I was doing a guest-star role last year on “Bones” and the production assistant who was escorting me to set said that the show was a well-oiled machine and that, “TV isn’t art, it’s science.” I totally balked at first, literally stopping in my tracks…and then realized that, for the most part, the kid was speaking a truth.
I call it a technical audition because it involves a lot of action and reaction to the situations or circumstances that the sides present. I began approaching it differently. The first audition Ethan Embry (“Can’t Hardly Wait,” “Empire Records”) and I worked on was for a recurring role on “24.” It was five pages of heavy dialogue, as well as roughly 20 different actions his character was supposed to be doing. Just brutal.
On set, this is actually easier then what is required in the audition room. At least on set we actually have well…a set to work with. In the room there’s just you and your imagination.
Ethan had been cursing up a storm before we had even started. The first thing I did was go through the sides and figure out what actions were necessary for his audition, which automatically cut them
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