Make a choice, any choice! (But not the safe, bland one that everyone else will make.) Casting directors see hundreds of auditions in one day. If you go in and make the safe (but run-of-the-mill) choices throughout a scene, they will have seen that 40 times before you and 50 times after you— and you’ll blur right into the background in their memory. At AYA, in order to stand out and save our casting directors from total boredom, we practice making strong choices! These choices reveal something about the character’s personality, their opinions, or their relationship with their scene partner. And, if you think about it, writers carefully consider each word they include— and so should we as actors. After all, we are in this industry to be entertaining, and nothing is quite entertaining about the safe choice. Giving meaning to every utterance (beyond surface level— “why am I saying it this way,” “what am I really trying to communicate to this person with these words?”) makes a scene more complex and interesting for both the actor and the audience, and in the room, will likely catch the eye of the casting director.What we learned? Always make a strong choice. Everyone will be making the safe, common choices— so go deeper and think about why a character is choosing to express themselves in the particular words they use!
–Lili Fox-Lim
Recent Comments