Or
“How To Avoid Audition Suicide”
You will find the Mother of All Fatal Audition Mistakes below. In later entries, I’ll introduce you to her Ten Children (all named “Never”) and a few of their Many Cousins. If you play with this family of missteps, one of them will probably kill your audition in the first ten seconds.
Introduction
Audition By Subtraction is a guide to removing bad audition techniques and ideas you may have been taught or developed. There are excellent audition instructors in the world and there are misguided instructors. Every actor has a friend, who will be glad to offer advice on what makes for a great audition; some friends have the wrong information. Some pamphlets or on-line sites will offer systems or step-by-step “sure fire” techniques to secure leading roles; some techniques only work in very specific situations, with very specific actors, very specific roles, theatre types, and – most of all – with very specific Directors. All actors drink the Kool-Aid of various gurus of theatre at some point – and well they should: actors need methods. The trouble is that all that “good audition information” they’ve taken in over the years hangs around in their memory and gets mixed up. Some “excellent techniques” conflict with other “excellent techniques” and the result is confusion. Your audition-information memory bank is very much like a computer hard drive: there are times when it needs to be defragmented, cleaned up – and some information should be thrown away. This book is about subtracting (throwing away) the bad audition information. It is about subtracting the mistakes actors make every audition.
Audition by Subtraction is not a guide on how to audition but rather how not to audition. It is the product of my observing and participating in over ten thousand auditions in every possible theatre situation from backyard to Broadway. Casting Directors have thousands of ways to evaluate an actor’s skills, training, passion, honesty and abilities. “Jumping through hoops” to get a role literally happens in a physical theatre audition and it doesn’t stop there. Auditioning can be as simple as your Aunt Mary making the right phone call or as difficult as five callbacks in five different cities for five different directors. While no one source can be the perfect guide on how to win at all those evaluation sessions, this book can help you subtract the mistakes, which could destroy your chance for success at any one of them; and one death is all it takes. The methods Directors use to choose actors are different; the mistakes actors make to fail are the same.
Who Should Read This Book?
Audition By Subtraction is a guide for actors who are auditioning for roles in professional, semi-professional, and amateur theatre companies. Beginning actors and well-seasoned actors, who are faced with the task of presenting two-minute monologues in front of Casting Directors if they want to be called back for further auditions and be cast, will benefit greatly from this book. There are many “How To Audition” books and many seminars and classes, which actors can embrace as either a “first step towards” or a “refreshing dose of” what they should know about, or were once aware of, when auditioning. This book will not guide you to the best monologues for your age, gender, nationality or experience level. For the majority of this book there is no mention of what the actor will say or sing in order to be called back or cast. This book is not an acting or performance book and it’s not an audition book for the absolute beginner (but it won’t hurt you). It is a guide and manual for the actor, who has auditioned at least a time or two; it’s for someone who has memorized a monologue or two. It is for the actor, who has played a role or two, for which they were selected through some kind of organized process, which eliminated other actors. In this book, that process is referred to as the “Audition.” If somehow, through some machination somewhere, you have gained an idea of how to audition – and you need to audition – then this book is for you. Read it quickly or carefully but read it before you audition again.
While auditioning for the stage can be similar in many ways to auditioning for television and film, Audition by Subtraction is intended primarily for actors auditioning for live stage performance of plays and musical comedies and not for television and/or film. Additionally, it does not substantially address the actual songs and musical performance of singers in their auditions – just as it doesn’t substantially address the monologues of the dramatic auditions. The casting team for a musical will include a Stage Director, Musical Director and Choreographer. The entire team must be satisfied with your first audition(s) – a disastrous, fatal error for even one will keep actors off the callback list for that show. Whether you sing or act – or both – for auditions, this book will help to subtract mistakes from everything surrounding the delivery of your audition material and, in some cases, from the actual delivery of the material itself. For dance, you’re on your own.
Chapter One
Thanks for Coming, You’re Dead
Almost half the actors I have observed in forty years continue to make one or more of the mistakes in this book. Hyperbole? Not at all. That’s a conservative ratio and it doesn’t count the simple bad-acting mistakes during monologues. After a Director has a little experience, the mistakes are glaring and actors cannot hide them. Directors know the tricks for “covering a mistake.” Most Directors begin in theatre as actors, you see – they know when an actor has forgotten the lines or is unprepared. The Casting Directors who did not begin as actors, have been heavily exposed to the “actor quick-step” of troubled times on stage. You can dance and whistle and look out the imaginary window at the imaginary airplane passing through the imaginary clouds, but Casting Directors know you are desperately digging for something to say to an expectant audience. This book details ten “fatal mistakes” (and introduces a dozen more) actors don’t even know they are making. Directors see them every time and carefully eliminate the auditioning actor from the callback list. “Thanks for coming; leave your picture on the table by the door.” You’re dead.
