Auditioning

One of the most fre­quent inquiries I receive, whether it’s from reg­u­lar stu­dents or from com­mu­ni­ty per­form­ers seek­ing coach­ing, regards audi­tion­ing. Whether it’s for school pro­duc­tions, com­mu­ni­ty or pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tions, or advanced aca­d­e­m­ic pro­gram­ming, audi­tion­ing can be scary, by its very nature—all the pres­sure of a job inter­view with the added stress of putting your per­for­mance in the hands (lit­er­al­ly) of an accom­pa­nist you may nev­er have seen before!

So how do you make sure you real­ly shine in your audi­tion? Here’s the best advice I can offer, based upon my decades as an accom­pa­nist, direc­tor, and per­former:

Select your auditions

One of the biggest mis­takes I see inex­pe­ri­enced per­form­ers make is audi­tion­ing for Every. Sin­gle. Show. That. Comes. Along. While it can seem wise to get as much expe­ri­ence audi­tion­ing as pos­si­ble, the best place to learn how to audi­tion is in an audi­tion work­shop (like my Vocal Per­for­mance Mas­ter­class), or work­ing pri­vate­ly with a teacher (like me) who spe­cial­izes in prepar­ing stu­dents for audi­tions. When actu­al­ly audi­tion­ing in the “real world,” some selec­tiv­i­ty is wise:

  1. Audi­tion only for shows that have char­ac­ters you can see your­self play­ing. Take into con­sid­er­a­tion not only your “look,” but also your expe­ri­ence, vocal and styl­is­tic range, etc. (The cri­te­ria for select­ing aca­d­e­m­ic audi­tions are obvi­ous­ly some­what dif­fer­ent, but here too you want to con­sid­er not only the kind of grad­u­ate the pro­gram pro­duces, but also the demo­graph­ic of the folks who are audi­tion­ing to enter. If you’ve nev­er tak­en an act­ing class, the Neigh­bor­hood Play­house might not be your best first audi­tion expe­ri­ence.)
  2. Ask, “How will this show help me to grow?” I’ve seen waaaaay too many stu­dents turn their backs on their school shows for the sake of land­ing an excit­ing role in a com­mu­ni­ty the­atre pro­duc­tion. And while play­ing Tevye might be more of an ego boost than “Third Townsper­son,” com­mu­ni­ty the­atre direc­tors are gen­er­al­ly (and under­stand­ably) con­cerned about one thing: how the show looks. Your growth as a performer—and your increased appeal to future auditioners—isn’t on their radar. Bet­ter to stick with a direc­tor who’s also a teacher, who can help you to grow into future roles.
  3. Con­sid­er your own sched­ule and ener­gy lev­el. Run­ning from show to show to show might seem like a good way to pad your resumé, but it’s also anoth­er great way to make sure you nev­er grow as a per­former. (Learn­ing a role is very dif­fer­ent from devel­op­ing your tech­nique and broad­en­ing your palette of skills!) Make sure you have at least as much time dur­ing your year to pol­ish your strengths and grow your weak­er areas as you spend prepar­ing for shows. (And keep in mind that things like eat­ing, sleep­ing, and doing aca­d­e­m­ic home­work don’t go away just because you have four tech weeks this semes­ter.)
  4. Ask around about the pro­duc­tion team and com­pa­ny. Admin­is­tra­tion, sched­ul­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and gen­er­al demeanor might seem like sec­ondary con­cerns to “mak­ing art”—until sud­den­ly they’re get­ting in the way of “mak­ing art.” If oth­er actors you know have had bad expe­ri­ences work­ing for a com­pa­ny, you’re prob­a­bly wise to save your­self the hassle—unless you have a lot to gain from doing the show (see #2, above).

Select the right repertory

Expe­ri­enced per­form­ers have a “book” (usu­al­ly a well-loved, fierce­ly guard­ed 3‑ring binder, or the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent) of audi­tion charts they can have ready to per­form at a moment’s notice. But if you’re still in the process of build­ing your “book,” or if you just haven’t found the right piece yet, there are a few guide­lines I can offer.

