What's the Project Called?
"The job of the dramatist is to make the audience wonder what happens next."
—David Mamet
Agents, managers, and casting directors tend to talk fast, as they are busy people (or perhaps because they wish to seem so). The point being, it's up to you to stand up for yourself and ask for what you need from them if you don't get it. Upon learning about an upcoming audition, there are three things you must be sure to receive:
The sides: one or more scenes from the script that you will read during the audition.
The character breakdown: a description of your character.
The exact date, time, and location of the audition: you don't want to miss the audition, to get lost and show up late, or to feel anxious about any logistical details.
The name of the casting director, writer/producer, and director: You want to know who you're dealing with, both so you can schmooze effortlessly with the creative team if you need to, and also so you can review their past projects and get a sense of their style.
Once you have these few necessities in hand, your Sherlock Holmesing can begin.
Your First Acting Clue
The first acting clue—the title of the project—is so obvious that it would be easy to overlook. But don't make the mistake of taking anything for granted. Leave no stone unturned. Remember, as you hold your script in hand and read through it for the first time, your aim should be to find any and all actable information in it. You will use curiosity, intuition, and deductive reasoning. The screenwriter is speaking to you in a code, a cryptic message that you must crack.
Talk aloud to yourself as you go along. Ask questions. Say to yourself: "I think that…, "I feel that…," "I'm guessing that…," "It seems possible that...," and "I wonder if…" Never forget that you are a detective solving a crime.
The crime, in this case, is your role. The sides are the evidence.
Deduction is how you put all the clues together at the end. That is when you make choices and use your craft as an actor. But you can't deduce correctly until you gather all of the evidence.
Keep a pencil handy (with a good eraser) and jot down notes in the margin of your sides as you go along. You might also write down your suspicions and impressions about the character and the scenes in a special notebook reserved for this purpose.
As you read the title for the very first time, pause and reflect. What could this mean? What could it tell me about who my character is? Or about the scene I've been handed?
The Definition of a Scene
A scene is a compression of time, space, and reality. Compression requires that everything which takes place in a scene is non-ordinary or heightened reality. Every word and every symbol you see in your script matters because the writer has to communicate so much in such a short span of time. Every comma, every ellipses, every parenthetical description was specifically chosen by the screenwriter to help you move the plot and relationships forward. Do not miss a single thing!
It is beneficial for actors to understand how screenwriters think, as the elements of their craft directly impact ours. We are looking for the life that exists behind and between the lines, as much as on the lines.
In 2005, the renowned playwright and director David Mamet wrote a memo to the staff writers of The Unit, a then-new television action series he created and executive produced about the men of a Special Forces unit and their wives. Leaked on the Internet, this memo has been widely circulated among screenwriters because of its theme: What makes good television? In essence, it addresses the reason for compression. As he says, "We are tasked with, it seems, cramming a shitload of information into a little bit of time… But note: the audience will not tune in to watch information…. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama."ref_1
As an actor, you must always serve the writer's intentions. You must say the lines you are given and make sense of them whether they are poorly or well written, and even if they represent nothing more than story exposition. This means that some lines report facts with no inherent drama in them, background details that must be communicated for the story to make sense to the audience. A skillful writer finds entertaining ways to dramatize exposition, incorporating facts into scenes that advance the plot or reveal something about the character. But sometimes you will just have to spit out expository lines and do your best to make a moment truthful despite dull, or even stupid, writing.
Mamet defines drama as "the quest of the hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific, acute goal." He advises: "We, the writers, must ask ourselves of every scene these three questions: 1) Who wants what? 2) What happens if the hero doesn't get it? 3) Why now? The answers to these questions are litmus paper."ref_2 As an actor, you need to be looking for the answers that the writer has hopefully provided you to these questions. It is not your job to supply the answers, but to truthfully embody the answers the writer has found in a human way.
