Imagine what your theatrical life would be like if you could walk into any audition room and find authentic freedom! Freedom to be human, freedom to be happy, freedom to be brilliant and freedom to be nothing but fantastically you? This inspiring not-like-any-other-audition-book by Broadway's top coach will crack your brain open with long lasting shifts that will keep you creating and enjoying powerful experiences "in the room."
AUDITION FREEDOM
THE IRREVERENT WELLNESS GUIDE FOR THEATRE PEOPLEBy VP BOYLELulu.com
Copyright © 2008 VP Boyle a.k.a. Vincent Paul Boyle
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-615-25044-1Contents
THE HAPPY HOUR............................................................................XIGETTING STARTED...........................................................................3PART ONE: WELCOME TO THE FUNNY FARM.......................................................7THE LAST SUPPER...........................................................................9UNIVERSAL CHAOS...........................................................................12THE TIME & MONEY GUN IS ALWAYS LOADED.....................................................14EVERYONE IS DOING HIS/HER BEST............................................................16THE CASTING OXYMORON......................................................................18YOU GET TO PLAY!..........................................................................21YOU CAN'T GET STRAIGHT A's................................................................22REWIRING YOUR BRAIN.......................................................................24ARETHA WILL TELL YOU WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT..................................................27LOOK AROUND...............................................................................31WHO THOUGHT TO PUT PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA?....................................................36COTTON CANDY VS. COD LIVER OIL............................................................39PART TWO: MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL......................................................43THE PEANUT GALLERY IN YOUR BRAIN..........................................................45GET OUT OR STAY TO PLAY...................................................................49SHOULDN'T THE WALLS BE PADDED?............................................................54BIG GIRLS ARE SEXY-AND SO ARE YOU!........................................................58SMASH THE MIRROR..........................................................................60SLICKSTER CENTRAL: STYLE OVER CONTENT.....................................................65SIMPLE SELF TRUTHS........................................................................69PART THREE: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE..........................................................75IMPOSSIBLE THINGS.........................................................................76ON THE DECK OF THE TITANIC................................................................79RAINY DAYS & MONDAYS......................................................................85THANKS FOR SHARING!.......................................................................89PUPPET PSYCHOLOGY.........................................................................92SOLVE YOUR SHIT...........................................................................97THE VORTEX OF DARKNESS....................................................................101YOUR EVIL BITCH...........................................................................103THE EYE OF THE STORM......................................................................107AN ALCHEMIST'S TALE.......................................................................109PART FOUR: LIVE IN THE WONKY PLACE!.......................................................113ADVANCED AUDITION TECHNIQUES ... AN INTRODUCTION TO BEING HUMAN AGAIN.....................115TECHNIQUE 1: IF YOU WALK OUT THE DOOR AND GET HIT BY A BUS................................118TECHNIQUE 2: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE YOUR MATERIAL...............................................122TECHNIQUE 3: BREATHE......................................................................124TECHNIQUE 4: LIVE IN YOUR BODY - ALL OF IT................................................128TECHNIQUE 5.: BE AWARE OF A 360 WORLD....................................................130TECHNIQUE 6: PLAY BIG.....................................................................133TECHNIQUE 7: TRUST THE STICKY STUFF.......................................................135TECHNIQUE 8: KEEP A SECRET................................................................136TECHNIQUE 9: THE MOMENT YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK.............................................138TECHNIQUE 10: LIVE IN THE WONKY PLACE.....................................................140PART FIVE: EXCUSE ME, YOUR LIFE IS WAITING!...............................................143WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY?.................................................................145THE ONES WHO JOURNEYED BEFORE US..........................................................151THE MAKE-IT-HAPPEN CLUB...................................................................156DON'T HOLD ON TOO TIGHT...................................................................159IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA AT THE AUDITION - KILL HIM.........................................162FINDING YOUR TRUTH........................................................................164NO ONE REALLY CARES ABOUT YOUR HAPPY-NESS EXCEPT YOU......................................166MAGIC MOUNTAIN OR THE HAUNTED MANSION?....................................................168LISTEN TO YOUR HEART......................................................................171PART SIX: HAVE FUN. NO, REALLY............................................................173UNCOMMON GROUND...........................................................................175SILLY PUTTY...............................................................................178KEEP POP ROCKS IN YOUR MOUTH..............................................................180KALEIDESCOPES, DIET COKE & QUEEN'S GREATEST HITS..........................................182CREATING SACRED SPACE.....................................................................185YOUR NOSE PRESSED AGAINST THE GLASS.......................................................189WHEN YOU LAY YOUR HEAD DOWN...............................................................191CUPCAKE KARMA & SMALL CELEBRATIONS........................................................194UNDER YOUR BIG ASS ROCK...................................................................196IT'S NEVER A COMPETITION..................................................................198THE ROAD HOME.............................................................................201
Chapter One
"In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art." Excerpt from The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, 1995.
