I have been auditioned in large, dark theatres, kin offices, hotel rooms, automobiles, in a rented hall with videotape camera rolling and no humans in sight, and once at the beach. Offices and rented audition halls (sometimes used as rehearsal rooms) are the most common places for auditions, but an actor needs to be prepared for any emergency. What you can do in a theatre will not necessarily work for you at the beach. The low-key reading you do in an office will differ from the open-voiced presentation you might attempt in a rehearsal room. When you are preparing material that you might use many times, in varying circumstances, you’ll be well advised to rehearse it in as great a variety of locations as you can arrange. Bore your friends! Do your selections in their living rooms, their offices, in classrooms, hotel rooms, corridors, parks - wherever you can and as often as you can. Don’t make the mistake of assuming your inspiration will carry you through the audition. Would you venture an opening night unrehearsed? Why audition unrehearsed?

The most common form of audition is the interview. It was virtually the only kind of audition until the 1920’s, when the great American director George Abbott introduced the novel idea that actors might be judged best if they actually read the lines of the role they were being considered for. The interview is a portion of all auditions and is frequently the entirety of an audition, your only chance to present yourself. That is particularly true in Hollywood, where virtually all small roles, particularly those beginners might hope for, are cast on the basis of appearance and personality - either the camera likes your face or it doesn’t. Interviews are equally common in New York as an initial screening phase of the audition process. Managements are required by Actors’ Equity Association to hold an open call for all shows, and typically several hundred actors a day will be shuttled through a small room before a not-very-interested casting director. What does the auditioner look for in an interview? Physical type, vocal type, appropriate skills, and personality. Ninety percent of auditioning actors will be ruled out at this stage of audition. IF the role requires a soprano to hit a high “C” and you can’t, you’re out. At this stage of the process, the management is trying to select a small number of plausible actors: skilled, appropriate, pleasant.

A typical interview is conducted in the following manner: you arrive in a waiting room corridor, or lobby and are give a number and usually an approximate time that the number will be called, say 2:10 p.m. (If the number/time is for much later in the day than the present time, you’re free to leave and return. Be careful to be back very early, however, as on rare occasions the casting line moves faster than anticipated and, if you miss your turn, you’re out). You will probably be asked to sign a list that is kept by the assistant stage manager (ASM) or a secretary who is coordinating the day’s call. You may also be asked to fill out an audition form that typically asked your name, phone number(s), union affiliations, agents name and number. You may be required to show your union card to some representatives of the appropriate union who is there to deny entrance to non-union actors. You may be asked for your photo/resume at this point, or you may present it only at the time you are shown into the audition. Now...you wait your turn! When it comes, you will be ushered into the auditioning room, and you may very well be introduced by name to the director or to whomever is present. There may be several people in the room: production stage manager, casting director, director, playwright, art director, producer, sponsor, musical director, choreographer, etc. Most will be seated behind a long table and, typically, you will be invited to sit in a chair across the table. By this time, some thirty seconds into the interview, your fait is probably already decided. The impression you have made up to this point may have determined your fate. Now the interview begins. Typical questions posed to you will relate to your training, your recent work, your agent, your experience, and any particular skills you might have that are required for the job. Do you ride horseback? Can you speak German? Whom did you work with last? Next you will be thanked, told that you will be contacted should there be any interest in auditioning you further, and you will leave as you came in. The entire interview will not have lasted three minutes.

