Two Words To Avoid in Every Audition

When an actor receives the audition sides, they are excited about what they can do. What they can create. There are no boundaries. No restrictions.

Then you start to lock things down. You start to prepare exactly what you will do at any and every moment in the scene. Many times this is driven by the writer notes. Most likely that a character reacts in a certain way.

And you interpret that as “I must deliver this moment” “I must react in this way”

When you your audition prep, if you use the words I MUST – or even think the words I must – then your audition is doomed to be regulated. You have stipulated a certain feeling or response at a specific time in the scene.

And guess what? If you have arrived at that decision, so have a lot of the other actors I am auditioning. And so you will be the same?

Think of this: when we like an actor in an audition, is it because that actor is the same as everyone else? Of course not.

I urge all actors to see things from where I sit. Where the casting directors sits.

If you are to succeed as an actor, you must understand what makes a good actor ….. but what goes in the minds of casting directors. When they are watching your audition.

We are not looking at how GOOD an actor you are. We want to know how INTERESTING you are.

The audition decision making process is the same the world over. The person who engages us, who fascinates us, is the person who we remember. Who we see again, and again and again.

And you do not achieve this, if your audition prep includes the words “I must”