Unit 24 - Auditions for actors

Selecting appropriate material for audition

On commencing this unit, I have carried out some research to find out about audition requirements. For the purpose of this assignment, I will be preparing a contemporary and a classical piece as this is what I might be asked to carry out for a drama school, university or an acting job.

I have taken some time to find some pieces which I think would be suitable for me to take to an audition.

First of all, I needed to establish my criteria for selecting a monologue. What am I looking for in a monologue? The monologue needs to be age appropriate i.e. I’m not going to be playing a much older woman.

I have used the internet to try to find a contemporary monologue which I will perform in my audition. When browsing the internet, I was unable to find a piece which I thought that I could connect with and perform to my full potential. Therefore, I decided to look in some monologue books with my lecturer. After browsing through a few books, there were a few monologues which stood out to me. These were ‘Stepping out (Mavis)’, ‘September in the rain (Liz)’, ‘Artist descending a staircase (Sophie)’ and ‘My mother said I never should (Doris)’. All of these pieces had potential. They were mostly within my age range. They could all be developed because they ha d a beginning, a middle and an end so would end themselves to a dynamic approach. However, after some careful consideration, I have selected the monologue ‘Stepping Out’. This is because I felt like, out of the 4 monologues which I had narrowed it down to, I could connect with this one the most. This is because the monologue is spoken by a dance teacher and with all my previous dance training, I feel like I can apply this to the speech. Also, I am aware of all of the dance steps that are mentioned within the monologue and I can therefore carry out these steps during the monologue to give the piece some dynamic and make it more exciting and believable. I know that Mavis is slightly older than me, but I feel I can draw on past experience with dance teachers and use my emotional memory (Stanislavski) to create a believable character.

I also carried out the same process for selecting my classical piece. To begin with, I decided that I definitely wanted to perform a Shakespeare piece as opposed to one of the Jacobean playwrights because this is something which I have never performed before and I knew it would provide me with a challenge. The Shakespeare pieces that I have considered include ‘As you like it (Phebe)’, ‘Henry VI part 1 (Joan of Arc)’, ‘Henry VI part 2 (Queen)’, ‘Twelve Night (Viola)’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet (Juliet)’. ‘As you like it’ and ‘Henry VI part 1’ would have both required me to work on a dialect and I felt that the challenge from understanding and learning the text would be enough for me to cope with. Even though I really connected with the character of Phebe, I decided against this. Also, I had worked on a dialect for another piece for the developing voice for the actor unit and I wanted to work with my own accent. Juliet’s speech, I felt, would give me an excellent contrast with my contemporary monologue. It is steeped in emotion and is tragic throughout. I don’t know how I am going to capture that emotional state for my own rendition but this is something I am going to commit to and work hard to achieve.

Here is a link to a really useful article about how to select a good monologue in preparation for an audition:
http://www.theatrebayarea.org/news/185679/10-tips-for-choosing-your-audition-monologue.htm