The second type of audition is one in which you are asked to present prepared materials. Usually these are held by director of permanent companies or summer companies or summer companies such as the many Shakespeare festivals that have sprung up across the country. These directors are looking for actors who will be engaged for all part of a season and cast in a sequence of roles - what is commonly called a “line” of roles: Cassio, Hortensio, and Sir Eglamour, for example. This type of audition is conducted in precisely the same way as the interview, except that you will be asked to present your prepared pieces. That may occur immediately upon your admission to the auditioning room, or it may follow a brief interview. Some director interview actors first so as to learn a bit about them and to give them a chance to relax and get a sense of the room they’re about to work in. Others feel it is faster to see the prepared selection(s). Then, if they’re not interested in the actor, they can save the time and labor of an interview. It is quite possible that you will be interrupted in the middle of your prepared pieces. There is no way you can know what interruption means. It might mean the director never wants to see you again in their entire life, or it might mean that you have shown what she needs to know for now and she will call you back later. Or it might mean she’s rushed and must move you along, even though her mind’s not made up at all. You will be temped to interpret such an interruption as rejection. Don’t. It may be, but you won’t know that for certain. f you give up at this point, you’ll forfeit your chances in the remaining brief moments of the audition, moments in which something about you may excite the director sufficiently to call you back for a subsequent audition. As frequently as you may be interrupted, you may be asked to present another prepared selection. A young actor ought to have a half-dozen speeches at the ready so that when the director asks for “something in verse, something comic,” you can do your Viola from Twelfth Night, and when she asks for something serious and modern, you can do your Gabby from Serenading Louie. “Be prepared” is a creed for more than just the Boy Scouts.

The third type of audition is the “cold reading” in which the actor is invited to read selections from the play(s) to be produced (or from some similar play that the director feels will give him a reasonable sense of the actor’s abilities). Frequently this “cold reading” follows an audition in which you present prepared materials. In most instances, you will be given the script to look over for a few minutes, while the actors ahead of you in the casting line give their reading, and then you’ll be expected to provide ample space between yourself and the director’s table as you read. Film and television directors are less concerned with that distance than stage directors, since the close-up is the important concern of the film director and he can see you better if you remain seated nearby him.

In almost all instances, there will be someone to read the other lines and to cue you. Typically, this person is an actor who has been hired by the casting director to provide this service, and a superior way for a young actor to learn about the audition process is to find a casting director who will hire you as a reader. When you get that job, you will be able to listen to the comments that follow each actor’s audition; you will be able to observe for yourself how vital is the actor’s entrance, clothing, manner, sense of confidence, and departure. And you can never know what will come of your being a reader. A director I know well, once cast the young man who served patiently as reader for five days of auditions in the leading role of a Broadway-bound new musical. (The show never got to Broadway, but the young actor had an extraordinary break.)

Some directors will coach you during auditions. Usually this happens only if the director has called you back, or if he is extremely interested in you. The late Nikos Psacharopoulos was renowned for stopping young actors in the middle of their prepared materials and saying, quite harshly, “No, no. Stop ‘acting.’ Just say the words to me simply. Don’t give me that b--- ---- Start at the top.” Many actors were too unnerved to continue. But I’ve known actors who Nikos badgered, then hired in their first Equity jobs. Other directors will ask you to repeat all or portions of your selection, but with different actions or given circumstances pertaining. Allen Fletcher, when he was artistic director of the Seattle Repertory Theatre, cause me to repeat Didi’s speech from Waiting for Godot (“Was I sleeping while the others suffered?”) and instructed me to play this action: to share my happiness with Gogo. Of course that made no sense in terms of the play. But it was his way of learning my flexibility, my willingness to take direction, my control. (He didn’t hire me.) On other occasions, directors may give you improvisations to do. This time-consuming activity is usually a sign that you are under very serious consideration for the role. Many film directors videotape all improvisations - indeed, all auditions - as a way of learning what the actor’s presence on film is truly like. Stage directors will frequently resort to improvisation as a way of learning the actor’s emotional range. As Robert Lewis remarks in Method - or Madness? (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1958), casting must be done to ensure that the actor can reach the role’s most intense emotional moments. If you are asked to do an improv, “cut loose.”

Auditions are normally private affairs. Rare are the directors who will permit outsiders to sit in the room while an audition is in progress. So don’t bring along your girlfriend. The audition is a meeting between you and the director - one-on-one (although the room may have other folks in it). And whether the audition is a limited one for a few actors the casting director has selected, or that actor’s nightmare, the “cattle call,” the rules remain pretty much the same. You will be given a number, a chance, and an exit. It is not a cheery experience, but remember, it is your second most important performance, so you had better learn to cope with its possible rudeness, haste, and depersonalization. You must come to terms with the truth that you are one number in a “cattle call” and find ways to make the judges give you the blue ribbon.