How to be responsive in auditions
“I sort of understood about taking direction quite early. And so I realised that it wasn’t so much about having the perfect speech or doing at the perfect way but understanding that you could perhaps listen and change.”
I’ll be blunt: the inability to take direction will stop you getting roles or getting into the school you want.
It’s actually incredibly common. I see it in my coaching clients a lot – they perform their monologue for me one way, then I asked them to do it a different way and… they do it exactly the same. There are a few reasons for this:
👉 The rhythm of Shakespeare is addictive.
Performing a Shakespeare monologue is like singing a song over and over again. When someone asks you to sing it a different way, it’s extremely difficult to break the pattern. This is not to say you should avoid rehearsing thoroughly. You just need to discover where there is space for you to break the pattern and when you need to stick to it. Think of yourself like a jazz singer - you can improvise your little heart out as long as you keep within the chord structure. For Shakespeare, that usually means playing with pitch and pace (i.e. high and low, stop and go) but NOT changing any words around.
👉 You’re over-prepared.
There is such a thing as over preparing - it’s when your preparation stops you from being flexible and curious. If you’ve done so much research that you can’t imagine the character any other way other than the way they were described in some scholar’s description from 1891, then that’s a problem. Because every director and audition panellist is going to see the character in a different way. This is especially relevant if you’re auditioning for a production rather than a school. The director or casting director may have a particular angle that they want to take for your character, and if you’re not able to be adaptable to what you’re looking for, that takes you out of the running, even if you’re a wonderful, skilled actor. Go into the audition open-minded and you’ll solve that problem.
👉 You’ve copied another actor’s performance.
This is usually a combination of inexperience and the idea that there is a ‘right’ way to do Shakespeare. Sometimes actors find versions of professional actors performing their monologue on YouTube and think that that actor must be performing it the ‘correct’ way. Please don’t do this! There is no ‘right’ way to do Shakespeare - and it’ll just leave you stuck if a panellist asks you to do it another way.
Which brings us back to- when you are preparing your monologue, practice doing it a number of different ways. You can be quite extreme about it. You could imagine the character is in a completely different situation, or have them behave in a way that’s very out of character. If in doubt, try practicing your monologue twice as fast/slow/loud/quiet as you usually do. Figure out what is your ‘default’ mode and then do the opposite, just to challenge yourself. You might discover something interesting that you can use in your actual audition - but if not, you’ll be ready for any crazy redirects that come your way. You never know what a panellist may ask you to do in an audition!
What’s the weirdest redirect you’ve ever had in an audition? Mine was “Do your monologue as if it’s an 80s music video clip!” 🤣 (I got the role! 💃)
