Just Waiting for Someone to Wake Me Up

Over the last couple months, I’ve been working as a reader at a feature film casting office.  What was interesting about this particular experience was that we were working on only one role for 6 weeks.  I read with over 200 hundred actors all doing the exact same 5 page scene.  Trust me, at this point I know every line in that scene inside and out.   I can do the scene in my sleep and I hate to admit it but there were times when I was pretty much asleep during the session.

If good acting is listening and reacting, then I fully admit during these auditions I was not always a good actor.  But every once in awhile, an actor would come in and really draw me out; these few would force me to pay attention.

It reminds of something a casting director once told me: in auditions he was usually just waiting for an actor to wake him up.

I started trying to figure out the difference between the boring actors that have now all run together in my head and the few that forced me to notice them.  Honestly, the ones that really woke me up were the ones that I could tell were truly paying attention to me.  In the scene they weren’t just talking at me but were listening to me and making sure that I understood them.

The ones that were good were more concerned about me than how they looked or if they were acting “right.”  It made them live truthfully in the situation, which is something actors are wonderful at on stage or on set, but for some reason find nearly impossible in the audition room.

When you go into an audition, take the pressure off yourself and put all the attention on the other person.  It will help you relax and one thing a casting director always likes to see is a relaxed, confident actor.  Those actors make the casting directors job so much easier.