Auditioning

What is auditioning like?

Auditions are usually when a casting director needs actors for a performance or a project, so they send out advertisements for an audition to find the actors they need. The casting director may either give out a sample of a script for the actors to learn or they will ask the actors to bring their own material in to audition with. Once the auditions start, the casting director may sit with other important roles for the performance while watching the actors perform their audition. Once that's finished, the directors may ask them to try the audition a different way or be more exaggerated or use a different emotion. After the audition, the directors might ask the actor to come back for a callback, which is usually a piece from the script and perform once or they will bring the actor into the project to start rehearsing.

Audition types: 

Open Auditions:

An open-casting audition is when the audition details are shared publicly across several platforms such as online, in newspapers, on social media, television, radio or similar. Open casting auditions allow casting directors to see as many people as possible in a short space of time, they may be looking for extras or a lead role. You won’t need to book an individual call time, but as it’s first come, first seen, it’s best to be an early bird or you may miss your chance.

Closed Auditions:

Closed auditions are held when a casting director is looking for a very specific type of talent such as singers or dancers. You will not be able to attend unless you meet the criteria and are invited or put forward by your drama school, theatre group or agency at the request of the casting director. A set time will be provided but these auditions tend to be a little less hurried and more relaxed as the casting director already has a good idea of the talent attending.

Online Auditions:

Using online auditions, a casting director can more easily narrow down candidates and create a shortlist for in-person auditions. Online auditions may also be held in Skype, Zoom or Discord and it will be held at a set time. It is essential to ensure you have a quiet, sound proof space to audition in so make sure you read the brief and focus on details such as tone, audience, character details. Look at the technical details like the correct file format to use, how long the audition is and be in time for the submission deadline. 

You should also use equipment like a professional microphone, editing software to remove clicks, breathing, outtakes and background noise and make sure that your internet is stable so that you don't leave the audition or make it difficult for your audition to be heard. You should also do vocal warm ups before recording to ready your voice and to not have a voice crack or not be able to project as loudly as you would like.

Self-Tape Auditions:

Self-tape auditions involve actors pre-recording themselves performing a provided monologue or scene and sending it to a casting director. Just like online auditions, this can help the casting director narrow down their choices before having you audition in person. The bonus of self-tape auditions over online, however, is that you can re-record your audition as many times as you like until you get it right.

How can I join an audition with my skills?

These are the skills I have that I can use in an audition. I have confidence that I can use when I walk into the audition room and not be nervous and stuttering. I can also use eye contact and look at the judges on the panel so they can see my face as I perform and express my emotions. During an audition, I am willing to take criticism from the panel to improve my audition and also showcase my listening skills as well. I am also a Tenor and I can project my voice out to the panel so they can hear me perform my lines clearly. I have a head shot so that they can see what I look like before the audition.

For a voice acting audition, I have a show reel to show off a recent preview of my voice acting history. I could use my phone or the booth to record myself acting out monologues or singing musical songs.

With the skills that I have, I believe I'll be able to join an audition to showcase myself and my abilities to a panel of judges if I'm either going for an online audition or an in-person audition and hopefully get a part to play, even if it's small, I'll add it to my CV.

Strengths - The strengths of my voice is that I have really good projection so the audience can hear me say my lines. Another one of my strengths is singing. I believe I have really developed this skill over the years and I've noticed an improvement, especially this year. Another strength I have is utilising my emotions during performances such as being able to use anger, sadness or happiness without it seeming fake or unrealistic.

Weaknesses - The weaknesses that I have with my voice is vocal stamina and that I struggle with constantly using my voice over 15 minutes so I'd like to find a warm up to help me increase my vocal stamina and expand my lung and air capacity. I also struggle using articulation with my words so I might use warm ups that stretch my mouth and jaw so that I can pronounce my words properly for the audience to understand me when I'm speaking.

Breathing exercises:

To help with my vocal stamina, I'm going to start using breathing exercises to have more space for air to fill my lungs. To start off, I'll sit or lie down in a comfortable, relaxed position. After that, I'll breathe in for a count of four. I'll hold my breath for a count of four. Let the air out for another count of four, picturing the diaphragm rising and relaxing. Hold for the count of four. After this, I'll repeat the cycle for progressively longer counts until I feel calmer. You can also start from a lower count than four and work your way up.

Articulation:

For articulation, I found that these exercises will help with stretching my mouth and jaw, as well as helping me to adjust to speaking faster than normal. Starting off, I will use 'The tip of the tongue, the teeth and the lips' which is basically repeating this sentence over and over again to help warm the muscles in my mouth such as the tongue, the jaw muscles and the lips as I will use them while repeating the sentence. My next warm up will be 'A E I O U' which is done by saying these letters with your mouth and cheek bones accentuated to stretch mouth muscles and to have your mouth ready for any movement or raising your voice which will make your mouth move even more and lessens the strain on your mouth to not hurt yourself.

