<p>When I hold auditions for a production I am directing, I am essentially a panel of ONE. There are other people present (usually the producer, and someone from Stage Management) but they don’t pay as much attention to the auditions as I do. I can’t cast a play just from seeing a whole bunch of people’s short monologues, but I CAN tell from a short monologue whether to give someone a callback, which gives me more time to work with the person and see if they are right for the show. I am not really an “amateur” as I have been professionally trained, and I am particularly good at holding auditions and casting.</p>
<p>A professional director can tell within the first ten seconds of your monologue whether you will be getting a callback. Really.</p>
<p>Yes, I put people into categories by “type”. The most important of these is age and gender, so I have older women, younger women, older men, younger men. I might have more then two age categories, depending on the play. And there can be other factors that determine “type”.</p>
<p>An actor should know what their “type” is, and should choose audition material that is appropriate for their “type”. And that includes whether you are the more “romantic” type (say, “Romeo”) or more of a “character” type (say, “Richard III”). I am certainly more of a “character” type. But you don’t have to be completely gorgeous to be a “romantic” type. The director looks at you and can imagine what you will look like with the right costume, hair, makeup and lighting–all of which can make up for a heck of a lot of issues. A romantic type can be skinny or average or even a few pounds overweight (again, with the right costume), a romantic male can’t be TOO short, but apart from this as long as there isn’t anything TOO far out most folks can be romantic types.</p>
<p>You will be put in a “type” and you will only be competing with others of your type. So the best strategy is to be the best auditioner of that type. It’s not a lottery, they don’t choose randomly from the categories, in each case they pick the BEST of each type they need.</p>
<p>But even having said that, here are a couple of stories. I was directing a play in college–BENEFACTORS by Michael Frayn–which I considered to be a very “British” play and thought when I started auditions I would need a cast that could all play British characters well. But one actress who auditioned for me was a Polish woman. Her audition was so good that I wanted to cast her, so I looked again at the script to see if it was possible to change the character to be Polish (you couldn’t really tell this actress was Polish, just from her accent that she was a European who did not speak English as her native language.) And yes, this Polish woman got the part and did an incredible job. Similarly, I once auditioned for a play by a Michigan playwright that was a parody of murder mystery plays, with six characters–the “types” were leading man, leading lady, juvenile lead, ingenue, butler, and detective. I auditioned thinking that since I was a “character” type I had the best shot at the butler or the detective. But instead, since at the time I was a younger man, and since my audition was so much better then any of the other young men there, the director gave me the “juvenile lead” role, changing the role into a “character” type by making him more geeky and comic. The ingenue and I ended up playing our roles like George Burns & Gracie Allen. And was the first time I actually got to kiss an ingenue onstage!</p>
<p>So in both those cases, an actor giving an incredible audition made up for the fact that they were the wrong “type”.</p>
<p>I agree that auditioning for a lot of places is a good idea. But also make sure that your audition is INCREDIBLE. Make sure that your chosen monologues are right for your “type”, and that you have worked on them until they are absolutely perfect. If your audition doesn’t go well, work on doing better for your next audition, instead of just saying “oh, they didn’t take me because I have the wrong ‘look’”.</p>
<p>KEVP</p>