Breaking It Down by Nicole Hodges Persley Monica White Ndounou

Author:Nicole Hodges Persley Monica White Ndounou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: undefined
Published: 2012-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

How to Play the Action in Auditions

Playing the action is another way of approaching the audition with a broader, more expansive exploration of the character. Some say don’t play the emotion—play the action—but those two elements are not as distinct as one might think. In simply playing the emotion, an actor may end up playing one note throughout the performance rather than playing multiple notes or riffing off of a phrase within a given composition. For example, if an actor labels a scene “sad” and plays it based on that single emotion, they may miss an opportunity to express a more in-depth understanding of a character and their given circumstances. They may miss opportunities to play subtle shifts in the character’s emotional state or articulation of their emotional state through verbal and nonverbal expression.

It’s not just what a character feels but what they do to convey their thoughts and feelings, conscious and unconscious, that can make the difference in an audition.

So, when preparing for an audition, consider that every character is doing something. They may be standing or sitting or walking or jogging or lying down. When you hear acting teachers talk about “playing the action” or “action verbs” and “objectives,” this is where those action verbs come in: the verb is the doing. For example, if you are studying when your partner walks into the scene and your first line is, “Oh, hey, honey. I didn’t know you were coming home early today,” you must play actions that show you are studying and then speak to your partner about their early arrival home. How you do this is based on other clues that you find in the script that tell you the relationship status of the characters. What do you want to accomplish by greeting them in this way? What time of day is it? What are you studying? All of these context clues, including punctuation, in the story impact how you say just one line of your sides. Blowing the line can blow the audition if the selected side drives the storyline.

The sides can only provide limited indication of what a character is doing. Those clues are suggestions made by the writer to indicate how they want the action and transitions of the scene to play out in performance. If you ignore the actions that help convey the character’s experiences, you may miss the subtext of what’s happening.

Find the actions, use your imagination, and play them. Again, the actions may be in the full script or sides you are provided. You may be asked to invent actions based on context clues. In that case, you need to determine where the character is, who they are with, and what brings them together in order to determine what the character might be doing during the scene or monologue.

Once you identify the set of actions, you should practice them. Props are not typically provided during an audition, so actors sometimes mime props if it serves the scene. For instance, if the

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