Often times, actors will come into the audition room showing their preparation for the audition instead of truly being in the scene with the reader. While being prepared is extremely important, it can sometimes cause actors to push their choices, worrying too much about the lines or getting fixated on only one way of doing the scene.
Yes, we want to see that you’ve made strong choices and have done enough work to understand the material, but we also want to see you make that same material truly come alive. Instead of showing us how hard you worked on your lines, we prefer to see you having a natural conversation with the other characters in the scene.
So when a casting director tells you to throw it all away, I’d interpret that to mean something like, “Don’t work so hard to show us you’ve done the work.”
When I work with actors on audition prep, I like to say, “If I were to walk by you rehearsing your lines with a fellow actor, it should feel like I’m witnessing a real conversation between two people. If one of you is getting upset in the scene, it should feel and look like you’re getting upset by what the other person said or did to you.”
READ: 14 Casting
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