Then Why Do So Many Actors Get Cast?
If so many actors make so many mistakes, how could so many actors get cast? Well, they don’t. In large cities east to west, an excellent year for an actor is to be cast four times. Sure, there are actors, who get six, eight, ten or more roles, I suppose, but that only proves the point more because those actors are taking roles away from other actors.
Think about your city and the number of roles available for you – roles for which you could have auditioned. If you don’t live in New York, Chicago or another major theatre city, that’s not going to be a large number, especially if you consider you can’t be in two plays at the same time. Let’s say the realistic number of roles you can shoot for is twenty (and that’s a lot); did twenty different actors get those roles? Not likely. Someone “just like you” must have gotten at least two or three of them, right? Let’s say fifteen actors were cast in the twenty roles. How many actors are there in your city who wanted those roles? Ten times that? Twenty times that? Do you think three hundred people could have auditioned (some didn’t) for those twenty roles throughout the season? I don’t know; it’s your city – you decide. Whatever that number is, it is much larger than fifteen.
How many actors are there between the ages of twenty and thirty in your city? A lot. A metric butt-load. Probably ninety percent of them didn’t get cast this year and it wasn’t only because there weren’t enough roles. If there are three thousand actors in your city, three hundred (10%) were cast and two thousand, seven hundred stayed home. Half (or more) of the three thousand probably didn’t even audition for some reason. For the others, if they showed up and auditioned and still didn’t get cast, could it possibly have been because the actors had a bad audition? Change the numbers if you want to but facts are facts: many more actors don’t get cast than do and actors who make mistakes don’t get cast.
It Only Takes One
Greater Boston has about twenty hard-driving professional and semi-professional theatre companies, which cast almost one hundred percent from local talent – there can certainly be more, depending on how you count, but let’s settle on twenty. And yes, there are a LOT of two, three and five year-old companies struggling for an identity; they are young theatres working out of basements and lofts, where actors can find a show and a friend and a cup of coffee…and be cast – I get it. They aren’t part of this twenty. If the established companies each offer six-play seasons with eight characters in each play (in your dreams), that’s less than a thousand roles for the city. Given the male-dominated cast bias, easily two-thirds of those roles are for men, leaving a little over three hundred roles for women – of those, most are for ingénues and young leading ladies. How many young actresses and hopefuls are there in greater Boston – an area with over fifty colleges and universities and a population of over four million? Whatever that very-large number of young actresses is, only a tiny fraction will be cast. The number of roles available to older actors, juveniles and actors with unique abilities or disabilities, is miniscule and the size of the actor pool in this group is very large. Directors have a lot of actors to choose from when casting and they would prefer a cast of actors, who don’t make mistakes.
Many actors point to the unfairness of companies, which cast their “favorites” every year regardless of everyone else’s talent so “no one else has a chance.” If that is true, just subtract those (alleged) unfair companies from the list of twenty, and subtract the roles they offer from the total number of roles available for the large group of actors above and the situation only gets worse. It gets a lot worse if you tank your audition for “some stupid reason,” and someone “just like you” doesn’t make a stupid mistake and is cast instead of you. Is there any doubt that it would increase your chances of being cast if you had better audition experiences? Avoid Audition Suicide.
If an actor commits audition suicide the Director will cast someone else; is that too hard to believe? Actors are geniuses at finding new ways to ruin an audition and no book could list or cure them all. It doesn’t matter how an actor does it – it only takes one fatal bullet to kill you. There are mistakes however, which are repeated over and over – these repeated, fatal errors drive Casting Directors crazy. Audition by Subtraction is for the actors, who want to subtract those mistakes.
This Cannot Be The Way It Is
Naturally, the position of this book is that it not only can be the way it is but also, it is the way it is. Any actor and quite a few Directors reading these chapters will have reservations. That’s fine; all actors have good and bad auditions and you never know what will happen. I agree. Let’s agree to think it through over the long haul, however, not audition-by-audition. Being “right” or “wrong” and still winning (being cast) once isn’t the goal when attempting to improve auditioning skills. The goal is to be the actor who doesn’t make mistakes and is cast in six or eight or ten roles every year instead of two or three (or none).