Singing Exercises:

These next exercises are more focused on singing but they can also be used as articulation warm ups. With 121, you count up to 8 and then count down to 1 and then once that's finished, do it in reverse, starting at 8 and then going down to 1. This exercise makes you have to count out loud going slow to fast which makes your mouth used to speaking faster to help you focus on articulating your words correctly.

With Mini Mah, you start off saying it at a slow pace as 'Mini Mini Mah' but as you keep repeating it, you raise the pitch and speed up over and over. You can also change the words to 'Bidi Bidi Bah' or 'Gidi Gidi Gah' and then at the end, you can combine them as 'Mini Bidi Gah'. This exercise helps with articulation and helps dealing with pitch and going higher and higher.

For these exercises, I would use these to warm up before singing to help the strain on my voice and be able to sing clearly and use projection. The first warm up I'm going to use is lip thrills and adding vocal slides to get used to the different levels of pitch. I'll then start humming up and down the pitch scale as well as holding 'Eeeeee' and 'Oooooh'. After doing all of these vocal warm-ups, my voice will be clear and able to go up and down the pitch scale to hit all the different notes during my singing lessons and rehearsals.

Stretches:

To help with vocal stamina, I also need to use stretches to help my organs get the space they need for my lungs to expand. The stretches consist of squeezing both hands together and pushing them forward while leaning my head back. Another stretch is putting my hands behind my back while leaning forward to stretch my ribs and organs. I'll also bend over all the way forward and hang my arms towards the floor, stretching my back out fully.

Do these exercises everyday for 10 to 20 minutes and drink water to help your vocal health. You should also schedule rest days to relax your voice and not strain it for rehearsals or performances.

Audition process - How I'll present myself in the audition

In previous auditions, I usually get nervous and start stuttering, losing confidence in myself to perform but for this audition, I would like to perform to the best of my ability without being held back by nerves or stage fright. The way I'll improve for the audition is by saying my introduction and my pieces confidently and also taking a deep breath before starting each piece to prepare myself for the performance. I'll also make sure to look at the panel in the eyes, turning my direction to each member of the panel.

Why 'Somebody Kill Me Please'

We were told that for our audition, we needed to pick at least two monologues, a classical and a modern but we were given the choice to pick a song as well but it had to be from a musical. I wanted to pick one song since I liked singing in the last project so I started looking for songs to sing. I decided to pick 'Somebody Kill Me Please' from The Wedding Singer since it has a more comedic tone. It also focuses on shouting in the main choruses and it gives me the chance to practice shouting in a song. I looked at trying to see if I could sing 'The Way Back' from Jekyll and Hyde but it seemed to use a pitch higher than I was used too and it also held notes longer so I decided to just pick three other monologues instead.

Why Gaveston’s letter of love

I chose to do this monologue because it's full of language that Shakespeare used, allowing me to practice and show that I'm capable of speaking this type of text. The main focus of this piece is love and getting to spend time with the man Gaveston loves so it's a different experience since I haven't played any characters that are in love, letting me develop a new skill for my acting abilities.

Why The Impossible Dream

I listened to a bunch of musical songs and I decided that I was going to try and learn the impossible dream from Man of La Mancha. I chose this song after listening to a bunch of musical songs because I believe it has a contrast to my other song that I'm singing where it's much softer in comparison. Since the song is longer, it will showcase my vocal stamina to sing the longer notes and be able to finish it without being out of breath.

Why The Bear

I decided to do the butler's monologue from The Bear because there's a lot of lines to remember so I'll be building up my vocal stamina. I also wanted to play with the comedy in the monologue, trying to throw myself around or try and use some exaggerated faces to get the panel to laugh.

Why Lungs

The reason for picking this modern piece is that I would be able to try acting as a parent, trying to rekindle their relationship with their wife. It also has a range of emotions in the monologue, such as forgiveness and romance, to use in and practice using for this piece.

After deciding what I'm going to be rehearsing for my auditions and my portfolio for future referencing, I then recorded a video of me reading all of my audition pieces with the scripts in hand to see my first attempt at these scripts so I can give myself an idea of how I'll perform them in later rehearsals. 

This was my first attempt at reading all of the audition pieces I chose and I'll start by breaking down how I felt about each piece and my opinions on them.

Lungs: On this piece, I found this one to be the most simple to imagine since it's very modern and is about two parents trying to figure out what to do to fix this relationship. So I believe I'll continue rehearsing this monologue to add to my portfolio

The Impossible Dream: For this piece, I found myself struggling a lot with the timing of this song since I'm trying to sing without any music in the background. After seeing how much I struggled on The Impossible Dream, I decided to focus on learning the other audition pieces since I don't think I would have time to learn this piece as well.

