Theatre Port

Give a review of your audition experience at the co-ops this year.

NOTE: Admin Changed title to reflect changing direction of post. 6-28-04

i think the auditors deserve a medal for sitting through that many auditions. at least a medal. maybe a trophy. or the fabulous prize behind door #1! in any case, cheers y'all.

I had a good experience. It was my first time to attend. Athough I have a bad feeling that they may not have believed I was really 18. I am 18, but I look much younger. It wasn't my absolute best audition ever, but I think it was successful. Call me crazy, but I would love to be able to sit in on all those auditions. I think it'd be interesting. But they do deserve an award!

I was impressed with the whole process. The auditors were attentive considering the extent of their workload. They did however seem a bit impassive (understandable), it was difficult to get them engaged.

I was surprised with how nervous many of the actors were, moreso than before normal auditions or performance.

This was my first CO-OP audition. Unfortunately, my timing was poor in that I ran out of time halfway through my second piece. I will tighten it up next time.

I guess the proof of the exercise is in if one gets any calls as a result. It might be fun to repeat this forum question in 6 months. :-P

Tightening it up would be a good idea, but not to worry... from what I've heard, LOTS of people had to be cut off. Word is, they scheduled 7 people per 15 minutes. ANYONE would have trouble keeping their auditions moving that tightly for 8 or so hours straight, 2 days in a row. It's understandable they were strict in keeping everyone to their two minutes. Kudos to all involved!!

It seems to me that people think this is a great service to The Actors. When Actually it's a service for the Theatres.

:laugh!:

-Thats cool though, it sounds like it was quite successful as far as attendees....

Well, actually, it's a service for all involved. It gives the actors a chance to get their faces out there for directors to see and it gives theatres a chance to see potential talent. Win-win.

I'm sorry to say I missed them this year!

I actually was..."busy" 8-)
I had done them 3 years in a row. They were a great way for someone new to the "scene" to introduce yourself to a slew of companies. And, every year their seems to be more companies involved.

Is it the best system? No. But it's only part of the process. 200+ people in a weekend?

Hell in New York you can have that many in one day!!
In fact I remember once I waited 5 hours at a huge call...
and then they said they "had enough" for the day and sent us all away before we got to go!

Yet another quip in being non-union in NY!
:-? grrrr.

The co-ops are friendly... :laugh!:

This was my first experience with co-ops and I was sitting in as an auditor for Collide; it's a marathon but worth it for all involved. The directors group was very easy-going, so don't stress out if you got cut off or even if you only got through one piece. Minute monologues are hard to find, and definitely one of the more striking performances I saw was a single two-minute piece.

We definitely often had 7 or 8 people scheduled for a 15-minute time slot, but that often worked out because I'd say about a fifth of all the people who registered were no-shows.

Actors: it's probably good advice to bring more headshots than you're expecting to need; theatres get added at the last minute.

Hi,

I'll volunteer my perspective as one of the people watching.

First, when I left Houston 20 years ago, the local talent pool was no way near the quality I saw yesterday. I was floored by the amount of real acting talent auditioning. On top of that, I was impressed by the number of people who had solid training and understood how to both build a character and be in the event of the scene so that somethijg real and alive happens on stage. I was most impressed with the group of young actors who were either at Sam Houston State or had recently graduated. Without fail, every single one was good. It was obvious that there was some form of training standing behind these people as I doubt Sam Houston could have been that successful "cherry picking" ALL excellent students. Even more amazing, they weren't like alot of actors from the big schools that end up "stamping out" a certain kind of actor and unintentionally erase individuality from the work due to their approach. (American acting without enormous individuality is un-American and is one reason why theatre is dying!) The Sam Houston actors were as different as night and day as individuals and yet all seemed to share a basic approach to the work and craft. One could have gathered them all together and had the foundation of a first rate permanent acting company that could have tackled an enormous range of plays and set the stage on inner fire. It was also interesting that one of the teachers from Sam Houston left there and has been teaching at Rice U. Rice has never been known for theatre, muchless training actors, but the small group of actors who auditioned from Rice and worked with this ex-Sam Houston teacher showed a good deal of the same qualities as the SH students. All of these actors not only projected imagination, belief, action, feeling and truth, they also seemed to be smart. It showed in their acting, the material they chose, how it was prepared, their professionalism. Good acting, contrary to pop culture stupidity, requires a big brain.

