HAVING YOUR VOICE (in the audition room)

Speak up! 
What’s your opinion in this scene???I know you didn’t write the audition scene. I know the project isn’t your vision. I know you just got the scene 15 minutes ago and now have to read it cold in the room. I know you have no personal experience with this event in the story (you were never a Vampire).

And yet you have to connect and create believability. You have to act AS IF you created these words.

 I am going to ask you, Actors, to consider your audition material as if you are the Creator of your scene. What if these are the words that YOU thought of saying? What if these are the only words that could possibly express how you feel?

You own these words.

The words are simply entry points for you to unearth why this character ticks, what is important to her, what he wants. My alumni know that one of my premises is to use the exercise of PARAPHRASING in your scene. This is a simple approach to taking ownership of the scene – recreate this dialogue as if it is your own that you generated. Don’t get hung up and limited by word for word accuracy.  Who cares about that when we are making a choice about if you can inhabit this character or not for a whole T.V. series or a whole film?

I always like to say, we are not auditioning the scene.  We are auditioning the essence of the person inside of the scene.

The strongest choice that you can make is to have a point of view, to have your own voice within the audition scene. You are the creator of this character’s world because it can only be depicted as YOUR point of view.