Had an invited audition on Wednesday -- reading prepared sides. The material was very well written (the plays have been accepted for the New York International Fringe Festival). I had several days to prepare, my cold-reading skills have been improving (thank god -- I've been working hard enough at it), the characters they wanted me to audition for were clear, and I felt I understood them quite well . . .
Very minor differences win and lose auditions. (p. 158)
- JoBe Cerny, I Could Have Been a Cabdriver... but I Became an Actor Instead: A Practical Guide to the Business of Professional Acting (Career Development Series)
It is striking to me (and has been so for awhile now) how professional these auditions need to be, and a "successful" audition that one feels good about is a combination of performance and attitude.
Attitude: They (the auditors) are not there to help me, I'm there to help them. That's doing my job.
An actor is a freelance contractor. The producer/director is the client. I've worked as a freelancer before (outside of show biz). Then, it was a lot like auditioning -- it was auditioning. I meet with the client, usually accessing their needs before hand, and then during the 'audition,' I told them what they needed and how I would meet that need. Most freelancers come to soon realize that while their clients are good guys, very smart, they're really ...well ... idiots when it comes to knowing what they want. This is the attitude you have to have -- clients don't really know what they want, what they need. You, the contractor, tell them what they need. If you believe they don't really know what they want, this helps you to be proactive, i.e., it's your job, that's why you're there, why they need you.
Only about 10% of the theatrical audition is the actual performance (the monologue, the reading) -- 90% of the audition is everything else that happens from the moment you walk into that room to the moment you walk out, and that 90% of the time is equal in importance to the remaining 10% . . . the auditors (producer/director) are not there to help me, I'm there to help them.
Just about every good book/class on auditioning stresses this, but it's finally starting to sink in. 90% of one's time in an 'audition' is a professional job interview. Having interviewed as much as I have over the last year and half in a tough NYC job market, I quickly learned you don't f**k around when it comes to an interview -- they're not easy to find, and they are a big deal.
The great thing about NYC is that I could, conceivably, audition almost every day if I wanted to (I'm actually shooting for 1-2 times/week now that I'm taking classes for the summer). Every audition I go on I get a chance to practice this 'attitude.' I don't think that I have a firm grip on the specifics of this attitude (yet), but always realizing that I'm the contractor and they are the client and keeping the true nature of that relationship clear should help me get better and better at proactively handling that 90% of an audition.
Performance: OK -- here, as always, is where I need work. I do seem to learn allot each time I audition -- my goal/prayer is that I can use it to become better at auditioning.
Wednesday's audition was for a non-union, non-paid job, but it was high level nevertheless, i.e., a serious off-Off-Broadway production team, experienced and ambitious.
Positives: I prepared well and I understood the characters and the scenes: I'm getting better and faster at this.
Negatives: I'm still not fully confident (brave) and fully engaged (focused). Getting better, but still not where I would LOVE to be. First, I didn't really fully connect with the readers (the producer and writer, who were not actors). I didn't use the space, the room. In short, I fell back on my preparation, giving a reading as I prepared it on my own, doing some minor blocking, again as I prepared. Not bad, but not good enough.
I need to learn how to be more fully engaged in the moment with the reader and the environment during an audition. The mistakes, I think, were doing things as I prepared them, but when the time came, they seemed a bit decoupled from the moments as they were actually happening, e.g., I gestured towards the cave, but I didn't "see" it. I didn't talk TO Moe -- I talked AT Moe. Doing blocking, making gestures when it was "time" to make them, talking AT rather than TO the readers -- those were my mistakes.
But . . . call me crazy . . .a part of me can almost feel myself, almost see myself, being fully engaged, and I honestly think I can get better (I pray I'm not kidding myself) . . . how I'm going to improve, I'm not exactly sure, but here's what I'm doing now:
- Going out on auditions -- and blowing them if necessary (and if that happens, limiting any clinical level depression to 24 hours max).
- I've started meeting with a cold-reading/audition workout group on Saturdays. We rent a rehearsal room, and the goal is simply to practice/rehearsal auditioning, either with practice material or material that someone will used for an actual upcoming audition. We've just started, and I'm hoping a core group of committed people will form. If not, I'm going to start my own group. Either way, I think/hope this type of 'practice' will be very helpful.
- I'm going to contact an acting coach -- if I sign up for one session, I'll get another one for free. I'm just going to ask this guy to cold read with me, get some professional tips and insights, and then take what I've learned into our Saturday 'audition workouts.'
- Patience. Just ... have fun learning and growing. Don't put all my focus on being great, "arriving" right now -- or else! Cultivating a great attitude, learning how to prepare and perform will take time. Acting and auditioning well requires a high skill set. Acting well is highly skilled labor.
- Have patience -- and don't give up. Even if it seems like I'm getting nowhere, seems like I keep making the mistakes, remind myself of something I heard long ago . . .
. . . before machines, men had to break great boulders into pieces with huge heavy hammers which they would thunderously rain down on these boulders. Blow after blow, hour after hour, day after day, and – nothing would happen: the boulder would remain: mute, impassive, eternally unmoved… however, inside, out of sight, beyond awareness, great internal forces began to reverberate, tiny internal shifts started to appear, equations began to unbalance, and then suddenly — it would just give way.
Things happen when they are ready to happen.
