Thank you to everyone who responded. I finally got a call yesterday and I got a part! Considering it was my first audition and there was lots of competition I'm quite excited. I also spoke with the director at length about my audition in particular and auditions in general and learned several interesting things, which I'm going to try to generalize below (I should mention that I knew the director already - not sure I would have had such an in-depth conversation with a stranger :o). Please note that we were talking about what he was looking for, but I suspect from what I've heard other people say about auditions that he's not unique.
1) Be nice to everyone, both inside and outside the audition room. This director spoke with the reception people after the auditions to find out how people had behaved. His rationale was that if he was going to be working with people for 3 months, he'd prefer them to be nice. I don't blame him! And while this wasn't necessarily a deciding factor in this instance, I'm sure if he'd been trying to decide between two people who would be equally good for a role, it could have made a difference.
2) Ask in advance what they are looking for, including song suggestions and role characteristics. In a case where there are many people auditioning, and there are a number with quite a bit of talent, the director (or whoever's in charge of auditions) will probably pick the ones who most closely match their image of the characters.
3) When doing a cold reading, more acting is better than less. ie, just reading the lines with a bit of vocal inflection isn't going to get you as far as actually trying to do a characterization. This was my first experience with cold reading and I have to admit I was a little too shocked to do much of anything (as in they handed me the script, gave me a ten second verbal description of the character, and immediately launched into the dialogue).
4) Don't take it personally. If you don't get cast, it doesn't necessarily mean you weren't good, it could just mean that you didn't fit the image of what they were looking for (see #2).
5) It never hurts to ask for feedback :o).
Jennifer
|
| |