Corey Parker On Camera Audition Take Aways

Motive: what is your goal for the audition? Is it just to book the job? Guess what? That is not something you have complete control over. You might want to focus on something more personal, establish a creative goal for the audition. Click here: Bryan Cranston  Avoid making the audition experience about "them," and falling into the trap of giving away your power to "them." Instead, make it about the work and bringing the character to life. 

Character breakdown: Avoid trying to be an entirely different person described in the breakdown. Instead,start from the Truth of you. Ask yourself: “What if I were this character?” Bring the essence of you, let them see something true. Of course, you can play many things- but build your characters from the truth of your essence. Watch your favorite actors if you want to see this in action. 
Marlon Brando said: "No one becomes a character. You can't act unless you are what you are- and you are who you are."
When Stanislavski was in Paris, he said,"What you are is what you are have to give." 

Given circumstances: Get all the clues to what the writer is giving you. If it helps you, write down those clues. Then build where necessary. Where there is no information, make your own clear choices. Avoid arbitrary choices, try to find what could possibly work with what the writer has given. Make choices that turn you on creatively, that are urgent. 

The W's: Where are you coming from? Why are you here? What do you want? How much do you want it? Why do you want it now? Who are you talking to? What do they mean to you? What do they have that is integral to you getting what you need? (The writer placed these characters together. They each want/ need something. The other character always has something that your character is after, pursue your objective and give it meaning to you.) 

Never judge the character. Is the character a prostitute, a murderer, a corrupt politician? Our job is not to impose our morality on their lives. Forget your ideas of right and wrong long enough to tell the character’s story. They were once a baby, innocent and full of promise. Somewhere along the way they got traumatized, neglected, abused, and they had to learn how to survive in life as broken people. That is what they are trying to do. The characters believe (as people do) that they are justified in their choices. For example, if they were harmed, they justify doing it back to the someone else. 

Our job is to take this human who never has had a fair chance, take them under our wing and tell their story with our body. Compassion is a crucial part of this equation. Don't judge them. What is their goal in life? What is their dream? What’s their blind spot (flaw)? They believe in the possibility of a better life. If a character doesn’t, then they will take no action and the story will stop in its tracks. But they do believe it is possible that their efforts will bring what they want.  That means they are driven and in pursuit. (Maybe they will even learn something by the end of the scene, and by the end of the story.) 

Help others understand this character, humanize the character with your own body, your heart and your humanity. Share the parts of you needed to lift them off the page, to create a three dimensional human being.

Memorization: Avoid memorizing only words, avoid approaching words as data. Our brains learn by making connections. Read the whole scene out loud (all the lines of all the characters) three times. Get a sense of the scene, of the rhythm, of what this scene is about.

Ask yourself questions as needed: What is this scene about? What does the character care about the most? How can you translate this into what you careabout, through experience or imagination?  Run the lines with someone else if you can. There are apps for running lines if you are alone. If in your dialogue you mention an object, like a tree, get an image for yourself of that object. Specify what you are talking about, by any means that work for you. Give your brain a chance to make connections. 

Be clear that you are communicating when you act. If you forget a line over and over, get clearer on what you are communicating there. Always give your brain context. Forgetting a line can simply mean you haven’t yet found why the writer placed it there. Every word, every letter is for a reason. If you get stuck, put the lines in your own language, the way you would speak it, make those connections and then bring that clarity back to the written text. Writing your scene down on paper can be helpful, it employs a different part of the brain and helps us really hear what is written (we are no longer just reading it). 

Journaling: An acting journal is a great way to foster the creation of your very own acting technique (which is the goal of all training, I believe; finding how you work as an actor and what you need.) 
In your journal:

Write down each audition. 

Write what you want to accomplish in it- a simple creative goal. 

After the audition: 

Write down how it went from a creative standpoint. 

How did you do in terms of your goal? 

What went well, what didn’t?
What do you need to work on?

Define who you can talk to when you need help. 

(Your acting class teacher, a friend, an acting book, etc.)  

Also, write down your notes from acting class. 

Write down performances you see that inspire you. 

Write down the people closest to you, 

so you can start to use them for substitutions. 

You can put pictures of old films, actors, 

whatever inspires you. 

Observe people in public, watch their behavior with each other, watch how they communicate. Write down what you see. 

Over time, you have a reference book that is specific to the formation of your technique. So when you get an audition and aren’t sure about how to approach it, you can go back and look in your journal and see what has worked for you in the past. You can also write your experiences in rehearsals and while working. The journal helps you to truly build something, to create a structural focal point and a means of true expression. In the long term you can build a collection of these acting journals. 

