Improving Your Chances at Auditions

Improving Your Chances at Auditions

Many actors, especially young ones, tend to have a love/hate relationship with auditions. Let’s check to Improving Your Chances at Auditions.

On the one hand, every audition is a potential job and the chance to possibly making your dream of being a professional performer come true. On the other hand, each one is a high-stakes, three-minute-long ‘test’ of your abilities and if you’re not cast, you may find yourself facing disappointment and questioning your talent and eventually life decisions.

Auditioning is a part of every actor’s life. When you think about it, every profession (doctor, lawyer, nuclear scientist) contains certain less-than-exciting duties that come along with good parts of pursuing one’s chosen field. You might say that auditioning is the paperwork of the acting profession. But unlike paperwork at a desk job, auditioning doesn’t need to be a dreaded experience—you just have to reframe it into an experience that helps you achieve your purpose.

A FEW TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES HAVE BEEN GIVEN DOWN BELOW-

Act as much as possible:

Taking classes and practicing your craft as often as possible will increase the chances of impressing a casting director. Take feedback from auditions into account and work as hard as you can to improve, then try again. It might take dozens of auditions before you land a role, but every time you act in front of a casting director, you’re getting valuable practice.

You already know how to do it:

Auditioning isn’t a test, it’s just acting under less than ideal circumstances.. Think of all those times in rehearsals and classes when you didn’t have the prop, costume, or maybe even the lines, but you were still immersed in the experience and discovering the character’s journey.

Auditioning, like all acting, is a process of imagination. It’s likely that you’ll have a reader who works in the CD’s office, but try to imagine that reader is Priyanka Chopra or Vicky Kaushal sitting across from you , reading those lines. Work off that imaginary experience. Act your way through it. It will help you separate your anxieties and fully enter the world of the scene.

Hone various skills and talents:

You can single yourself out from the other actors by demonstrating your other talents if they are relevant for the role. Knowing how to sing, dance, play an instrument, play a sport, and so on can give you an edge. Don’t be afraid to break into ‘song and dance’ during an audition if you think it will help your chances.

Act like a star:

This doesn’t mean behave like an entitled jerk. What it does mean is conduct yourself personally and professionally like a star. Stars are stars because they deliver. They have confidence in their abilities. They know the lines. They’ve figured out an approach to the scene and know how to listen—not for their cue, but with the intent of being affected; being ‘hit’ by what the other character is saying or doing.

Most stars carry themselves with confidence in and out of any room based on the quality of their work. Provided you’re talented and have worked hard on your skills, you can (and should) carry yourself with the same confidence. People like to hire ‘stars’ because they feel confident that those artists will deliver.

Embrace auditioning:

Unless you become an ‘offer only’ actor (and trust me, there are very few of them on the planet), auditioning will continue to be a part of your life. Since it’s not going away, learn to love it.

The casting process is unpredictable. The number of factors that go into who gets the role is jaw-dropping. While getting cast might be completely out of your control, how you perform in the room is not. Most auditions don’t lead to a booking, but if you demonstrate that you’re a skilled performer who’s consistently fresh in the room, your good audition will most likely lead to another audition in the future, and that eventually leads to employment.

Never whine about auditioning. Solve your problems using your creativity and talent, and audition as much and skillfully as you can. Master it.