Audition Advise!

SOME SAGE ADVICE FOR YOU ON YOUR AUDITION

1. Where are you? Remember to take a moment before you begin the audition to establish in your imagination exactly where you are. The environment is a crucial stimulus. It takes a brief moment to orient yourself into the place. Without that connection it can sometimes be very hard to see anything other than the audition room.

2. What is your relationship? You should have a good sense of who you are speaking to and what they mean to you. While this sounds like it should be obvious, many actors don’t make a strong enough choice regarding their feelings about this person, which can lead to a weak objective in the piece. As soon as the objective weakens, the moments become less important.

3. What is happening? Consider the event of your scene as the headline of a newspaper. What is the main event? The essence of what is going on. The most important thing occurring at this time. Knowing this keeps you from veering off the through line of action in the scene. It also continues to remind you of what you are here to do. This, of course, will be the most important thing to remember.

4. Where are you coming from? Emotionally and physically. What just happened to you to cause the first moment of your scene? Something should already be going on in you before you begin. The first moment is yours whether you have the first line or not. You must always be coming from something and going to something.

5. What are you doing? Your character is there to do something. This something must be active, it must support your objective, and it must lead to another thing to do after another thing to do. It must push the scene forward. Otherwise you are playing words and not actions. Emotional actions drive your scene forward.