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AUDITIONS 10 TOP TIPS 1. Preparation The key to looking ill prepared is to be ill prepared! It works wonderfully every time. So if you know you need to brush up on a) your experience (ie. be able to recite your CV without glaring at it because you can never remember dates), b) your monologue (it’s almost there but you can wing the end) c) your 1:1 questions (what you want to ask them and be confident about what they ask you), then do it – before you enter the room and plonk yourself down – assuming you are lucky enough to be given a chair! 2. Practice If you have several set pieces you like to do, practice them. They should be familiar to you (so that you don’t pull strange faces whilst you are trying to remember your lines), but not so familiar that you lose that ‘edge’. Remember, the CD is likely to say “can you give me that again with a bit more ….sorrow/anger/disappointment* (*delete as appropriate or substitute any emotion going). So make sure you are ready to adapt. 3. Presentation Make sure you look the part. If they are looking for a 29 year old hooker, don’t go in dressed like your granny. You may not have to walk down the street dressed like a hooker, but take whatever wardrobe you might need, to give them a better idea of how you scrub up or scrub down. Don’t walk in like a tramp and fluster around for your CV and then pick the Werthers Original off the back of your CV before handing it over. 4. Planning Make sure you know where the audition is (yes I know it sounds stupid). But I mean exactly where it is. Know what time it is and arrive early. If there is no set time or it’s an open audition arrive in plenty of time and expect to wait a long time and be cheerful about it. Take a great book, not Heat magazine. 5. Don’t hassle Don’t hassle the people organising the auditions, they will be herding people through all day and won’t take kindly to others moaning, being negative and not giving them a smile. Take everything in your stride; let everyone else get stressed out. You need to look like a swan and be like a swan underneath too.

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6. Do your homework Find out who the CD is, find out as much as you can about their experience, any background information into the piece. They will be impressed that you did so if they ask you, however don’t shoehorn it into the conversation unless it’s appropriate. Bragging is not an attractive quality – unless the part is for a bragger obviously. 7. Visualise Yes, visualise doing the audition and enjoying it and them loving you. If you can ‘see’ yourself doing it, you will be fine ‘doing’ it. Do this as early as possible once you have the audition booked. Sometimes it may be a late call, but it doesn’t stop you spending 5 mins visualising every couple of hours. At the very least you can do it on the way to the audition. Make sure you are really ‘feeling’ how it will feel. Use all your senses, what can you see; what can you hear; what can you taste; what can you smell; how is it making you feel? 8. Feel confident Make sure you walk into that room feeling fabulous. Think back to a time when you felt confident and like you could take on the world. Make sure you keep connecting to that time. Close your eyes and remember that particular experience. Focus really hard on that feeling and isolate where it is in your body. Where can you feel it? Make sure you can get that feeling back whenever you need to. 9. Go in fresh I don’t care how many auditions you have had, I don’t care how many you lost. You need to walk into that room as if it’s your first audition and thinking, ‘of course they will give me the part’. If you are feeling jaded and thinking “oh god, here’s another damn audition I probably won’t get” – it’s not good, your body language will be bad and you will probably be frowning. Start to love the audition. 10. Cope with rejection Work out a way to cope just in case you don’t get it. There will be times when you think it’s perfect but the CD has other ideas. You thought you nailed it, but clearly not. In this industry you have to get over the failure – it’s not you – personally. It just was not your day. Sales people always know that a ‘no thanks’ is just a means to get them closer to getting a ‘yes please’. March 2008 Lyn Burgess The no.1 life coach for film and television