Auditon: "Hamlet" and "Dracula"

Last Thursday I auditioned for the productions of Hamlet and Dracula at the Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake. Both plays will be directed by Charles Morey, Artistic Director at PTC. This was my first audition for an Equity theatre and I was pretty excited and pretty nervous. I prepared a monologue from Measure for Measure for the audition and was also ready to read sides from Dracula. I went up to Salt Lake with three other really good friends. They all had to go on the waiting list, but I had an audition slot at 3pm thanks to my friend Gary Reimer who had gone up to Salt Lake the week before and signed us both up. We arrived early and they all got on the list. We even ran into some good friends up there that I hadn't seen for a long time. It was really fun to see them all. Eventually all of my friends got to go in ahead of me. That was funny that the only guy who had signed up ended up going last. They had things moving along very nicely.

Eventually my turn came. I guess to get to the point of this post, my audition was terrible. I am honestly embarrassed by the work I did with the Measure for Measure monologue. I was nervous. I admit that, but that's no excuse for what I did. First of all, I hadn't given my monologue a shape. I had done a lot of emotional work with it, and it's a piece I've done twice before as a scene in classwork and for a competition, so I felt comfortable with it, but I hadn't given it a solid shape as a monologue. As a result I started just making choices in the moment. Now, I'm all for making choices in the moment. Some of the very best work comes from acting in the moment. However, if those choices are made safely and out of fear then it will stink. And that's what happened to me. My body was stiff and full of tension. My thoughts were in my head the whole time. I didn't go nearly deep enough for what the scene required. My emotions were pushed. My voice was okay. In essence it was an okay piece of acting, but it was a terrible piece of a human soul. I didn't bare any of my soul in the piece and it's no wonder that I didn't make call backs.

On a lighter note, I felt great about my cold reading for Dracula. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to salvage the damage already done by my awful monologue. Well, I got out of there and wrote down what I did wrong and what I did well. Then we went out for pizza. It was delicious. So, I'm embarrassed for the performance that I gave, but I learned a lot. I've got to push myself and go all the way. There's no such thing as playing it safe if you want to succeed in this art form and in this business.