Audition
Today we started our audition unit by reading a monologue aloud, we were revising a skill called sight-reading. Sight-reading is the reading and performing of a piece of the text that the performer has not seen before, this can be significantly challenging as within an audition the panel will expect high standard performance after a short time of first seeing the text. This enabled us to start learning how to put emotion in to the text without rehearsing first. Sight-reading is a strategy used within most acting auditions as they will not give you a lot of time to the learn the piece through and through, you will have roughly about 20 minutes to get to grips with the text then perform it to your best ability for the final audition. This shows the panel that you are able to give them the type of performance needed without even having to spend weeks on perfecting a monologue.
For my sight-reading I read a monologue from the play 'An Ideal Husband' by Oscar Wilde. It was the character Mabel Chiltern's monologue -
"MABEL CHILTERN: Well, Tommy has proposed to me again. Tommy really does nothing but propose to me. He proposed to me last night in the music-room, when I was quite unprotected, as there was an elaborate trio going on. I didn't dare to make the smallest repartee, I need hardly tell you. If I had, it would have stopped the music at once. Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf. Then he proposed to me in broad daylight this morning, in front of that dreadful statue of Achilles. Really, the things that go on in front of that work of art are quite appalling. The police should interfere. At luncheon I saw by the glare in his eye that he was going to propose again, and I just managed to check him in time by assuring him that I was a bimetallist. Fortunately I don't know what bimetallism means. And I don't believe anybody else does either. But the observation crushed Tommy for ten minutes. He looked quite shocked. And then Tommy is so annoying in the way he proposes. If he proposed at the top of his voice, I should not mind so much. That might produce some effect on the public. But he does it in a horrid confidential way. When Tommy wants to be romantic he talks to one just like a doctor. I am very fond of Tommy, but his methods of proposing are quite out of date. I wish, Gertrude, you would speak to him, and tell him that once a week is quite often enough to propose to any one, and that it should always be done in a manner that attracts some attention."
We were given feedback and tips, here are some that my peers and I were given.
- Speak from lower, do not use head voice there is not as much power behind the voice.
- Breath control, mark your
-diction
-use body to show
-vowels,pronounce them to get the tone of the text