THE LAST SUPPER
Have you ever walked into an audition to find twelve people sitting behind a table staring at you? That's the visual for most Broadway callbacks and it can send you spiraling into the vortex of darkness, desperately wishing you'd had a quart of green apple martini for breakfast or it can give you a wonderful giggle. I'll take the opportunity to giggle any day of the week. Who are THEY?
THEY are a bunch of folks doing the best THEY can.
I'm fascinated by the idea of THEY. I hear it all the time in my audition workshops. THEY are looking for this. THEY want you to be this. THEY like this. Let me state for the record, I have been THEY in almost every capacity at the Broadway level and I can tell you right now that it's all fiction. Most of the time, THEY don't have a clue what THEY want until YOU walk into the room and show them what it is!
I promise to do my best not to use caps from this point forward. The people "behind the table" are the ones who have been assigned to create a show. Producer, director, casting director, choreographer, dramaturge, librettist, composer, lyricist, production assistant, monitor, reader-the list can go on for days. It doesn't matter if they are Sam Mendes or the owner of your hometown pet store who happens to run the community theatre. A show has been selected, dates are in place, the artistic team (sometimes a very loose term) has been selected and now we have to find the last missing part of the puzzle. The actors.
Theatre is a living, breathing experience. It seems totally logical to me that the only way to screen candidates to be a part of that experience is to talk to them and get a sampling of what they do. Sounds much like a living, breathing job interview, right? Whether you're auditioning for a job with great pay or for pennies and a cheese sandwich, it's all the same beast. Some folks are better at it than others. I speak from the experience of having spent two full years of my life casting Broadway shows, regional productions and original workshops/ readings. It was fascinating, terrifying and totally absurd in ways I'll never be able to translate into text. It's a crazy, thrilling aspect of the business and taught me so many profound lessons in respect for the people behind the table. We'd look at hundreds (often thousands) of pictures and resumes, pick as many as we could see based on the time we had and run from there. Add in some required union calls, the artistic team requests, our last minute personal favorites and we were off to the races.
I'd love to tell you there were rules. I'd love to tell you that all of it was fair and that everyone got due consideration. I'd love to tell you that we got everything right and always made the right choice. I can't. If you can find that anywhere else in your life or even our world, I'd love to know where it is. A lot of the time we were flying by the seat of our pants in unknown territory hoping for happy accidents. And these happened all the time!
Oftentimes, we would go into the casting process with someone (a huge "name") in mind, thinking it was in the bag. Then, without warning and in the midnight hour, someone who none of us knew would walk into the room being all the wonderfully unique things that he/she naturally is-have a great time-and knock the audition out of the park. Suddenly, everyone behind the table was buzzing, whispering to each other and flipping through pictures of people who they thought were their final choice and trying to figure out how to use this wonderful surprise that just walked out the door.
Five minutes and the world had changed.
Chapter Two
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." - Nietzsche
UNIVERSAL CHAOS
I visit www.hubblesite.org a lot. They have downloadable pictures of amazing things that are going on in the universe that no human has ever seen until now. How lucky are we for that in this lifetime? Much of it is imperceptible to the human eye, so graphic artists and scientists assign colors that we can see to different gases, matter densities and the like so we can view some of the universal chaos going on "out there". I believe there's a divine universal order to the whole kit and caboodle, but I'll leave that to other books and to your personal sense of spirituality!
Here's a yummy idea. The truth about casting and the audition experience is that it is sometimes totally random and barely one notch above organized chaos. Great! It's a wonderful thing, really. Maybe that's the imperfect perfection in the whole shebang. If you wrap your mind around that idea and the inherent synchronicity, you will have a starting point to find freedom in the audition room. You will discover other unexpected gifts, too. Humor. Respectful irreverence. Joy. If you start to think of it as a living, breathing experience and stop resisting or trying to manipulate what you're presenting as "you" based on "what you think they want" or some set of perceived rules, you're already in a new place that will set you up to have fun. And win. Huge. Really huge.
