[NoHo Arts District, CA] – This month’s acting blog from Fran Montano of Actors Workout Studio focuses on the question, “How is your Audition Perspective?”
Auditioning live should not be a stressful event. Some actors get nervous, anxiety, and panic over auditioning live. If that’s you, you need to change your perspective. Many actors go into an audition thinking, “I need to get this job,” “I need to be good,” “I want them to love me,” “If I don’t get this job, I don’t eat and am a failure.” Sound familiar? If so, you’re probably not booking a lot of work.
Your view of an audition is important. See it as an opportunity to perform. I have heard many great commentaries from excellent people that I will paraphrase here, including Tom Hanks, Brian Cranston, Richard Kind, Jeff Doucette, my manager and agent, as well as my own take.
Richard Kind said something like this, “Writers can sit down and write, painters and sit down and paint alone, but actors need an audience, and they only need one to perform. An audition is an opportunity to get to do what you love.” He has a much more detailed and great post on Facebook about auditioning, check it out.
I heard Tom Hanks once said, “An audition is the one time you get to give a performance completely the way you want to.”
Jeff Doucette told me he tells himself this before an audition, “Wanna know how to play this part? I’ll show you how to play this part.”
Brian Cranston talks a lot about auditioning. If you can find some of his talks on it, I highly recommend it. What stuck with me when I heard him was this view, “This is my presentation of the character. If they like it, it’s mine, if they don’t, it wasn’t meant for me, it’s meant for someone else.”
I had an agent and a manager both say the same thing to me. They said, “I don’t care if you get this job or not. Go in there and show them what a great actor you are. When I call for feedback this is what I would like to hear, ‘He is a great actor, we want him for this job, or he is a great actor, not right for this but I’ll call him in for something soon.’”
I had an acting teacher once say, “Every audition is a job, a chance to work and be seen by an audience, and get fans.”
It’s true that most parts that an actor gets, don’t come from one audition or meeting a casting director the first time. They get seen, and the casting director remembers them and calls them in again for something they are right for.
I like to see an audition as an opportunity to perform. If you get the job, great, if not, you may get a fan or follower that would like to see you perform again.
Take the pressure off yourself on having to get the job.
Thank you Tom Hanks, Brian Cranston, Richard Kind, and Jeff Doucette, for your insights and sharing with us. You are all great actors and I’m a fan.
I often post audition commentaries on our Actors Workout Studio Facebook page.
Keep working.
Fran Montano
Actors Workout Studio