I singled out this "group" just because there was an obvious pattern and connection behind their excellence, but there were just as many individual actors with all kinds of backgrounds that were every bit as fine. Two African American actors, who arrived without resumes, who went overtime and only got to do one selection both gave mind blowing performances. Both people started out doing things that at first read as "is this person REALLY doing THAT; we are in trouble!" and within seconds, that fear changed to WOW!. The man was so believable that when he said he was leaving as a line in his selection and walked toward the door I thought he was actually going out the door -- stunning. (Actors don't only feel "the moment" -- more importantly, the AUDIENCE does, and that's the essence of the theatre event. No moment, no theatre -- no matter how great the set, text, concept, direction, star, theatre company, method, etc. No moment, no theatre.) The woman uncorked a personal passion and fierce intelligence within imaginative form that was heart stopping. I hope both of these people are not lost in the suffle due to not having the business of acting altogether.

Ok, the constructive comments -- yeah, ok, who am I kidding, the NEGATIVE :-).

Personally, I had a problem with a good deal of the material chosen. Part of this comes from the fact that I dislike alot of modern plays (1980's on). I don't think they are truly theatre. They are more like sketch comedy and are based on the words alone with character, action, feeling, psychology, tacked on for decoration. The writing does not reveal character and psychology; it just comments with attitude on the navel gazing self-involvement of modern urban life. They seem to be written with a TV contract in mind. Most of them sound like a cross between Jerry Springer and Oprah. 2 days of listening to monologues that pretty much amount to passive-aggressive bitch fests with good one liners is deadening. The people in these plays love to talk, talk, talk and they only talk, talk, talk about themselves, themselves, themselves, with a good turn of phrase every once in awhile. 2 days of 70% such material is like sitting through 2 days of bad group therapy stories.

Think about this when you choose material. Its not just hearing the same monologue over and over during an audition process (which is never a problem IF the actor doing it for the 10 time that day is truly GOOD!); it's hearing the same KIND of writing, play, character and style in so many monologues over and over, so that they all run together. They may be from different plays but the plays are so similar, who can tell? This stuff might be great for TV auditions but it is such shallow, meaningless material for real acting that it leads the actor away from acting and into line readings and sketch comedy. The pieces play like comic "public speaking" more than acting. So, know that 70% of the competition is doing the "I lost my love; I hate men; women suck; I am lonely; I am quirky; I watch TV, I am sick funny; I could write TV" material and if you do it you may just get lost in the repetition.

It was amazing how little material that was written pre-1980 was used for auditions and that vast library of great plays is simply overflowing with choice material, material that, obviously, judging from co-ops, few here are doing anymore. Read it! The older plays are built on ACTION -- the foundation of acting -- and they allow the actor to create an imaginary yet real event (situation) on stage and live in it as a created character DOING things and not just saying words with meaning, readings and and more or less real or faked feeling. Some of the modern plays are good enough to do this and there were several wonderful examples of this in the co-ops, but, on the whole, from the majority of the modern material chosen, the modern pieces were word --- not inner action/event/doing/believing (acting) -- driven. This made the auditions seem like "public speaking/ stand-up comedy and not acting a good deal of the time.


It was interesting to watch how the age and experience of the actors effected how they approached acting and auditions. The 40+ AEA members approached auditioning as good actors always have -- a chance to act. They had developed characters, made moment to moment inner action choices, created a full place and relationship on stage and let it rip. They were in a PLAY and not primarily seeking acceptance and a job. They were focused on their WORK and not selling themselves like salesmen on a car lot. They knew the work is the ONLY salesman in theatre.

The younger AEA members there were all strong actors and did a good deal of what the older ones on a whole did, but the 20's somethings were beginning to vear toward making all their acting choices only in the words. They did not fully imaginatively live in time, place and relationship as the previous generation of AEA actors were doing. Acting is getting diluted.

