Fighting For the Acting Part
Knowing Your Competition at the Audition
Since the majority of an actor’s efforts are is spent auditioning for work, it is important to spend some time investigating who your opposition is for each particular role. You should know that your main rival is aggressive, somewhat mean-spirited and has a chip on his shoulder. And though they haven’t thoroughly prepared for the audition they do have a sense of self-entitlement when it comes to landing that part. So who is this person? To quote the cartoonist Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
An Inconvenient Truth
The only person you’re competing with for that role is yourself, but we are mislead through inexperience and naiveté into thinking that we are striving against others for the part. This problem goes back, for many of us, to when we were trying out for the school play. Because the talent pool was small; because we knew all the kids who were reading for that particular part in the show; because we were young and stupid, we naturally viewed everyone as our rivals. The “I win, you lose,” mentality is ingrained into almost every kind of contest we have, yet when it comes to actors auditioning for a part, the rules are different.
How do I Judge Thee, Let Me Count the Ways
It’s very important to understand that the criteria by which you are being evaluated are subjective and not objective. The director can and will change the way he judges each actor, according to how that actor might fit into his idea for the role. The director is going to expect you to be good; i.e., you understand the part, have worked on the sides, made some acting choices and walk in the room with a positive, ready-to-work attitude. That is the minimum.
If the casting of a role were objective, then the director could lay out one set of criteria, which everyone would know beforehand, and then simply see who could meet all the requirements. It would be like a foot race where all the competitors that know if they run a certain distance under certain conditions and come in first, they are assured of winning the gold. This is simply not so in the casting process.
Your Evil Twin
So if you know that each actor is evaluated separately and under subjective criteria, then why are you spending one minute thinking about what your “competition” will be doing? You should be focused on your true rival, your evil twin…the actor described at the top of this article. They are the ones who defeat you for that role by saying, “Hey, you’ve worked on this scene for 30 minutes already and there’s a great rerun at eight o’clock, let’s call it a night,” or “You know that director only likes to hire _____ (actors with MFA’s, friends of theirs, blondes, etc.),” or “You know you’re not right for this part, just go in there and wing it.”
Don’t let them rob you of your concentration, dampen your spirits or focus your frustrations on others. Though this behavior might salve your ego, none of these things will give you the real advantage you need in landing that role – the power of showcasing your talent which comes from the focused preparation of your audition.
To read another article on this general topic go to: Bring Your Best Acting Skills to an Audition
Acting Competition
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