Dealing with Audition Nerves: Preparation

Ask yourself this question:

Do you enjoy performing?

If you're reading this post I'm assuming the answer is yes. :)

But what about auditions? Do you enjoy auditions?

It's possible that some of you out there do, but most people 
cringe at the thought of having to audition compared to performing.

So what's the difference?

​Since I started audition coaching I've been frequently surprised by clients who have shown up not yet knowing the material. Your audition is in a week! Imagine if we hadn't done this and you'd gone to your audition still not knowing the material?! Then we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that it's not the most productive use of the time but it's still better than nothing.

Even in that situation, one of the most valuable things about the coaching process is practicing working with your audition nerves. Nerves are a normal and important part of performing, yet we somehow learn to work with/use our performance nerves to the benefit of our performance and some people even view them as positive and helpful. So why do audition nerves get the better of us compared to performance nerves?

The answer is preparation

​Think about it - by the time you reach the theatre you've most likely been rehearsing for up to three months and (hopefully) know your stuff inside-out and back to front. You've learned your lines, you know the chore, you've been practicing on the set - you're all good to go.

If you take out the costumes, hair, blocking, etc., the amount of preparation you put into just singing your song in a performance is actually only a very small part of that up-to-three-month process. In the 'stand-and-deliver' context of an audition, where you only have to focus on the singing, that amount of preparation doesn't actually feel like much in comparison. Yet people keep cramming and panicking because they're not as prepared for their audition as they would be for a normal performance because they're not actually treating it as a performance.

This is Scar. Scar is prepared. Be like Scar. "Be Prepared". :)

​And you enjoy performing in front of an audience - you said so yourself. Audiences and audition panels aren't really that different when you get down to it. In reality they both judge your performance, the only real difference is that there's something riding on the panel's thoughts and you hear the outcome of their opinions (not saying that the audience doesn't have opinions, you just don't necessarily hear them). So treating the panel as an audience allows you to connect with them and communicate - to perform - just the way you would with any other audience.

Remember what I said about audition panels being lazy - they don't want to see a 'fixer-upper' they can work with for a few months. They want a performer:

Give them a performance

​Performing in the audition room should be no harder than performing in front of an audience, as long as you're prepared. If you spend the same amount of time preparing for your audition (remember, the singing part alone really isn't that much) as you do for a performance it then becomes a performance which a) makes it easy(er), and b) makes it fun.

If you do as much singing preparation for your audition as you do for a performance you'll go in there as confident as you normally do when you're performing and can treat it as just that - a performance - which is exactly what the panel wants to see. :)