The Sam Houston students and certain other individual non-Equity young and older actors had this hybrid "quality" in their acting too and with a little nudging you could see they would be able to jump over the watering down of real acting today and go for the full blown DOING and real FEELING article.

Unfortunately, many people of OBVIOUS talent did not have the training or understanding of what the craft of acting IS and so they wasted their very real talent on simply pushing the words to fake something happening. It was hard to watch this as they were talented but did not know how to play the instrument of acting.

Overall, I'd say 50-60% of the actors mistook nervous, hyped energy and physical tension in the form of muscular and vocal strain as feeling and truth. Tension and raw adrenaline pumping are always to be released and held at bay through choice and craft. They lead to pushing and when you couple an instrument so out of inner control with the actor's need to be loved when performing, who have a disaster. If you find yourself hyping it up as a desparate plea to be exciting, to fake belief and to fake feel when acting, you are lost. Belief, action, thought and emotion only come into play when the body and mind are one and free. If you pump adrenaline over the tension, you end up looking like a 5 year old child trying to act-OUT! RELAX! RELAX! RELAX! Just talk. Just do. Concentrate. Allow the acting to happen. If it doesn't just happen from homework and relaxed doing, imagining and thinking, then you are lost as an actor and need training. Tension and energy will never do it. When an actor uses energy as a fake inner wildfire it's like the actor is only grinding gears.

Bobby

It's good to have your perspective, stanman, especially as regards the Sam Houston students. For the last few years this has been the group that gets the 'buzz' around the theatre community. Jim Miller, who heads that department, is a wonderful man, he actually directed me in my first lead, back in '77 (and not again until twenty something years later in Die Mommy Die, at LaB). A soft spoken, but very focused individual, he KNOWS his stuff. I've also worked with several of the students who've come out of there, and they are, to a person, as professional a group of young people as I've ever worked with. I encourage anyone who's looking to study acting at a university, look into SHSU, you'll get your money's worth.

Hi Htownactor,

Yes, the SHSU actors stood out. They had the quality that you rarely see in university trained actors but used to see in serious New York actors, which is they knew how to combine their personal truth with the step by step inner action of the play's events and with the thought logic/objects of the lines. More importantly, they knew how to grasp the true intent of a scene or character and build their work upon that spine. They did not just treat the play and acting as things there for the individual to use to show off and substitute performing for acting. I was mightily impressed. It is ashame that they will all be scattered to the 4 winds and will never know the wonder that comes -- NOT JUST FROM A HIRED RESIDENT COMPANY -- as is found today, but the magic a group of actors make who do all truly share the same basic approach and craft and who are dedicated to the aesthetic values behind that basic approach and then create productions out of that unity -- which is how art works. You cannot get art with a jobbed in cast or even seasonal company. You cannot get it from a resident company. Theatre has to grasp what the innate nature of a real permanent company is.

I was sitting there imagining just what kind of company those young actors could build if they stayed together as one and spent the next 10 years creating work and real experience (on stage in their acting and off stage for their lives)as a true company. It is a shame Houston does not have the environment like Chicago where graduating classes can stay together and come and create theatres and build a real creatively alive community and not just a collection of several different seasons of shows by established houses or experimental work focused on issues of writing, style and form. There has to be a way to get Houston theatre to move beyond the quest for professionalism and newness and move toward a great big field of manure encouraging things to stay and grow. It was sad watching all the talent and knowing alot would not be used as Houston theatre still primarily runs on producing theatres hiring actors for shows rather than actors, directors, designers and writers who share an aesthetic and craft coming together to build work and company themselves. I wonder how you get the workers in theatre to risk staying and to build and create on their own rather than think and act like day labor waiting to be hired their whole lives.

It seems you are right, the man you mentioned at SHSU and a man named Mark Ramont who was at SHSU and at Rice a bit were the training behind the excellence of the SHSU and to a real degree Rice actors. I wish Rice would do for theatre what they did for the Shepherd School of Music.

It was a wonderful experience overall. The seats were butt killers but not the experience. Acting, even bad acting, never bores me. I learn something new in every experience.

Bobby