have no idea, because they came in with such low energy I struggled to pay attention to what was going on. Then there were people who, may not have been the greatest actor in the world, but had such great energy when they walked into the room, when they were playing the part, when they were receiving the re-direction that they instantly went to the top of my list.
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Related Reading: The Other Side &The Other Side Part 2
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