Later in his memo Mamet continues, "Remember you are writing for a visual medium. Most television writing, ours included, sounds like radio. The camera can do the explaining for you. Let it. What are the characters doing 'literally'? What are they handling, what are they reading? What are they watching on television, what are they seeing? If you pretend the characters can't speak, and write a silent movie, you will be writing great drama."ref_3
In an audition, you won't actually be doing anything physical. You'll either sit or you will stand. In rare instances, you might go from standing to seated or seated to standing. But you won't be moving around the room. An audition really is a close-up. Nonetheless, you need to know, in explicit detail, what your character will be doing when it comes time to shoot the scene for real. Know this and the camera will see it behind your eyes.
To test this principle, lower the volume on your television and study the performances of the actors in your favorite programs. See what happens during their close-ups. A good program to use for this particular exploration is The Good Wife, starring Julianna Margulies, as the camerawork in every scene of this show includes many close-ups.
Watch Kyra Sedgwick eating in The Closer. You know exactly how she feels and what she thinks about every piece of cake or Ding Dong she consumes, even though she doesn't ever talk about it. Sedgwick's knowledge is revealed by her transparency.
Due to the compressed nature of a scene, writers hide clues to meaning everywhere. The script is encoded material that is a metaphor for life—not life itself. The average one-hour episode of a TV show encompasses forty-eight pages of script. A half-hour episode is written in twenty-four pages. A two-hour film averages 120 scripted pages.
Where to begin decoding this mystery that is your script? Right where the audience begins: with the title of the project.
The First Question: What Does the Title of the Show/Film Tell Me?
Consider the titles of several popular television series and what they can tell us at a glance. Feel free to come up with your own impressions. This is purely intuitive.
Cougar Town: middle-aged women hungry for sex—possibly with younger men—probably funny.
Rookie Blue: novice cops in uniform, possibly with "the blues."
Private Practice: the intimate lives of doctors in a practice together—probably a primetime soap opera.
Desperate Housewives: women living in houses who are unhappy—probably funny.
Modern Family: family escapades—possibly nontraditional family combinations—probably funny.
Criminal Minds: a crime drama where police "profilers" chase bad guys and solve cases based on thinking like the criminals.
Scoundrels: criminals up to mischief—probably funny.
No Ordinary Family: a family with something special about its members. (Further investigation leads us to know the special thing is having super powers like comic book heroes.)
My Generation: a look at people of the same age—probably relatively young people, maybe Gen X people.
The Big Bang Theory: featuring scientists—possibly tongue-in-cheek funny.
Hawaii Five-O: remake of a classic program, set in Hawaii, featuring cops.
The Defenders: featuring lawyers who work for criminals. Not sure, could be funny.
Burn Notice: don't know offhand, sounds official—sounds hot.
Californication: sex in California—probably funny. And it sounds perverse or intellectual.
Stargate Universe: science fiction, spinoff of an earlier program, involving a gate to the stars (whatever that is) and the entire universe (or "a" universe, and is it ours?).
Use your curiosity and speak aloud to yourself. Literally ask, "What could this title mean?" At this stage, with a new project, you won't have much else to go on.
Here's how Sherlock Holmesing works in practice. Let's take CSI, as an example. What do those initials stand for? The answer: crime scene investigators. Intuitively we'd surely guess this program was about forensic scientists, the investigators who solve crimes, and it is possibly gritty. If we had seen any of the earlier three versions of the show, we'd also know it was stylish, set in Las Vegas, Miami, or Los Angeles.
You would also wonder, wouldn't you, who this insight makes your character. Are you perhaps a victim, a criminal, a witness, an informant, or a crime solver? How does your character serve the plot of the episode (or ongoing series of episodes) for which you are being asked to audition? Knowing the structure of a one-hour crime drama, you can logically surmise that each episode covers the commission, investigation, and solving of a significant crime. Looking at the title opens your mind to receive guidance from the script about how to handle the material.
