Monologue Audition Tips

Video Transcript

"Good day, I'm Dr. Charles Grimes, and I'm speaking today on behalf of Expert Village about finding a theatrical monologue for use in auditions. As an actor, you should know what directors are looking for, and you should have some insight as to what they are thinking as you are out there auditioning and about to audition. So here's Hank again. He's scared because he's an actor and he doesn't know what's going. I'm feeling great because I'm the director, and I know everything that's going on. So Hank wants to know what's going on inside my head to make him worry less. First, Hank should know and you should as an actor know that the director may well have an image in his head of who that character looks like. Indeed, the director may have cast a certain part. These are things that you can't do anything about. He can't change what he looks like or how good of an actor he is in the day of the audition. So differentiate between things that you can control as an actor and a person and things you can't control. What a director is looking for, is someone to do a job for him or her. It really is that simple. They may not ever pick the artistically brilliant choice. They want to find someone that they can get along with for four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks of fairly intense work. They want to find someone who looks responsible and who will contribute to a group enterprise. Realize when you go into an audition, you're not being seen just as an artist, but as a collaborator and a fellow worker. Realize also that there are things going out there that you can't control, and your job is to control your own work and your own quality and to let everything else go."