Why?
You're being authentic. You're taking responsibility for your mental health, your personal wellness and yourself as an artist-and not taking responsibility for everyone else in the room. You're doing what you love because you have chosen to be there and want to do it. You're making decisions for the only person on the planet you are allowed to make decisions for-yourself! That is part of our lives as artists. Everyone is creative in some way. You have chosen to learn skills that make you a masterful theatrical storyteller. Someone who can take words or music or movement that was created by someone else and breathe life into them in ways that no one else can because of your unique life experiences, your body, your brain, your age, your sex, your everything.
That is why you are an artist.
I don't care if you are 18 years old and reading this book before going off to the University of Michigan or 60 years old getting ready to audition for the local JCC production of Brighton Beach Memoirs.
You are an artist. A creative being. A person who just happens to love theatre. There are more people like you out there! Meet them, collaborate with them and join forces to tell great theatrical stories while doing what you love. You must find them. You must nurture them. You must let them nurture you.
One of them happens to have written this book!
Chapter Three
"Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
THE TIME & MONEY GUN IS ALWAYS LOADED
Boy, it always seems to come down to time and money, huh? Certainly that was what my lower middle class, Midwest belief system was based upon through most of my twenties. Not much room in there for artistry as I see it, so I changed my belief system. I'm always changing it. I'm continually working on my own paradigm to integrate renewal and presentness into my work in theatre. Money is good. We need it to survive. It is definitely something that needs to be acknowledged and handled. More personal free time is always better because we can relax and appreciate the time we have! Learn how to respect the time/money equation in theatre sooner rather than later. Then you can approach the audition with honor, respect and artistic integrity.
Why is that so important?
Everyone is stressed, anxious or fatigued and it starts behind the table. In the ideal world (an oxymoron), the creative team would have no budget limitations, all the time in the world and infinite choices with which to create a theatrical experience. I hesitate to use the word "show" or "play" since the current commercial theatre genre is vast and those terms are often associated with things that are far from well-crafted dramatic stories, but are more often thrilling "theatrical experiences." So be it-I love it all.
I sometimes think we should call the performing arts "Theatre Sports" so we can acquire the status that athletes have in our society and the budget to go with it. Theatre folks are up against it all the time for funding, commercial viability and sustainability no matter what the level. You will find 100 or 1000 times the attendance to any sports event than you ever will find at a theatrical event-and everyone involved will have more money. The players, the promoters, the coaches, the fans. I could have easily said the actors, the producers, the artistic staff and the audience. The collaboration prior to the event is much the same. It is what is! Don't get angry about it.
Understand how it affects everything down to this crazy thing called the audition. Have compassion and respect for the people behind the table because they are under as much, if not more, pressure as you are when you walk into the room. They want you to be the answer to their prayers. It's true! The faster they can locate the perfect person for what they need, the faster they can move on to other things. Not bigger or better things, just more pieces of the huge puzzle that has to be solved before opening night. Give them a huge break before you walk into the room. Start with being thankful that you get to do something you love to do.
Chapter Four
"Assumption is the mother of screw up." - Angelo Donghia
EVERYONE IS DOING HIS/HER BEST
We're all human. I struggle with seasonal allergies. I'm allergic to everything. Literally. Dogs, cats, pollen, my mother. It's part of my unique entity. I remember working on the casting of the national tour of Cinderella and we were required by the union to have another Equity Chorus Call for the show (which was already cast) so it was going to be a full day seeing almost three hundred young soprano girls sing 16 bars of standard ballads when we didn't have anything left to cast in the show. Imagine hearing girls scream high C's all day long ...
Even on a good day, this is a challenge to navigate, let alone through a downpour of green goop in my throat and a virtual ice pick sticking in my eyeball. We had so much going on in the casting office, that no one could cover me on the audition. "Calling out" was not an option. We were spread out all over the city holding auditions for different shows in various studios. I had to do it. By the time I got to the studio, I was ready to curl up on the studio floor and take a nap from the double dose of anti-histamines I took and the impending migraine was starting to cause white spots in my vision. I'm particularly fun, outgoing and friendly when I conduct auditions whether I'm casting, directing or producing. Having been on all sides of the fence, it's important to me. That being said, I was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to make it through eight hours of ingnues and get home to my bed and an ice pack. I pulled up my bootstraps and hoped for a miracle.