  1. Make sure your song is from the Musi­cal The­atre (MT) canon, and is styl­is­ti­cal­ly sim­i­lar to the show you’re audi­tion­ing for. Pop music (the kind you hear on main­stream radio) too often relies on pro­duc­tion and instru­men­ta­tion for its char­ac­ter­is­tic “sound,” which means it doesn’t make for a good vocal audition—remember, you have to win this part with just you and a piano. There are tons of MT antholo­gies avail­able, often curat­ed by voice part, gen­der, and age. Many of these even include rec­om­mend­ed audi­tion cuts (see below), and new­er antholo­gies often include record­ed accom­pa­ni­ments avail­able online for you to prac­tice with or use in self tapes.
  2. When in doubt, pick a song that makes you feel good. Unless you’re audi­tion­ing for an unadul­ter­at­ed tragedy, choose an upbeat song that makes you smile. (Remem­ber, if it makes you smile, it has a much bet­ter chance of mak­ing the cast­ing team smile. One can only hear so many ver­sions of “She Used to Be Mine” before one con­sid­ers leav­ing the the­atre for a career in pas­tries.)
  3. Find the right audi­tion cut. Gen­er­al­ly you’re look­ing for about 16 to 32 bars, or 30 to 60 sec­onds of music. A safe bet is usu­al­ly to take the last 32 bars of the song—which usu­al­ly means the last verse and refrain, or some­times bridge and refrain. You want enough music to show a good range of pitch (look for good “mon­ey notes”!) and dynam­ic (growth from soft to loud or vice-ver­sa), while still being “of a piece”—that is, the excerpt should tell an under­stand­able part of the sto­ry with­out requir­ing expla­na­tion.
  4. Choose the right arrange­ment. If you’ve cho­sen from one of the MT antholo­gies, you’re usu­al­ly safe. If you’re buy­ing a sin­gle chart from a site like Music­notes, look for the “Singer Pro” edi­tion, or at least a “piano/vocal” arrange­ment. Avoid arrange­ments for solo piano or oth­er instru­ments, even if they include lyrics.
  5. Choose the right key. I actu­al­ly had a singer walk into an audi­tion once—roughly four hours into a 6‑hour block of auditions—and tell me he want­ed to do a lit­tle-known Sond­heim piece a third high­er than the chart he hand­ed me. (After star­ing at him for a few sec­onds to ascer­tain he wasn’t yank­ing my chain, I wished him luck and told him he’d have to audi­tion a cap­pel­la.) Pro­fes­sion­al tran­scrip­tion­ists eas­i­ly charge upwards of $100 an hour to trans­pose charts, so ask­ing your accom­pa­nist to do it “on the fly” is any­thing from unpro­fes­sion­al to incon­sid­er­ate to stu­pid. Instead, arrive with your charts already trans­posed into a key that lets you show off your range with­out strain­ing or flip­ping reg­is­ters on the high notes, or fuzzing out on the low notes. (If you buy your song dig­i­tal­ly, you can almost always pre­view and select from a vari­ety of keys before print­ing.)

Make it easy for the accompanist to help you look good

This means doing every­thing you can to elim­i­nate any mechan­i­cal or tech­ni­cal chal­lenges that might make it hard­er for your accom­pa­nist to focus on actu­al­ly mak­ing music. (And while it should go with­out say­ing, plan­ning to sing your audi­tion with­out accom­pa­ni­ment is NOT an accept­able alter­na­tive to the fol­low­ing. If you’re not sure how to find piano music for the song you want to sing, it’s worth your time and mon­ey to pay some­one like me to help you pre­pare for your audi­tion.)