Television Episode Titles
Beyond the title of the show, when you are shooting a television series, every episode has its own title. This is another clue to the central focus of that episode's investigation. From CSI: NY come episode titles like "Pay Up," "Hostage," "Cold Reveal," "Personal Foul," and "Admissions." What intuitive hunch do you get from any of these? They seem to be rather terse phrases. Are they plays on words (puns) or literal descriptions of the episode plots? We don't know yet.
Ask, what could that last episode title mean… admissions? An "admission" is a revelation of something personal and often embarrassing, like an admission of an error or a failing—or of guilt. When you look at the breakdown for this episode, you might learn that it involves a guidance counselor in a high school advising students about the college admissions process. There may be a double entendre here (most likely there is) about college admissions and guilty admissions.
Let your curiosity lead you to ask questions that result from your hunches. Put them in the background of your mind as open questions that may yield useful knowledge as you read further down the page and begin to make decisions. If you've been given a pivotal scene to prepare, such as the scene where your character makes a confession to the police, having a point of view derived from the episode title could help you craft an interesting performance or moment.
At the top of your sides, instead of an episode title, you might also see the letters T.B.D. These stand for "to be determined." This indicates that the script is still a work in progress. As it hasn't been finalized, your work will be in vain if you memorize it now since the screenwriter hasn't yet entirely solved the puzzle of the program. This is a sign to be as mentally nimble as you can be. Don't worry though; you won't be dealing with last-minute rewrites during a five- or ten-minute audition.
Film Titles
Like the names of television series, the name of a film should express that which is most central about it. A film title is basically code for the most important element of the plot, the context, or a lead character. Think back and you'll probably remember some titles of movies, for instance (in chronological order): Sophie's Choice; Good Morning, Vietnam; Do the Right Thing; Catch Me If You Can; and The Motorcycle Diaries.
Do an intuition test on the title of any film you have admired to see whether it aptly communicates the essence of the movie. While a retrospective inquiry, this practice session should reinforce the point of how much you can learn about a project from its title. Remember that normally at this stage you haven't read the sides yet. You are just beginning to open up a process of inquiry. This is what you'd discover in looking back.
Sophie's Choice (1982) with a script by Alan J. Pakula adapted from a novel by William Styron, starred Meryl Streep as a post-World War Two Polish immigrant living in New York City, a Nazi concentration camp survivor who, as we learn towards the end of the film, was forced to make a terrible choice to save either her son or her daughter from being murdered. Her choice is a central mystery that informs the character, a woman who enthralls the young, male protagonist nicknamed Stingo.
If you were auditioning for this film, knowing your character's relationship to Sophie or how your character factors into the story of her making her choice or what she does afterwards might be a clue to how to craft your performance.
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), with a script by Mitch Markowitz, starred Robin Williams as an irreverent disk jockey assigned to the U.S. Armed Services Radio station in Hanoi, Vietnam, during the war. Every morning the character begins his program with the cheerful phrase, "Good morning, Vietnam!" His mandated role as a morale booster for the soldiers and his on-air comments during his tour of duty change as the tide of the war turns against the U.S. and as the morality of what the American troops are doing is called into question. The title not only refers to the literal wakeup call the program serves as every morning for the soldiers, but it signifies the character's wakeup call to what is happening around him and America's wakeup call to a "bad war."
If you were auditioning for this film, the title might give you an actable clue in regard to the Vietnam War era. Does your audition scene take place before, during, or after an awakening?
Do the Right Thing (1989), written and directed by Spike Lee, as well as starring him, is a film about bigotry and racial hatred that erupt in an urban neighborhood on a sweltering summer day. It's an ironic title, because the film is ambivalent about what the "right thing to do" is. As an advisory, it keeps the audience wondering whose point of view to embrace. "Rightness" is subjective.
If you were auditioning for this film, you might do well to get curious about your character's racial attitudes. Is the title a clue to develop a point of view about "righteous" behavior?
Catch Me If You Can (2002), with a script by Jeff Nathanson adapted from a book by Frank Abagnale, Jr., and Stan Redding, starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, who respectively play a con artist and the federal agent trying to arrest him. If you were auditioning for this film, how might the title inform your character's behavior? Wouldn't you be curious about where your character interacts either with the pursuer or the pursued? It's a lighthearted title. Why?
