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6. PREPARING YOUR PIECES

(1)

 Read the play
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(2)

 READ THE PLAY AGAIN! You must read the play. If at any point in your audition they think you have not read the play you will be discounted. You should be living and breathing your play and your characters for this audition. This is serious. You should research the place and period too.
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(3)

 Now you may start to attack the monologue. But before you can do anything, you must understand the story, the characters and the context of your extract. There is only one way to do this – READ THE PLAY! Only then can you even begin to understand what you are saying and why.
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(4)

 Understand what you are saying.
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(5)

Get a feel for the style of the writing. Look at the words, the sentences and importantly, the punctuation. A comma could be a rest, semi colon is more than a comma and a full stop is a stop. Now apply this to the THINKING of the character not just stopping and starting of sentences. Apply them as thought punctuations too. Work out all the changes of thought, all the new thoughts and ideas. When is the character adding to an existing thought? When do they come to a conclusion? When do they come to a decision? These are VITAL to your delivery of the piece. You’ll also need to hear what the author is saying in there too.

The following thoughts should be applied for both rehearsal work and the actual audition.

Most importantly for the panel, it is about your creativity, your imagination. Time after time drama schools state that they want to see you create the world of the character you are playing, and that means the mental world and state and the physical surroundings. If you can imagine these into being in front of you, you will lift the energy colour and world of the piece. Then you have to inhabit that world.

  • Create a world internal and external. Where are you? Night/day? What’s the room like? Summer/winter? Are you hot or cold/ hungry etc? What are you wearing

  • Create mental images for each line and each word as you say them. Own the lines and the words. Link them.

  • Who are you talking to? Why? What do they look like?

  • Why are you speaking? What’s the price of saying what you are? What do you want?

  • What has just been said to you? Are you reacting?

  • What do you want in the scene? In the extract? In the sentence? In the word?

  • Use each word and give it value and weight – mental and physical. Create images for each one.

  • Stay with the word until it is over, live in it, be it! Do the same with each line, reaching the end word firmly and with choice. Don’t let sentences and words fade towards the end. Really focus to stay with them. Don’t move on to the next line or thought before the one you are dealing with is properly over- even if you are going really, really fast.
  • In the end, IT IS ALL ABOUT WORDS. These are the end product of all the other stuff you have been doing. These are result. WORDS. Work with them. Give them meaning, colour, texture and emotion. Shakespeare used all his words as weapons of meaning and emotion for the audience. Words were like tools for the actors - arrows of intent, bullets of bravado. You have to explore them, feel them, and love them. You have to USE them! Don’t waste them when you come to audition! 
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