<p>This year Ithaca's theatre department has initiated a pre-screening process.
The length of monologues to be submitted is stated to be 1 minute.
Is this also the length if you get passed on to regular audition?
The 1 minute length is shorter than any of the other colleges audition requirements - which seem to be at 2 minutes range.
Does anyone else think 1 minute is too short?</p>
<p>Most colleges say two minutes maximum, I believe. One minute is not too short. You don’t have to perform the monologue exactly as written. Monologues can be trimmed.</p>
<p>Auditors actually like shorter monologues at auditions. They have to see so many people. It is often said that they can form an opinion of you in the first few moments!</p>
<p>We are planning to shoot our monologues for Ithacas pre screen today.
Their requirements for on campus audition are also one minute monologues. It is the shortest we have of 14 schools. It does make me wonder how they decide… Compared to DePaul, Rutgers and of course Juilliard who end up spending hours with their final candidates at callbacks. </p>
<p>I did notice this week when reserving our Carnegie Mellon audition that they have changed to two one minute monologues. Last year they asked for two one and a halfs. CMU does say to prepare a third monologue in reserve. Ithaca doesn’t. When we toured at Ithaca she made it clear the audition would be carefully timed.</p>
<p>When a director (or casting director) holds auditions, they can almost always get everything they need from the first 10 or 15 seconds of the monologue.</p>
<p>Always follow the instructions from the school. If they say one minute max, then your monologue MUST not exceed one minute. It doesn’t matter how you “feel” about that. One of the many things they are testing is your ability to follow directions.</p>
<p>People always seem to pick really long monologues, and then agonize over “how am I going to cut this down.” It might make more sense to figure out how long one minute looks like on a script page, then find a monologue that fits that length.</p>
<p>KEVP</p>
<p>If CMU likes you, they will ask for more monologues until you don’t have any more. Our campus tour was led by a girl who did six of them and got in.</p>
<p>Dramamom, Ithaca was the only school where my son’s auditor used a stopwatch. It’s also the only school where he was asked for an additional monologue. (He got in, ftr.) He ended up using the same one-minute monologues for every audition–as I recall, that’s what most asked for anyway. But definitely have at least one additional back-up monologue prepared, no matter what the school says they require!</p>
<p>Interesting. We only have one school of 14 with one minute monologues. I’m glad to hear Ithaca will ask for a third. My D actually has 9 monologues in order to meet all the varying requirements across the 14 schools. (She also tires of monologues quickly so instead of cutting one mono shorter to meet several school requirements she just picked other monos entirely. This way she won’t get bored with them.)
KeVp - I’m sure with some kids the auditors can tell very quickly they are not what the school is looking for, but with the top 10 percent I just feel like it must be very hard to differentiate with only two minutes worth of audition time! I don’t think my D has been cast in any show on so little… Between auditions and callbacks it is almost always ten minutes or more. Just my thoughts on it.</p>
<p>Dramamom0804, I don’t want to open up a can of worms, but I think the reason that college auditors can make a decision more quickly than casting auditors is that casting auditors are looking for a skill set, whereas college auditors are looking for potential.</p>
<p>In casting auditions, there will be relatively few qualified candidates, and the auditors have to make sure that the cast they choose will be able and dependable.</p>
<p>In college auditions, the auditors simply have to identify promising candidates. The actual decision will be made later and will be based on a number of other factors that will be considered when they study the whole application.</p>
<p>I think what we are talking about is a “pre-screening” audition. I would guess that Ithaca has this to save time, to eliminate the “hopeless cases” right away, so they know not to waste time with those. Once they have eliminated those, they have more time to spend with the people who get through the “pre-screening”.</p>