Learning to Love Auditions

It's a good thing I didn't try to hold myself to posting every single day on this blog. Otherwise, I would have given up by now. I find that I get very tired after a long day on a set, even though I might have been sitting down most of the time, or just doing two or three auditions over the course of a day. I find performing to be exhilarating while I am doing it, but it is almost always followed by a big emotional letdown, followed by physical exhaustion, which usually means for me that I will have to spend the day in bed.

When I last wrote, I had just had two intense work days, followed by two days of auditioning for theatre on the weekend, an audition for the Jimmy Kimmel show on Monday, and a 10-hour day of working background on a new hidden-camera show called "Fashion Emergency" yesterday. [By the way, I was invited to become a member of one of the theatre companies, The Underground in Hollywood, and to join the Jimmy Kimmel show as a sketch player on an as-needed basis; it was not, in fact, an interview to discuss my career. Damn!] I had a great time every day, but I had to stand on set for about 30 minutes during four different takes, which meant that my back was killing me when I got home. So I was forced to spend today in bed, which meant I missed two auditions, one for a new game show, and one for a student film with an intriguing lead female character. This fell into the "no pay" (well, gas money) category, but I wanted to do it because I liked the character description, and it was at UCLA, a film school with a great reputation that I have not yet worked with.

I hate to miss auditions, because for me, they are like free acting classes. If you get an audition for a lead character, sometimes you not only get to perform your monologue, but you will get a chance to do a scene study with the student director. This may be a "cold read," where you have just been given the "sides" (pages from the script that the director wants you to read with him or her) just before the audition, right before you go in; or it may be a read where you have had some time to look at the script beforehand. If you get the sides even a night before, you will be expected to have them memorized, or at least close to it, in order to have a shot at getting the part. You'll also need to take your best shot at interpreting the character without any input from the director.

Normally, I will give my reading first, and then if the director does not give me any feedback, other than "great" or "perfect" (I hate that because it is meaningless), I will ask, "can I do it again with some direction from you?" Almost always, they will ask me to make some sort of change, and the second read will be better. I may not get the part, but I will have shown that I can adjust to direction, and I will have gotten to perform the scene two different ways. And then I thank the director for inviting me to read, and I leave the room and immediately try to forget about the audition.

Why do I do this? Because, if an actor gets hung up on how they do in an audition and why they didn't get the part, and wondering if a director will call, and why they didn't call, they will go absolutely nuts. I was obsessing over auditions early in my career, when I wasn't doing very many, and a more experienced actress with whom I was doing a play at the time gave me a very wise piece of advice that I have never forgotten. She said, "I try to treat each audition as a little performance. I go in, I do my best for the audience, I smile and thank them, and then as I leave I mentally crumple it up, toss it over my shoulder, and forget it. It's over, and whatever happens from that point is no longer up to me." Wise lady. That advice has saved me a lot of grief. I love to perform, so now, I treat my auditions like performances. I enjoy them, I try to learn as much as I can from them, and if I get the part, it's just a bonus.

I do try to analyze how I'm doing, of course. My routine goes like this: every week day I review audition notices in six databases, minimum - Actors' Access, Extras' Access, Now Casting, LA Casting, SF Casting, and Casting Connection. If I have time, I also look at the listings on Back Stage West and IMDB.[There are tons of databases available with lists of castings; these are just the ones that have worked best for me. They are not free, so I had to choose based on what I can afford and my rate of return. I've listed them more or less in my order of preference. Many actors like Craig's List too, but almost all the jobs on there are no pay, and a lot of them are for "adult" films, so I don't subscribe to that any more.]

Anyway, I estimate I submit electronically about 30 resumes a day, or about 150 per week. Out of these, I get about 15 auditions, which is a pretty good rate (10%) but could be better (I'd like to see 20%, but I think I need a new performance reel to hit that - mine is mostly from 2006 now so the next investment I make will be in a reel). Of these auditions, I estimate that I will be offered 3 to 5 parts, again, not a bad success rate (20-30%; this is up from about 10% in past years, I think due my weight loss and going back to darker hair).

Of the parts that I don't get, I try to analyze what went wrong; it is usually because my look is not right (I play a lot of mothers, and often the child does not look like me, for example). Sometimes the other actress has more formal training than I do, so she gets the role. Or her English accent was better. Or maybe she got to the audition 15 minutes early, and I was just on time. It is usually little things like this that sway the part from one actor to another.

So, if you can learn to treat auditions like lessons, and not get too upset if you don't get the part (as long as you are getting hired often enough to feel like you are doing something right!), auditions can be an actor's best friend. Between auditions and working in student films, I feel like I have gotten a BFA by now. But of course, I don't have classical training or a degree in acting, only a number of director's and casting director's workshops, and my lack of training has hurt me on some occasions. I'm about to reach the stage of my career where I need to consider some serious study, because I'm starting to get asked this question at more and more auditions: "who is your acting coach?" And right now, I don't have one. Which means I'm going to have to figure out the answer to that question pretty soon.

Til next time,
Jennie