Lisbeth Bartlett Private Coaching Studio BLOG SERIES: How to Succeed at BA, BFA, MFA and Conservatory Auditions
PART 1: TALENT
“We are looking for emotional transparency. Does the energy in the room change when they come into it? We are looking for that sense of presence, a drive and a passionate commitment to making theater… Can the student physically and vocally translate the circumstances of a scene into behavior? How well do they understand the text, inhabit the character, call on emotional resources to bare the full character?”—Kevin Kuhlke, Chair of the undergraduate drama department at NYU Tisch, where I received a Masters’s degree
“Everyone asks, ‘What are you looking for?’ It’s so simple that it’s boring — something truthful. Someone who brings humanity to their work. And a student who really wants to work hard. One of the first questions we ask ourselves is, ‘How fully into the imaginary world is this kid?’ That’s a biggie. Can they put themselves in a situation that is not true, but act as though it is? That’s a childlike gift. Are they O.K. with making the bold move, or are they judging themselves, watching themselves? Do I want to work with this person for four years?” Students should be asking the same question about the school. Four years at $40,000 a year. I absolutely hope they’re doing that.” —my friend and colleague Don Wadsworth, Carnegie Mellon Drama
As a private acting coach, I have been thinking about the things that set the best Drama/Musical Theatre BFA, BA and MFA applicants apart from the masses of applicants. Right now, as the audition season is coming to a close, I am reflecting on the qualities that set the most promising and successful student auditioners apart from the masses. All of my coaching students have tackled the audition process with passion, hard work, and persistence. With more results coming in daily, they have already succeeded in securing enviable program acceptances to (as well as several places on wait lists and priority hold lists) some of the best Acting and Musical Theatre programs in the USA and abroad, including Ithaca; Pace; Emerson; Syracuse; Point Park; Texas State; Penn State; Roosevelt; Baldwin Wallace; Temple; Point Park; Wagner; SUNY Purchase; Marymount Manhattan; Muhelnberg; Desales; LIU; Chicago College of the Performing Arts; The New School; and many others.
What do the most gifted and promising private coaching students do in the preparation process that increases their chances of success? What qualities do you need to snag that coveted brass ring?
This first of 10 blogs in this series will examine talent. Plain and simple, performers must exude TALENT. But what exactly is talent?
We know when we see it on stage when a performer takes our breath away. Absolute presence. Honesty. Instinctual accuracy. Vulnerability. Emotional transparency. Carnality. Spirituality. When a performer executes a scene or a song or a monologue or a dance so uniquely and so passionately and so honestly, that the performer elicits from us, the audience, a collective, visceral, primal response, deep in our bellies, that screams TRUTH. Witnessing great talent makes us laugh, cry, gasp, shiver, and shake our heads in disbelief. Witnessing talent brings us outside the mundane sphere of our everyday human experiences and deeply connects us with all humanity. Talented performers are singular. They are driven. They embody opposites—vulnerability with strength; love with hate; fear with ferocity. They do not imitate other performances, other interpretations or other renditions. They are at once, totally and completely themselves within their characters and performances, and they are also able to reach out beyond the footlights and touch fellow human beings with their souls.
Think for a moment about what sets these young break-out stars from the rest…. Lin-Manuel Miranda. Ben Platt. Laura Dreyfuss. Leslie Odom. Susan Parfour. Annaleigh Ashford. Phillipa Soo; Nina Arianda. Cynthia Erivo. Alex Sharp. Brie Larson. And so many others. They are utterly, completely, uniquely gifted.
UNIQUE TALENT allows certain performers to move other people in a different way than any other performer can, showing audiences something new about what it means to be alive, and giving us a raw insight into human dilemmas as well as whimsical self-awareness about our collective foibles.
