Casting directors are your advocates and your champions. Your work reflects on them. Your disconnected, tentative, muddled work does nothing for anyone. They want you to be great. They are there to shepherd you in, not hold you back. They want to share in your excellent work.

  1. Write them out. This works really well because you are connecting your mind to the action of writing the lines down and seeing the lines at the same time. This helps go to a deeper part of your brain. Try writing them by hand instead of typing. Write out just your lines, then run through the scene out loud.
  2. Use a Smart Phone App. For Apple iOS phones, The Rehearsal 2 is a great way for actors to learn lines. You can highlight the lines in the app, record the other character’s lines, and use it as a teleprompter, which will scroll through the script as you are reading it. Then it just keeps playing on a loop. The secret is to whisper your lines and read the other character’s lines out loud when recording, so you don’t get too caught up in the way you’re saying the lines. You can literally put your iPad on a chair and pretend you’re running lines with someone. For Android phones, try using the free Script Rehearser.
  3. Run the lines with someone. The first time you run through it, just listen to the words. Absorb what’s being said and go over the scene many times in different ways, playing with choices, actions, and pacing. Try it sitting and standing, while getting more comfortable with the lines.

You can also effectively use a combination of these three techniques to prepare for the audition. Write down the lines, run them with the Smart Phone app, then with another actor.

Ultimately, you want the lines to seem like second nature, genuine and authentic, so they are coming from a real person with real thoughts and ideas.

Auditions cause anxiety, and when you walk into the audition room it’s easy to get distracted and forget. As an actor, prepare for this and be very memorized – but not locked into a pattern, so you are confident, relaxed, committed, listening, and open to direction.

 

 

~ Backstage Advice