Actor Growth

I got an interesting feedback today that was very enlightening. Today when I first preformed the audition sides the coach commented how everything was great and that what he wanted to see was for me to pick up the pace a bit as he felt it could go a little faster. It was kind of funny as there were only two of us that did the same scene to compare and while my feedback was to do it faster the other guy’s feedback was to do it slower.

So I did the scene again and he mentioned that he felt it was such a small change but it made things so much better. Here was the interesting part. He then said he wanted to try something with me. With that he took over the reader’s job and was now acting as the audition reader for me.

I didn’t really know what to expect but as always what I do when I am acting is that as long as I establish who the character is you can pretty much adapt to anything. What the coach did was that he kind of changed it up a bit such as times where he would do physical gestures implying that he was going to beat me up. As expected, I reacted to it and went with the flow of his new pace where the scene was done a lot faster.

He then commented how it was fantastic that I reacted to all of this. Then e pointed out that I should watch out for that as I really do react off of what the reader gives me. For example, if they are reading it slow the most likely I will respond to it in a slow pace too. He emphasized how that is fantastic as an actor especially when you are on set where you are actually shooting the show.

For an audition though I have to be very careful he mentioned as that means if the reader is very bad they could literally destroy my audition. Therefore, I have to make sure that I can do the scene as intended even if the reader is bad or at least instruct them to try to do it a certain way in order to adapt to the direction I am going for.

That’s kind of funny when you think about it as listening and reacting is a huge component in making a scene believable I’d say and it is also why chemistry is so important in casting actors to do a role. Whereas in an audition you have to be a little more aggressive if the person isn’t giving you the dialogue right.