Somebody Kill Me Please: When performing this piece, I did feel more relaxed with it since I do remember how it's sung and the timing of the song so I'm going to continue rehearsing this piece until I can perform with confidence and comedic timing for the full effect of this performance.

The Bear: In this piece, I have to mostly play as a butler talking to a depressed widow to try and get her outside. I could see myself walking around and cleaning up the room while talking about the monologue.

Gaveston's Letter of Love: Having read the script for this piece, I feel that it's a different change from all the other performances I've done where the main emotion I'm using is love and I'd like to develop using this emotion as another key skill to add and it's a nice performance for my portfolio.

Somebody Kill Me Please

For this song, I'm going to start off singing with my voice shaking, to make it sound like I'm crying. And then when I hit the chorus, I'm shouting out the lyrics to show how upset my character is. On the next verse, I'm going to use the same sad tone while clutching my fists and then on the last chorus, I'm going to start shouting again but when I'm singing the last line, “Put a bullet in my head.” I'll stretch the note on “head” and then start crying after the song since the character singing the song is really upset about their breakup.

Gaveston’s Letter Of Love

When it comes to performing this monologue, I'm going to focus on portraying how much I love the king. I'll extend my words and speak with a lighter tone to show the love in his voice. When it comes to my body, I'm going to bring my arms to my chest and spread them out, looking up while also trying to hold the letter, dancing around the room to show how happy and joyful Gaveston is to receive this letter.

The Bear

Since the monologue from The Bear is mostly comedic, I'll try to lean into that element such as when he's talking about the dead husband and being very quick to talk past him, telling her to move on while listing all the men at the regiment, that she can go out and dance with them. So I'll be very dismissive about the dead husband, moving around the room to pretend to open the curtains and try to pull her out of the chair without anyone sitting on it.

Lungs

My impression of the monologue is that the character I'm playing as is a parent who wants to rekindle his relationship with his partner so to portray that I'm going to speak softly but firmly, keeping my eyes forward on the panel to let them into the intimacy I was trying to show. I'm going to hold my hands forward in the air like I'm holding the partner's hands, waving one hand to the side while I'm listing off the choices at the end of the monologue.

The Impossible Dream

For this song, I had the idea in mind that this song is supposed to be motivation for the characters singing it to achieve the impossible dream. So to match that, I will stand upright and proud, pushing my chest out to project my voice, making it clear and strong, like the character. When I'm singing the verses, they follow the same rhythm in each line so I'll raise my pitch up and down like the song and try my best to drag out the last note.

Recorded a video of myself singing ‘Somebody Kill Me’ 

Feedback: What went well was that I was able to remember all of the lines and that I performed the entire piece. I was also able to raise my volume and shout in the second and fourth verses.

However, I did stumble on the first and third verse so I would like to be able to say the entire song clearly and correctly without pausing. I'll improve upon this by going home and reading the lyrics over and over until I remember each line without stopping or freezing. I also would like to add more emotion into my performance instead of just reading the lines in a singsong voice so in the future, I'll try to seem like I'm upset and crying about what happened in the context of the song.

Video Below:

I practised 'Somebody Kill Me Please' again

Feedback: On this attempt, I was able to add more emotion into the first and third verse by sounding sad and on the verge of tears which really helps sell the performance. I was able to sing all the lines without freezing up on one word and I sounded more like I was singing instead of just saying the words.

What I need to improve on is adding more volume into the quieter verses so that the audience would be able to hear me much easier. To improve on this, I will sing in front of people at College and sing in a separate room to raise my singing volume. I would like to put in some movement into the performance as well, such as maybe strumming an invisible guitar, moving my hands in a quick manner and even leaning over and sobbing with my head in my hands at the end of the song.

video below:

I started thinking about how I was going to perform Gaveston’s letter of love by reading it out loud over and over again, making sure I know how to sound out the old words. I had to think about the context of the scene and that I'm playing a character in love and take my time with words, being full of happiness and how to show that with my body. What went well was that I was off script and managed to speak the entire monologue but my volume was low, I didn't utilise any movement and I did freeze up during the monologue but I repeated the line again and continued with the rest of the monologue until the end.

To improve with these criticisms, I'll read over the script day after day and read it out loud as well so that I don't freeze on any of the lines. By reading the script, I should get more confident with the script and be able to raise my volume up so that the audience can hear me. For movement, I'll try to move to the left or right or I could look up and hug myself, imagining my character being held by the king to emphasise his feelings for him.

To know what we were doing for our final performance, we watched Chekhov's comedy sketches and saw The Reluctant Tragic Hero, The Dangers of Tobacco, The Bear and The Proposal.

