Acting Auditions 101

Lesson 3: APPLYING THE TWELVE GUIDEPOSTS.

Arriving at Your Definition of Success.

You’ve written down your personal definition? Good, because without it written down and purely defined, how will you know when you’ve achieved a successful audition?

Now that you’ve written down your own definition, let me share an experience from my early college days. Auditions were being held for The Fantasticks. For some reason, I’d never heard of this production before (silly me). I arrived with just enough time to select which part of the script I would read from for the cold reading. Not knowing anything about the play, I decided to focus my slant toward intensity and searching and longing.

My name was called. I stood in front of the entire crowd, a room full of hopeful actors and a tired casting director. As I read from the script that afternoon, I soon forgot the room was full. I sensed something growing within me – almost a disconnectedness from where I was in that place and time.

Elevated, I pushed through the script, somewhat sensing that the entire room of actors and staff were right with me. When I was done, I almost had a hard time “coming down.”

As I sat down and then watched some of the other females read, I began to notice a completely different approach to their auditions. I became more and more embarrassed. At the first break possible, I tried to slip out of the room.

The director saw me leave. He swiftly got up, walked after me, and hailed me in the corridor. He told me that although he would not be able to use me in this particular production - he needed something different, something more frail - he was astonished at my gift and implored me to come back for future auditions.

Was the audition a success? It depends on your definition.

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