You’re enrolled in an acting class. Your teacher may give you acting scenes to study and perform. You may do a cold-read in front of the class or you may be asked to get together with your scene partner between classes to prepare for next week’s performance. You study your scene, make your acting choices, memorize lines, and return to class ready for your performance and critique. You begin to develop your acting skills and your classmates are supportiive. Then you get an audition and everything you learned seems to fly out the window. Why? Acting training is not the same as audition training.
You can be the most brilliant actor in class, your teacher can be the best around, but that does not mean you will audition well. There is one factor to the audition setting traditional acting classes cannot completely recreate; fear, stage-fright, also known as performance anxiety. One of the primary fears rooted in this kind of performance anxiety is the fear of judgement.
Most acting teachers try to promote a “safe” environment for their actors to work; a place where they can develop trust with others while stripping themselves of their ego blocks allowing them to be vulnerable. A safe environment means they won’t be emotionally abused or personally judged. Although this kind of environment allows the actor to be able to safely develop their skills, it doesn’t necessarily prepare them for the real world of auditions. Here’s the reality; an audition means you are being judged. You’re being judged on your talent, your skill, your professionalism, even your looks and personality. It may seem horribly personal at times, but it’s not; it’s simply the nature of the business of casting. So audition training is more about preparing to handle the pressure than it is about performance.
Audition training should include the art of Improvisation, mock audition, and cold-reading practice.
The art of improvisation isn’t just about being funny or quick-witted; it’s about learning the disciplines of unwritten storytelling. Improv teaches the actor how to listen, and be present in every minute of the story. Improv exercises the actor’s imagination and helps them to visualize their environment, which an actor has to be able to do in an audition where there aren’t any set pieces or props. The best auditions are by actors who are Improv trained.
The mock audition is when the classroom turns into a pretend casting office. The teacher hands out audition scenes or “mock sides” to the students when they arrive to class. The actors are given only a short amount of time to prepare before going into a separate room where they audition in front of the camera as if it were an actual casting. The teacher doesn’t coach them during this process and sometimes purposely makes them uncomfortable or tries attempts to throw them off by giving them unexpected direction, like adding movement or “busy work” to include in their performance. After the mock audition is over, the teacher reviews and critiques their on-camera performance. One of the best ways to prepare for an audition is a new form of training called Somatic Memorization Technique. S.M.T is a form of training that conditions actors to perform with better recall and focus while under pressure. S.M.T is most effective when used in the mock audition practice.
When you seek and acting teacher, ask if they coach S.M.T or do any kind of audition training. If they don’t, then you may want to seek out an audition coach. After all, if you can’t land the role, what’s the point?