Video Below:

I decided to cut The Bear Monologue due to time constraints, I realised I wouldn't be able to try my best on all four audition pieces due to my time being split up so I'll cut The Bear and just work on Somebody Kill Me Please, Gaveston's letter of love and the Lungs monologue. 

I started trying to learn my modern monologue from Lungs without relying on a script, I began this process by breaking the monologue into small chunks, line by line. I was able to say the first lines without the script but I will get off the script soon.

This was my first attempt at performing this monologue without the use of a script so I was more focused on getting the lines right instead of using more volume and projection. However, this was a good starting attempt and now that I know all of the lines, I will start developing my emotions as this character and add in projection, movement, focused eye contact and making my character seem more believable in his role of trying to recover his broken relationship.

To actually utilise these criticisms, I'll start raising my voice in rehearsal to sound like I'm talking in a normal conversation and not lowering my voice. I'll keep my eyes forward and not move away, keeping in contact to enhance the performance more. After adding these to my next rehearsal, I believe it will improve it greatly.

For the auditions on the 23rd of March, we were all given a 5 minute shortened down version of The Reluctant, Tragic Hero script to perform as a monologue. From what I've done so far, I like the volume I used but I feel like I could get louder or maybe change my tone from annoyed to anger, to show how frustrated he is at the situation that he is in.

What I would like to aim to do after this script reading is to be able to say all my lines without the script so that I'll be able to use my arms and look forward to the audience. I would like to add some movement into the performance by putting my head in my hands or moving around the room, huffing and puffing to add some comedy into the monologue.

Video Below:

Audition Practice in front of the class, I performed my audition and I then received notes from Spike for how to improve 

What I did well was that I was able to be off script for the audition practice which let me project my voice forward towards Spike and use my arms to enhance my body language. He also liked the tone change on “You know what it means being a married man” going from complaining about his life to being angry, raising my voice and throwing my arms up.

What I needed to improve on was eye contact so that I can build intimacy with the audience. I can resolve this issue by forcing myself to look toward the panel and to ignore the feeling of embarrassment. I also kept looking away when speaking so to fix that, I'll make sure to look away when I've stopped talking and do whatever action I want to do. Another thing I could improve on is to take longer breaks after I finish a block of lines so I'll just remind myself to pause a little longer and breathe out.

Video below:

In the rehearsal of the monologue from Lungs, I believe that I was able to use good volume and that I was also speaking nice and clear, all of my words could be heard correctly. I was off script and spoke every word without needing the script in front of me.

However, what I need to improve on for the audition is to not get stuck on a sentence and say the entire monologue without freezing up and forgetting the words. To help correct this issue, I'll be speaking the whole monologue off camera until I can say every word fluently and without pausing. I should also be using my hands to pretend to hold the wife's hand, to point at myself or to count on my fingers while talking about the things they'll do together and to show how deeply that my character cares about fixing his relationship, I will use eye contact and look at the audience.

Video Below:

When I first walked into the audition, I said my introduction confidently and without tripping up on any of my words, I then took a few deep breaths to prepare myself before acting out the two pieces.

For the first piece when I performed Gaveston's letter of love, I spoke clearly and confidently to the panel and I used my hands to point towards the panel and myself to enhance my point. However, there are other things I need to improve such as using more eye contact since I was looking around the panel but should've just focused on one person to make the scene more intimate. I also could add more emotion into the scene since the whole monologue is about love so I should've spoken my words more softly and moved around the room as if I was so happy and glad to have received this letter.

On the second piece, The reluctant, tragic hero, I was able to add more emotion in this piece than the previous one because I had already practised this monologue in an audience setting and was able to take feedback from someone else to make the scene feel more natural. I was also able to speak all my lines clearly and with projection but I didn't perform the entire script, only stopping on the second last paragraph. For what I need to improve on is to add more comedy into the monologue since the entire script is from Chekhov's comedy sketches so I should've leaned into that more by being more exasperated in my lines and maybe shout more, I also needed to add movement into the performance to enhance the comedy by maybe running back and forth or putting my head in my hands. I feel that would've made my audition a lot better if I try to take these criticisms on and add them to my future auditions.

After performing my two pieces, one of the people from the panel said to perform the first couple of lines but act as if I don't get this gun, the world will end so I raised my volume and tried being panicked and stressed, leaning forward to add more body language to enhance the performance.

https://voice123.com/thebooth/how-to-audition-for-voice-acting/#:~:text=A%20voice%20acting%20audition%20is,the%20tone%20of%20the%20script  

https://www.schoolofrock.com/resources/vocals/9-best-vocal-warm-ups-for-singers 

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/best-breath-control-exercises-75009/ 

https://www.stagemilk.com/what-to-expect-at-a-theatre-audition/ 

https://www.theactorspulse.com.au/acting-auditions/the-audition-process-what-to-expect/?utm_source=aio&utm_medium=organic