  1. Pro­vide a clean copy of the chart. Any marks on the page should be rel­e­vant to this audi­tion. Don’t make the accom­pa­nist wade through your study mark­ings.
  2. Clear­ly mark your start and end points, and high­light any changes in key or tem­po. Do you need a bar or two of piano intro­duc­tion, or just a start­ing pitch? If you’re not singing all the way to the end of the piece, what’s the last chord you want played? (The amaz­ing Andrew Byrne has a great mod­el for how to mark your charts on his web­site.)
  3. Don’t tempt grav­i­ty. Nev­er give the accom­pa­nist a paper­back song­book for an audition—you’d be amazed how poor­ly most piano music racks actu­al­ly hold song­books. Instead, go for loose­leaf print­outs or copies on neat, un-curled paper, safe­ly stored in a hard­back fold­er or binder. (If you’re copy­ing from a song­book rather than print­ing a dig­i­tal pur­chase, see this hand­out for rec­om­men­da­tions.)
  4. Min­i­mize or avoid page turns. I have a hand­out for this too, but in a nut­shell:
    • If your audi­tion cut is four pages or few­er, you can gen­er­al­ly tape those sheets togeth­er neat­ly into a sin­gle strip that the pianist can stretch across the music rack, or accor­dion-fold into a mini-book­let with a sin­gle page turn if they pre­fer. See the hand­out for details.
    • If your cut is five pages or longer, you’ll want to insert the music into a 3‑ring binder—but see the hand­out for a few pos­si­bly counter-intu­itive rec­om­men­da­tions based upon my decades of expe­ri­ence as an audi­tion accom­pa­nist.

Practice your audition—all of it

Too many stu­dents real­ize only after walk­ing into an audi­tion that there’s a lot more to it than “just” singing their song. Make sure you are con­fi­dent and com­fort­able with all of the steps of the audi­tion:

  1. Enter the room con­fi­dent­ly, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. (Assume you’re try­ing to make a good first impres­sion on every­one in the room, even if you’ve worked togeth­er before. You want them to want to get to work with you!)
  2. Greet the accom­pa­nist, give them your music, com­mu­ni­cate your tem­po, and make sure they don’t have any ques­tions about your chart (includ­ing whether they should give you a start­ing pitch or play an intro­duc­tion).
  3. Greet the cast­ing com­mit­tee and “slate” by pro­vid­ing your name and the title and source (com­pos­er and/or show) of the piece you’ll be singing. Take par­tic­u­lar care not to rush through your slate—you want to sound relaxed and con­fi­dent, and make absolute­ly sure they know how you pro­nounce your name!
  4. Look down at the floor and pre­pare to sing. Recall to mind the answers to six cru­cial ques­tions, that you’ve pre­sum­ably answered while prepar­ing for the per­for­mance:
    • Who are you?
    • Whom are you singing to?
    • What do you want from them?
    • How impor­tant is it?
    • What’s in your way?
    • How will you know when you’ve suc­ceed­ed?
  5. When you’re ready to begin, raise your head and look over the heads of the cast­ing team. The accom­pa­nist will take this as their cue to begin (i.e., give you your start­ing pitch, or begin the piano intro­duc­tion)… and you’re off!
  6. Stay “in the moment” (in char­ac­ter) until the pianist lifts their hands off the keys and the sound stops com­plete­ly.
  7. Thank the cast­ing team (as “your­self”) and wait to be dis­missed. (The team may want to talk to you before they dis­miss you.)

Sound like a lot? It is. But con­sid­er that your job at any audi­tion is to con­vince the audi­tion team that you have the expe­ri­ence, skill, and ded­i­ca­tion to help them to tell their sto­ry in the best way. A well-pol­ished, pro­fes­sion­al-qual­i­ty audi­tion is the best way to prove to them that you’re up to the chal­lenge.

Ready to get start­ed? You can reg­is­ter for Vocal Per­for­mance Mas­ter­class here, and/or get start­ed with one-on-one audi­tion coach­ing with me using this form.

Break a leg!