The arc: Every scene starts in one place and has a journey to the end of the scene. It starts in one place and ends in another. How does this actually happen? It starts with the character wanting/ needing something. You pursue your objective and you will find that there are always obstacles in your way in every scene. The obstacles may come from the other character, from your environment and even sometimes from inside your character. These obstacles build pressure on your objective, raising the stakes. The pressure builds. (Who is a person for your life that presents the most obstacles to you getting what you want? Does the pressure build form the obstacles they present?)  By the end you are in a different place. 

This means you never have to do an audition as a one note character. Ever. Connect to what you want, pursue your objective and try to overcome every single obstacle the writer has put in your path. (this is where actions can help when needed.) Never give up, never lose this battle. The objective is the engine that launches the arc. 

Conflict: Every scene has conflict, it drives the action forward and gets us interested in the action. Align yourself with the writer's intention by defining his given conflict (the conflict between the characters). Get clear what the two sides of the conflict are in your scene. (This can help you avoid making choices that don't support the arc of then scene.) The writer has created an active way for you to be in pursuit of your objective. Dive in. When I say over and over to pursue your objective, I don't mean like a well behaved, nice, obedient way. I mean get out of your head and go! Jump on it. Pursue what you're after! It's not about polite. It's about telling what happens when humans care a lot about something. If you know anything about that, share it with all your heart- or in whatever way makes sense for you. 

Accept yourself, your strengths and your limitations. Use them! Have you ever seen a musclebound actor enter a scene and overact, indicating that they are really tough and scary? I believe that we all have strengths and once we see ours, we don’t need to hit them over the head. In other words, a musclebound actor already looks tough, as an actor he doesn’t need to be playing “I’m tough, I'm tough.” We get it, we already see him. But as a tough guy, he can then trust his strength and seek a deeper choice: what does the character want or need? Approval? Recognition? To be rewarded? Pursue the objective, not the quality of the character. Trust what we naturally communicate. If an actress is meek in some natural way that we all see, then she limits herself and her choices by playing “I'm meek, I'm meek." She is already doing the work of the writer with her natural qualities. This frees her up to look deeper into the script and find out what drives the character, her super objective, her scene objective, to then connect with it from a place of true care inside herself and then to let us see a human being in pursuit.

So don’t try to be someone else, use who you are. Trust what you communicate naturally. Your humanity, your strengths and weaknesses, are the colors on your palette as an artist.

Never beat yourself up. Unless you want to. It is possible for us to beat ourselves up since we are the instrument that we use. This will create a destructive habit and will never allow our work to truly blossom.  Take care of you. What are your needs: patience, support, to be loved, encouragement, being valued no matter what, etc. Define your needs in your journal and find the ways to get them met in a healthy way. If you have ever seen a child being shamed for making a mistake or for failing, you see the body language of a human collapsing in on itself. Beating ourselves up breeds shame. Shame is the belief that something is wrong with me. Did you ever see a child who is loved and supported? The results are joy, blossoming, possibility, fun and knowing that they are valued even when making mistakes. 

I believe we each have an inner child, which simply means the energy of our own tenderness, our own vulnerability. The way we treat ourselves on our journey as actors will create positive habits or destructive habits. Inside ourselves, we will expand or we will contract. Make the choice a conscious one.

Find what works for you. No one has a monopoly on acting. Find the teachers that feel right for you. Set healthy boundaries. Let no one bully you.  Once you have a teacher, stay teachable. Prepare. The more you prepare, the more the teacher can teach you.  Try new things. Write it all down in your journal.

When you try new technique, it may throw you off at first. Lee Strasberg spoke about this. It takes time. Be patient and persevere. 

I support you to trust your inner voice, if you are working and a technique is putting you in your head while you are auditioning or performing, drop that technique immediately. Get in the moment. Get out of your head in audition acting. Bring your creative self. The solution to most problems in an audition is renewing your commitment to being in the moment. 

Carry the pages into the room. Hold them. At home, practice with them until you are fluid in your ability to look down when needed and find the line you need without disturbing the natural rhythm. 

If it feels like the industry says “no” to you, and you truly want to do this work, then reach outside the box. Do readings of plays with your friends. Write your own short play or indie. Network with other people you want to work with, motivated creative people. Go to the library. Read actor autobiographies. Steal from them any good idea. Learn the history of the work. Become fluent in the areas of the work that interest you. Get onstage. Do one acts. Shoot your indie. Get it into a festival—any festival. Form a collective. There is no limit to this. Do not let the industry make you feel like a victim who sits around and waits as a lifestyle. That is also a choice. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Many thanks,

Corey

 I invite you to do a search on this blog with the word, "audition." You will find some casting directors, directors, writers and actors talking about the process. 

“One cannot always create subconsciously and with inspiration. No such genius exists in the world. Therefore our art teaches us first of all to create consciously and rightly. The more you have of conscious creative moments in your role, the more chance you will have of the flow of inspiration.”

Stanislavski