As a coach, I have seen UNIQUE TALENT in so many of my gifted coaching students, including my private studio alums Sarah Steele (Columbia University), who took the New York stage by storm in Steve Karam’s SPEECH & DEBATE THE HUMANS on Broadway; as well as in Greg Pierce’s SLOWGIRL at Lincoln Center and who stars in the new primetime series THE GOOD FIGHT; Alyse Alan Louis (NYU Tisch BFA), a sought after actor and musical theater performer who is currently appearing in the Broadway musical AMELIE; and Victoria Janicki (Rutgers BFA), slight of stature but with enormous passion which was accepted to every single acting program she auditioned for, and recently joined the acting company at the famed Guthrie Theatre. I have also seen UNIQUE TALENT in my male private coaching alums, including Cole Doman, who while attending Roosevelt’s Chicago College of the Performing Arts MT BFA program, was “discovered” by several windy city theater companies; picked up by celebrated agents; named one of the ten most promising actors on the Chicago scene; and played the title role in the independent featured film HENRY GAMBLE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY, a celebrated LGBT film that garnished Cole and the film many awards; and Lee Slobotkin (CCM MT BFA) who joined the national tour of WICKED as Boq; just appeared in the hysterical solo show BUYER AND SELLAR, who will soon be joining the Broadway cast of THE BOOK OF MORMON. And the list goes on and on!
But as all of my students and coaching alums will tell you, TALENT IS NOT ENOUGH.
Talent, as I have seen it in my gifted students, is a cluster of innate abilities, yes… an affinity for truth; a natural ability to radiate inner life; astonishing instincts; and a supple, uniquely expressive body, face and voice. These things are wonderful. But they are NOTHING without sustained, passionate, committed, hard work, as well as a commitment to developing ever keener skills, instincts and understanding of plays and roles; the ability to endure challenges and adversity; the courage to develop singular, vibrant characterizations that do not fall into a stereotype; the ability to work cooperatively with other artists. So, innate skills must be accompanied by dogged, constant effort. This combination of innate and learned abilities, constantly working with and off of one another, gives aspiring actors the best opportunity to achieve success in auditions, and both on and off the stage.
As an actor, coach and acting teacher myself, I hear all the time that talent “can’t be taught.” I’m of two minds about this. Yes, there are certain human beings who have ridiculously amazing innate abilities that other humans do not possess and seem not to have to work at all to achieve superlative work. However, for the rest of us mere humans, the other 99.999999% of aspiring performers, our innate abilities are NOTHING without hard work, passion, curiosity, persistence and resilience.
My next blog will examine the topic of how to select a GREAT PRIVATE ACTING & AUDITION COACH, an indispensable tool for developing your talent. Until then, keep working and developing your talent! In closing, here are some inspiring and insightful quotes that great artists and teachers have said about acting talent.
“An actor has to burn inside with an outer ease.” —famed actor and acting teacher, the late Michael Chekhov
“The actor is an athlete of the heart.”—famed actor, writer, and director, the late Antonin Artaud
“Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.”—famed acting teacher, the late Sanford Meisner
“Of course, if you have thought up to now that an actor relies merely on inspiration you will have to change your mind. Talent without work is nothing more than raw unfinished material. When an actor is completely absorbed by some profoundly moving objective so that he throws his whole being passionately into its execution, he reaches a state we call inspiration.”—Constantin Stanislavski
“Actors should arouse a sense of wonder because of their ability to exceed what the spectators can envision ever being able to do.”—famed Polish director and teacher, the late Jerzy Grotowski
“It’s not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent. Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don’t be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.” —famed actor and acting teacher, the late Stella Adler
“Seventy-five per cent of great art is hard work only about twenty-five per cent is great talent. A great actor is independent of the poet because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.”—famed acting teacher and creator of THE METHOD, Lee Strasberg
“The best acting is instinctive. It’s not intellectual, it’s not mechanical, it’s instinctive.”—actor Craig McDonald
LISBETH BARTLETT is a private acting coach with over 25 years of experience as a professional actor, acting teacher, and writer. She currently works out of her private studio in historic downtown Philadelphia and via Skype across the country and abroad. More about her and her services at her website, LisbethBartlett.com.
Image credit: Allef Vinicius on Unsplash
