Stop auditioning!
What? “Well, Tony, I can’t very well get a job if I don’t audition!”
Yes, you can. In fact, you book jobs when you take the whole paradigm of what an audition is and turn it on its head.
The term “auditioning” stacks you against yourself and becomes an implicit order of self telling you that you have something to prove.
You don’t.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Absolutely nothing to prove.
You deserve to be here. On this planet and in a casting room. You are already whole and complete regardless of what an agent or manager or casting director (or anyone for that matter!) thinks about your work.
Your job is to tell your story. Not the way you “think” the producers want you to tell it. Not the way you “think” you have to do it. Your job is to do it your way.
Emmy-winner, Bryan Cranston says that you’re not “trying to get a job.”
Your job is to create.
An “audition” is an opportunity. It’s a possibility for someone to see how you choose to interpret the material. They’ve never, ever seen your way. Ever. So you have a 50/50 chance of getting it right just by being brave enough to go into a room and (in your creating) say, “This is how I choose to interpret this.”
Let’s face it. For many actors that’s the only opportunity you might have all week to act. If you’re not in a class, if you’re not on a job, if you’re not rehearsing a play, your “audition” is your two minutes to act. That’s what a 4-year college degree and an MFA in acting has gotten you – literally two minutes to act!
So you better put that degree to some good use and stop analyzing what you think they want. You are what they want, but you don’t think that because you distrust that doing it your way is potent and powerful and unlike anyone else’s. So you acquiesce your power in the name of an “audition” because you’d rather do it “right” or not make a mistake and do it incorrectly and upset someone. Or get bad feedback. Or risk.
What ends up happening? In the name of doing something “right” you do it “wrong!”
Stop trying to figure out what they want. No one knows what they want until they see it. That’s the intangible quality of life itself. It’s energetic. It’s timing. It’s essence. It’s creativity. It’s letting go of control. It’s alchemy.
Why do you book the jobs you have no interest in doing? You know the ones . . . Friday The 13th Part 77 . . . Leprechaun 3D . . . Godzilla vs. Battleship: The Final Sinking . . .?
You simply don’t care.
You’re not attached to how you look or what the casting director thinks of you or if you’re making the “right” choices or nailing the part. Instead, you’re playing (remember what it was like to actually play and have fun?), you’re engaged moment-to-moment, you’re surrendered in listening and unattached. You’re not focused on the end results or trying to get the job.
Then your agent calls and says you booked it and you’re like, “Nooooooo!”
A student reminded me that agents rarely call it “auditioning.” They call you and say, they have an appointment for you. Or a casting office wants to see you. Or your reps say you have a meeting or you’re going in to read for someone.
It’s only actors that create this idea in their head that it’s about a job.
So stop auditioning and what will happen?
You won’t have to anymore because you’ll be so busy working.