Audition Technique

This is an audition skills class!

If, as Deb Aquila teaches, “your job, as an actor, is to decipher the complex messages of the play, and to communicate those ideas, themes and emotional truths from the author to us, the audience,” what does it mean when the audience is a room with a casting director, director, producer, creative execs, or some combination thereof? Students, under the instruction of Henry Russell Bergstein, will work to answer that question.

Whatever acting school or style you're from, we'll look at how the tools you use to create characters as an actor on set or in the rehearsal process both help and hinder you in the audition process. Using different scenes and sides in each class as well as conversations and questions with the class at large about individual experiences, we'll drill different audition skills and figure out what works for you. We'll also bring the techniques of script analysis and backstory/emotional memory that the Aquila Studio is known for to the practical application of the audition process.

For active auditioning classes, students will get scenes and sides to prepare 48-72 hours in advance. Under this time constraint, we’ll explore what it means to take the techniques you’ve been learning and apply them to your process, in order to create a performance for the audition room. We will examine what you must scale up or down in order to give the performance you need in the room (or on tape) to book a role! We’ll learn together the choices that work for each individual student, based on their strengths, inherent skills, and disposition and how they need to adjust their practice and technique when auditioning.

 Sundays, 5-8pm - Class dates for 2024:

Feb 4 - Feb 25

March 17 - April 14 (no class March 31)

May 19 - June 16 (no class May 26)

Typical curriculum.

Week 1: auditioning with a theater scene – students will receive sides 72 hours in advance – there will be an audition reader in the class and you will not be able to practice with them beforehand, just as in the audition room

Week 2: auditioning with television and film script and sides – students will receive a script and sides 72 hours in advance – you will be assigned a reader in class, you guessed it, just as in the audition room

Week 3: auditioning with cold reads – you’ll receive sides staggered throughout the class and have 20-30 minutes to prepare them cold – will figure out how you can apply the techniques you’ve been using with at least some time to prepare when you have almost none! accommodations will be made for students with dyslexia or any other learning disability as would be made for actual auditions.

Week 4: self-tapes and auditioning with television and film sides only – you’ll receive two sets of sides for this class. one set to self-tape in advance of class to see what works when you are taping on your own, and one set that you get with no other info other than the breakdown. the audition when in class will be more geared towards co-star / one-line scenes. when you don’t have a full script and are prepping a scene in a vacuum of just that scene and a breakdown description, what can you do to get the most out of the scene? we’ll once again apply the principals of script analysis along with different audition techniques to use what you’ve been learning in these practical situations.

Throughout this class, we’ll be discussing what works from your technique under the confines and pressures of the audition timeline and process and what additional audition techniques and guides (i.e. anything from physicality to eye line to punctuation on the page) can help fill out your performance so that you can book the role and ultimately have the chance to use the full technique and give an amazing nuanced performance that other people will get to see.

Audition Technique - $400 - 4-Week Course

Our courses/intensives are a learning experience. It is not an audition or employment opportunity. When the course/intensive is over, the instructor teaching this course/intensive will not be taking home, nor be given access to your headshot, resume, or any of your other promotional materials. As we are an educational institution, the use of the studio and faculty’s names and likenesses for any professional or personal purposes without our permission is strictly prohibited.