The day progressed and I was doing my best while trying to be still and somewhat quiet as I personally battled the pain in my head. When I was walking through the waiting room on the lunch break, a young actress that I knew (and adored) came up to me and started apologizing profusely for how poorly she had auditioned. I was in shock. She was fabulous as always and had knocked it out of the park with solid preparation and great choices. I asked her why she thought she had done poorly and she replied, "Well, you're always so upbeat and enthusiastic and today you seemed so quiet, I thought you were mad at me." Mad? Are you kidding?
That was the farthest thing from the truth. It was total fiction in her head! I told her I was battling a migraine headache and just couldn't be at my usual high level of energy. We laughed about it (gently, of course) and we both agreed it was such a great lesson in not guessing at what the people behind the table might be thinking. It's impossible! And totally unfair.
Doesn't everyone have a rough day at work, sometimes? Some days are more productive than others. Some flow easily, some we blame on Mercury being in retrograde. Some days just suck because our boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with us last night, we had to euthanize our dog because of cancer, or because two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center and our world is a mess while Air Force jets circle Manhattan all day and all night.
We're human. We do the best we can. That includes you as an artist and everyone else involved in the audition experience. There are going to be days when it goes smoothly and days when it feels like pulling teeth. The bottom line is that in the end, only you can choose how to perceive the experience and integrate it into your life as an artist.
Wow, that's huge. Reread that last paragraph a few more times to drill it into your brain.
Chapter Five
"Quit now, you will never make it. If you disregard this advice, you will be halfway there." - David Zucker
THE CASTING OXYMORON
Are you ready for another wonderful step towards audition enlightenment? You can suck and book the job.
It's true. You can be total-sucky-sucky and still end up with a contract in your hand. It's not the Karma Police serving it up hard to some folks and looking the other way for others. It's life in theatre. Sometimes we (the creative team) ignore the actual audition and make our choices based on hundreds of other reasons that have nothing to do with logic or the audition we have just witnessed.
Here are ten examples:
1. You're someone we have worked with before and we already know what you can do.
2. We are totally sexually attracted to you and want to see you naked in our show.
3. You're an extreme type in some way (super tall, super weird, super funny, super skinny, super old) and we need you.
4. You're the producer's girlfriend and half of the funding is based on an off-the-record verbal agreement to cast you.
5. You're nice and the other casting option has an attitude 5. problem or history of being totally high maintenance and crazy.
6. You're an ethnic minority.
7. You're a soap star that will sell tickets.
8. You fit the costumes.
9. You'll work for scale.
10. We've run out of time and options we have to just choose someone. Anyone.
Get the picture? More often than not, solid audition technique, diverse skill sets, type and artistic integrity are the key factors in getting the callback or the job, but not always. You may be thinking that the whole thing is hopeless. Far from it.
I see accepting this truth as a huge opportunity to let all of that stuff go and just do your work. When you really grasp the bigger picture, your happiness becomes your choice. If you decide to walk into the audition room and tell a personal story with words, music or dance, it is your choice. If you accept yourself as an artist, it is your choice. If you are able to walk out of the room feeling great about your work and who you are, it is your choice. If you want to be a star, do what you need to do to be a star. It may or may not have to do with artistic integrity. It may or may not give you happiness. If it gives you a mansion, a Hummer and a private table at NOBU, great! Invite me to dinner and let me start a scholarship fund in your name.
You might ask yourself, "If so much of the casting process is not about actual talent, what are my chances of making a living or getting cast every once and a while out of pure luck?"
Here's what I absolutely know to be true-not much! I do know that if you do the work, learn to enjoy the process as part of the life you want to create and take committed action towards your theatrical artistry, things will happen. It may not be tomorrow or at the same speed folks around you are seeing "activity," but the results are inevitable and it will add up to a rewarding journey. This is the only truth I'll tell you that I really believe based on measurable, tangible results. And yes, talent matters a lot. Talent is the starting point for everything in the casting circumstance and in the collaborative creative process for theatre. However, having talent doesn't dictate wellness, happiness, joy, humor or personal fulfillment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from AUDITION FREEDOMby VP BOYLE Copyright © 2008 by VP Boyle a.k.a. Vincent Paul Boyle. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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