As an example, let’s agree that you are an unknown actor – a new-to-town actor of fine quality, who is deciding how to present the next audition. The question in this case is not how well you will perform the audition piece, but rather how you will present it. We will agree that however you present it, the poetry and vision and power (the “performance”) will be the same. If you commit one of the Fatal Mistakes – by choice or chance – you can certainly survive the experience and have a Director call you back and, eventually cast you. I absolutely believe that and so should you. Additionally, in an audition with those twenty, professional Boston theatre Directors who are casting their Fall/Spring seasons with the help of a Combined Audition (where they are all at a group audition “open call”) – you can still survive and have a Director call you back and, eventually, cast you. It is very likely, however, that that role will be the only role you get this year from that audition. They were casting over one hundred plays with over five hundred roles. You got one out of twenty or thirty or more, which were right for you. Those are horrible odds to CHOOSE to challenge. Put another way, if the mistake you make is bad enough to kill you with nineteen Directors (make the number smaller if you wish), it will not matter if they are in the same room when you die or if you visit them one-by-one. Think like a Casting Director. They will take the easy, safe way out almost every time. Taking a chance on an unknown actor after a bad audition when there are other choices available is not in their DNA.
Casting Directors
Playwrights write plays with characters in them. Producers and Artistic Directors choose plays to present to the audience. Generally, Producers and Artistic Directors hire Directors to put all the parts of the production together. Generally, Directors cast the actors to perform the roles. That’s the overall system in a nutshell. There are other ways it can work, but that’s the most common system. There are other people involved in the process but the Director who is casting the show is the focus of this book. The ‘Casting’ Director is the entity or person who says, “You’re in,” or “You’re out” for a callback and casting. This book is about how those Directors decide who will be in the cast. The more actors know about how Directors think and how auditions function, the better they will understand how to subtract mistakes when auditioning. Auditioning by subtracting mistakes and gaining a total understanding of what makes the Casting Team “tick,” will increase successful auditions. Actors are hired through auditions. If they do well in the audition process, it’s good for them. If they stink, it’s bad. This has been pretty simple so far.
The Mother of All Fatal Auditions Mistakes
Every book and instructor will begin with one absolute rule regarding auditions and it would be improper to begin this discussion without including it here. Everything you do from the moment you wake up on audition day is either helping you or hurting you. What you eat, how you dress, the thoughts you think all matter. Everything, everywhere matters. Visualize a perfect day: a perfect walk to the car or train; a perfect smile to the person next to you; a perfect audition; a perfect trip home; a perfect thank you note to the Casting Director. Visualize and plan those things and then work that plan flawlessly. That’s the rule. Everything counts.
It only takes one fatal bullet to kill you, right? Where is it going to come from? You don’t know so avoid every gun waiting to shoot you. You don’t know who is in the coffee line behind you watching how you behave with the counter person. You don’t know who is on the train or bus or elevator watching you on the way to the audition. Think about it: are you the only person going to that theatre today? In addition to the dozens or hundreds of actors, there is also the entire staff of the theatre and maybe some of their family or friends. The Casting Director may hold a meeting with the rest of the Artistic team before going to auditions. Where is that meeting being held, do you know? Could it be in your favorite coffee shop or the lobby of the hotel across the street, where you sit to relax? Do you know everybody everywhere? No! You might know a lot of the staff of the theatre and the Director of the play but do you know the Director’s current girlfriend? Could she be the woman trying to hail a cab in the pouring rain on the same street corner as you? What story about her trip to the theatre will she whisper to the Director (way back in Row W) when she sees you come on stage for your audition? Was her story about getting a cab part of your visualization? Did you work your perfect plan even in the rain?
Everything counts. Because anyone, anywhere – including other auditioning actors – could suggest (or torpedo) you for a particular role someplace, today or down the road, it makes sense to be nice to people all day long. There have been many times when a stage manager or assistant something-or-other has come to me and whispered about what a “raging lunatic” an actor was out in the lobby. You might have an outstanding audition but you will have a very high mountain to climb to get a callback if the Director hears terrible things about your off-stage behavior. No Director wants a pain-in-the-ass, rude actor in their cast. They will move heaven and earth not to cast you, believe me. In this case, there are too many stupid, poor choices you could make off stage to make a list. People are geniuses at pissing off the wrong people in never-thought-of ways. Don’t do that. Visualize a perfect day, plan that day and work that plan. All day. Everywhere. The Mother of All Fatal Audition Mistakes is Never Piss Anyone Off. In the following posts, you will meet Mother’s ten children and their close relatives.
(Next: Fatal Child One)