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), a Latin American film scripted by Jose Rivera, adapted from both Ernesto "Che" Guevara's actual diaries and a book about his youth by Alberto Granado, focuses on a road trip across South America—by motorcycle—that took place when the world-famous Latin activist/rebel, a hero to many people, was taking time off from studying to be a doctor. Was it this journey that caused him to find his life's purpose of helping oppressed people? What personality traits developed out of this temporary experience of poverty and hardship? Knowing the significance of this title could hold a clue for an actor auditioning for the project.
Always ask questions and make guesses about the title. Be curious. Heed your intuition.
Researching Past Episodes and Precursors
When you read the script for a television show, at the top of the page, there is always a number. Let's say, 303. This particular number means you're looking at sides from the script of the third episode in the third season. Script numbering is similar to hotel room or office suite numbering, except that script numbers begin with the number of the season instead of the floor.
The third season is a great season to be on a particular show. You know it is a hit! It's been renewed twice, kept on the air by the studio executives. It's earning money for the advertisers because it's getting good ratings.
If you see the number 703, then you can guess the show is soon to be cancelled. After all, it has been on the air for seven seasons already. The regular characters are thoroughly developed. The style of the program is probably locked into place. It is a brand-name product with a devoted following that knows the specific commodity to expect every week.
If you see 103, then you know it is the show's first season and you really don't know if it's going to do well. The kinks may not have been worked out yet. The characters are new. Their histories, personalities, and relationships haven't been developed much by the writers.
By taking the time to view some past episodes of an ongoing series before your audition you can get a sense of the storytelling style that might ultimately help you. If it's a gritty crime drama, that's one style. If it's a situation comedy, that's another. If you know the show you are trying out for, you can learn the style of the show ahead of time. Entering the audition room with sensitivity for the material to which you have to pay homage means the producer doesn't have to educate you. This could be a favorable factor leaning toward your selection.
One student of mine auditioned for an episode of Gilmore Girls, a show whose dialogue was often witty banter delivered rapid-fire. The pace was generally so quick, in fact, that scripts for Gilmore Girls usually ran to sixty pages instead of the customary forty-eight. When the producer heard my student read his scene in style, he thanked him for doing it that way and then gave him the job on the spot—all because he understood the way the show was paced.
In addition to watching earlier episodes of a running program, other precursors that you might want to investigate online include the movies that shows are based upon. For instance, if you had an audition for a part in the TV show Nikita, you could view the French film La Femme Nikita (1990) or its American remake, The Point of No Return (1993). You wouldn't want to make everything you did in your audition an imitation of those films; think of it as just another way to establish an intuitive sense of the concept and approach based on the title.
You can stream full episodes of currently airing TV shows (often including episodes from past seasons) on the websites of the various broadcast networks (NBC.com, CBS.com, Fox.com, ABC.com, and so forth) or stream reruns of older programs on websites like Hulu.com. You can either stream movies or view them on DVD by mail order from companies like Netflix.com, or watch them on a pay-per-view channel.
What if the project you're auditioning for is a spinoff of a popular show? A classic example of a spinoff is the program Frasier, starring Kelsey Grammer, which was a very successful sequel to Cheers. Knowing the history of the leading character, as drawn from the original program where he was not the main character, may help you understand how to relate to this character in the new context. Here, among other traits, you would discover that the character of Dr. Frasier Crane is a psychiatrist who often brags about his intelligence and his taste for the finer things in life. That made him different than the main character of Sam Malone, the former pro-baseball player in Cheers; and it also made him the opposite of his blue-collar father, a retired policeman, who is one of his foils in Frasier. There's a lot of information available to you from simple research.
Use everything you discover from the project title for inspiration in your crafting process. In the end, your knowledge will help you make clear, specific, interesting, and appropriate choices for your on-camera audition.
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