The Missing (Vital!) Ingredient From Many Auditions
Actors can become fixated on their acting to the degree that they are actually not present.
They are in an isolated bubble, hermetically sealed.
When auditioning, the overriding need should not be to get the role.
Which is difficult because of course you want to get the role. Why else would you be auditioning?
But you can want that role so badly you become insulated inside your own nervous system… clinging to what you want with the fear that if you stop, you will have nothing.
A friend wrangled an audition for me for Ophelia when I was nineteen. It was one of my dream roles. My passion was steaming out of my pores. I walked the dark streets as Ophelia in a long-hooded cape on high alert seeking to capture the role… all the while headed for my demise.
By the time I was in the audition room my hand shook so badly I could not see the words on the page. The temperature in my body soared. I was flying in some other universe and I couldn’t get on the ground. I left the audition shattered.
I didn’t realize I was clinging to myself through the character, suspending myself. I was not present.
Being in the room is the baseline for acting success.
An actor can act up a storm and be extremely talented but if they are not present in the room, something huge is missing. Acting is interactive, not only within the role but with the whole setting. It is a convergence.
Take it all in; the people, the room, the objects, those things that connect you with where you are physically, as well as how you feel. This is what brings you into the present.
There is a tendency toward isolation when auditioning, but willpower will not erase what is actually there.
The balance will go off.
The actor then tries to cope with the unbalance. And a whole internal struggle ensues. The audition becomes about personal survival, as mine did for Ophelia.
I didn’t know how to be present as a baseline, I was too afraid to be present, to really be there. So I isolated myself, hoping that they would come and find me.
To be present is both selfish and selfless.
We tend to be naturally present when what we want isn’t an issue, we are relaxed and open.
When the need is high, we go on super drive to meet its demand… projecting our needs onto the experience, propelling us even more into conflict.
But an audition is not your enemy. It is not them-versus-me but rather us. It is a joining.
I am present when I am tuned in to my surroundings. I am present when I don’t escape the feelings in my body. I am present when I hear my thinking, while at the same time listening beyond myself.