<p>My son is preparing for and stressing about his auditions for several BFA theater programs. I do not have any experience with this so I am asking for advise to give him on how to best prepare with 5 weeks to go. He has his monologues chosen and is working with his high school drama teacher once or twice a week for 30 minutes each session. What should he focus on to prepare? And how about an appropriate song choice, two schools require he sing 16 bars of a song of his choice, acapella. It there any piece of music he should avoid? Thank you for any advise.</p>
<p>I am glad to hear he is working with his high school drama teacher, he or she should be able to help him prepare his auditions. Does he have the option of increasing the number of times a week he meets with his teacher?</p>
<p>There is really nothing to focus on other than the audition as a whole! There are whole books written on how to audition. I can’t tell you what he needs to work on without seeing his audition, I don’t know what his “weak points” are, so that’s why he needs to keep working with his high school drama teacher.</p>
<p>Remember that he could be asked to do all kinds of things at his auditions. He might be asked, “okay, do that same monologue you just did, but do it while stacking up these chairs” or some other physical activity. Or he might be told to do the same monologue in a different way, like “as though you are on the verge of tears” or something. He should definitely have read the entire plays that his monologues come from. One reason for this is that he may be asked to talk about his monologues and what is going on in the play. He might be asked to talk about why he picked these particular monologues. He might be asked to talk about what is going through the mind of the character while they speak the monologue.</p>
<p>He might be given some sort of improv or movement exercise that has nothing to do with his monologues. And he might well be asked to give another monologue–so he should always have at least one more prepared then they formally asked for.</p>
<p>Or he might not be asked to do any of this.</p>
<p>You say he was asked for 16 bars of a song, but you don’t say whether he is going for Musical Theater or non-musical. If he is auditioning for non-musical theatre, the auditors are just asking him to sing so they have one more way to evaluate his voice, stage presence, and so on. He does NOT need to pick a song with hard to hit notes, or that requires belting. He should pick a song that is easy for him to sing. And there are also many “overdone” audition songs to avoid, just like there are “overdone” monologues. Much of the process for choosing an audition song is the same as the process for choosing an audition monologue.</p>
<p>It says that this thread has been “moved”, but I don’t know where this thread has been moved to or from. It really belongs in the Theater/Drama Majors subforum.</p>
<p>KEVP, that’s where the thread was moved from. I wondered if it was because of the mention of 16 bars of music…</p>
<p>Okay–is your son auditioning for Musical Theatre, or is your son auditioning for non-musical Theatre? People approach the “16 bars of a song” requirement differently for the two majors. The question of how people who are auditioning for non-musical Theatre should handle the song requirement has come up several times, and there are at least a couple threads about it.</p>
<p>Thank you for the response. He does know that he may be asked to do something different with the monologue to see how adaptable he is and how he takes direction and he also knows that he needs to be familiar with the plays and characters. He is auditioning for theater, not musical theater.</p>
<p>sfnmjrm, you may want to come over to the “theatre/drama” thread which is geared more toward straight actors. This is the MT thread. This confused me a lot when I first began to post here!..</p>
<p>This was moved from the Theater thread. It should probably be moved back.</p>