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Audition
Feedback By ROBERT BETHUNE I’m
in touch
with an aspiring professional actress presently starting to carve out
her future in the Big City. (Not necessarily the Big City you’re
thinking of; there are several of them these days.) Recently she bemoaned
the difficulty of getting feedback on her auditions. I thought about it for a while and
I came up with this. The only really valuable audition feedback is the feedback
you give yourself. After the heart and breathing rates slow down and you've
left the venue and you have a cup of your favorite beverage in front of
you, think carefully and slowly and ask yourself some good questions.
Did you do what you wanted to do as fully as you wanted to do it? If not,
why not? What would you do differently next time for preparation and performance?
Each audition becomes an experiment, a test, a trial run at delivering
the kind of work you want to do, done the way you want to do it. Each
audition becomes something of value to you, regardless of the outcome
for the folks on the other side of the table. I know it seems counter-intuitive,
but what they want out of you is not the thing to think about. You cannot
sell to all markets. Every performer, every artist of any kind really,
can only do what they do. You cannot satisfy a market for a kind of work
that is not what you do, because unless the work authentically comes from
yourself, it will not be good work, and will not satisfy the market. Even
if it should sell, it will not be the work that you want to be out there
in the world with your name on it. You have to find the market that wants
what you have to sell. Every "they" is different; they themselves
may well not know what they want until they see it, and their ability
to express what that might be, or what they see in you, is highly questionable.
Don't make the assumption that the other side of the table is qualified
to make judgments or recommendations about you. If everything waited for
someone to come along who’s fully qualified to do it, very little
would ever get done. They may be completely out of their depth doing what
they’re doing. If you get feedback, evaluate the source right along
with the feedback, and decide if the feedback, positive or negative, is
actually relevant to who you are and what you do. Their side of the table is completely
out of your control; so don't waste time on it. Spend your time developing
your ability to develop yourself. Fretting and fussing over a constantly
moving, constantly changing, and very possibly irrelevant target is a
surefire way to frustration and failure. Also, do remember that everybody
who ever got somebody to show up for their auditions considers themselves
to be the world’s greatest expert on auditioning, as does everybody
who ever got cast in a show. Remember that their success may well be in
spite of what they do, not because of it. That doesn’t mean that you should
act as if there are no markets out there. You should explore as many different
kinds of work as you can. The more you know, the more you can imagine.
You may surprise yourself; the Shakespearian tragedian may unexpectedly
discover a gift for musical comedy or contemporary drama that never raised
its head until asked to appear. Just remember that no one is infinitely
plastic, capable of being all things to all people. If Neil Simon really
is what you do best, then by all means do that, and don’t worry
about “missed opportunities” to do Shakespeare. Do what you
do, and let the world worry about itself. |
