If you can’t cook, then you can’t audition.
Contentious statement, I know. Apologies, but stick with me for a moment….
If 10 amateur cooks all cooked the same recipe, whose meal would be best? And similarly, if 10 actors performed the same dialogue—which is exactly what happens in an audition—whose audition is best?
When I started to cook, I could not start without a recipe. And the recipe was treated like a religious parchment. It was to be obeyed.
So three ounces of an ingredient meant three ounces, not three-and-a-half. I would follow the instructions to the letter. And if everyone approached their early days in the kitchen in the same way as me, that means 10 amateur cooks would create roughly the same meal.
And so it is with many actors in an audition.
You follow the sides and the writer’s notes with fervent obedience. You respect and obey every full stop, every character instruction. You think that if you deviate from the sides, your audition is doomed. Like your soufflé, your audition simply will fail to rise.
But if you do follow the sides to the letter, you will be the same as every other actor.
You need to approach an audition (and any recipe)
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