Lisbeth Bartlett Private Coaching Studio BLOG SERIES: How to Succeed at BA, BFA, MFA, Conservatory and Professional Theater, Film, and Television Auditions. In my first blog, I explored the concept of TALENT. In this blog, I examine auditions, particularly monologue auditions.
Part Two: What is an audition? What is a monologue? How do I choose the best monologue for a particular audition?
What exactly is an audition?! According to the dictionary, an audition is a “trial hearing” given to a singer, actor, dancer, musician or other performer to test suitability for employment, professional training or competition.
My speciality as a private acting coach is working one-on-one with aspiring actors to prepare for these “trial hearings” to train them to apply the acting skills they have mastered in their training to succeed at various kinds of auditions, including school, college, and graduate school, and professional auditions for theater, film, and television, as well as for scholarship and award competitions.
What do auditions entail?
Auditions may ask for monologues (explained in this blog) as well as “sides” (various portions of scenes, explained in future blogs), song cuts, and dance combinations taught in group dance calls. They may also include group acting exercises, warm-ups, theater games and improvisations. Many auditions also require a personal interview either before or after an audition. Auditions can include being directed by a judge to change or alter their performance. Relish this. It is always a good sign when a judge or judges engage an actor in creative work at an audition (explained in future blogs).
Actors also may be asked to attend a “callback” audition for either admission to acting programs, or roles in professional theater, film, and television. (explained in future blogs)
What is a monologue?
Monologues are a staple of audition processes. As a private acting coach, I specialize in helping aspiring actors choose, rehearse and perform age-appropriate and exciting comic and dramatic monologues that are not overused.
SO… what exactly is a monologue? A monologue is a solo passage from a published and/or professionally produced play in which a single character speaks alone, either to one or more other characters in a scene, or to the audience (in the case of a soliloquy from Shakespeare). Many auditions ask for two or more contrasting monologues, usually between 1-2 minutes in length, one comedic and one dramatic. Sometimes, auditors want to see two contrasting characters, one from a contemporary play (example: Annie Baker) and one from a classical verse play (example: Shakespeare).
Every aspiring and professional actor should have several monologues on hand, both contemporary and classical, comic and dramatic.
Should monologues be age appropriate?
YES! Auditioners should choose characters and monologues that are similar to themselves in age and type. As exciting as it can be to perform iconic Shakespearean roles such as Shylock, Macbeth, King Lear, Brutus, or Claudius, these are not roles applicants will be playing in professional theater until they are a few decades older. It is better to pick one of the many, many Shakespeare characters in your relative age range, taking into account your uniqueness as a person and actor.
In my private coaching studio, I work with many, many students applying for BFA programs. Some of them can realistically play as young as 12; others are more mature looking and can tackle roles in their mid-twenties. With an expert acting coach, the perfect material for YOU and only you can be found.
Where do I find great monologues?
The best place to find great monologues is by reading great plays. Seeing live productions of plays is also tremendously helpful in discovering plays and roles. GO SEE AND SUPPORT LIVE THEATER!
Go to libraries or bookstores well stocked with plays, and where the staff is knowledgeable and can make great recommendations. The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center is a great resource, and houses the “Theatre on Film and Tape Archive” so you can research plays by watching celebrated Broadway and regional productions on tape. As a young actor in New York, I was thrilled to have the first Broadway show I appeared in filmed for the Lincoln Center Archive.
Some celebrated theater bookstores around the country that are great resources for finding plays, roles, and monologues include DRAMA BOOK SHOP, and THE STRAND in New York; TRELLIS in Chicago; SAMUEL FRENCH, SKYLIGHT and THE LAST BOOKSTORE in Hollywood; And THE AMERICAN BACKSTAGE in Alexandria, VA. Outside Washington; there may also be one in the city you live in, especially near a college that has a sizeable Theater program. Here in Philadelphia, it is great to comb through college bookstores and used bookstores near Temple, University of the Arts, UPENN and others that have respected acting programs.
Other fabulous script sources can be found online. Some of them include Playscripts.com, Dramatists.com, and SamuelFrench.com. Some of these websites will even give you free samples to read from plays so you can decide whether a particular play is worth purchasing to find monologues.
Also, keep abreast of the major theater news in the USA and abroad. Read as many new play production feature articles and reviews as you can, in your local news or in Arts sections of news sources in major cities such as New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, London, and many others. PLAYBILL and BACKSTAGE often feature new play information as well.
Subscribe to AMERICAN THEATRE magazine, which publishes complete new play scripts in almost every issue. The student subscription rate is only $25.00 and worth every penny.
What are the worst places to look for monologues?
In my opinion, the worst place to find monologues is in published monologue books. First of all, if you decide to use a monologue from a monologue book, it will surely to be overused. Secondly, you will be taking the monologue out of context from the play it comes from. Judges at auditions want actors to be well versed in entire plays, not just a clipped monologues from a play with no understanding of the characters, given circumstances, plot and theme of the entire play.
Given that many monologues are overused, search for and pay attention to the many lists of overdone monologues that appear online or at specific acting program admissions websites. You would hate to find out the monologue you are performing for your top acting program is one they suggest NOT doing!
Believe it or not, there are private acting coaches that regularly hand actors monologues from plays without requiring actors to understand, explore or even read entire plays. This is an enormous mistake and signals that you may have picked a bad acting coach.
Why is finding monologues that are NOT OVERUSED so important?
It is of the utmost importance that auditioning actors search for monologues that they can “own” and relish performing without the worry that they might be performing a monologue that a dozen other auditioning actors will be performing for the same judges on the same day. As a private acting coach, it always thrills me to hear from my students that judges complimented them on their monologues choices as unique and exciting. Often, judges will exclaim, “Wow! I’ve never heard that monologue before! What play is it from?”
In terms of Shakespeare, there are hidden gems in the canon of 37 plays. There is no need for everyone to perform overdone iconic monologues from, for example, ROMEO & JULIET, HAMLET, AS YOU LIKE IT, or MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. Judges appreciate it when applicants look deeper into the 37 plays to find a juicy character and monologue to perform. All the plays can be found at www.playshakespeare.com.
Do some Acting Programs assign monologues that might be overdone?
There are indeed some acting programs that welcome and even encourage using monologues that are overdone. Some programs even assign a few different iconic monologues for actors to choose from but these programs are few and far between. Many of them are high-level classical conservatories that require Shakespeare both in the USA and in the UK.
What if I have fallen in love with a monologue that is listed as OVERDONE and desperately want to perform it?
After stressing that overdone monologues should be avoided, there are certainly exceptions to this rule. When a coaching student comes to me convinced that he or she MUST choose and perform a particular overdone audition monologue, I go through my library to find similarly great but less well-known characters and monologues that are also appropriate for that student. I ask them to explore these other roles and monologues before making a final choice. If he or she is still madly in love with this overdone monologue after reading other plays, then we will talk about it.
The truth is that many overdone monologues are overdone for a reason; they are so popular and beautifully written that many students have read them or have seen them performed. Examples of overdone monologues/plays may include anything written by Christopher Durang, Kenneth Lonergan, Theresa Rebeck, Neil Labute, David Mamet, Neil Simon, Nicky Silver, Wendy Wasserstein and others… all wonderful writers, but too often overrepresented at auditions. This may be disappointing to actors but it is important to remember that as much as they love a particular monologue, if it has been performed countless times at auditions, judges might be sick of hearing them over and over and over again. This is particularly true of comic monologues; imagine being told the same joke over and over and over again on the same day by different people. Even if the tenth person tells it well, the joke is not so funny the tenth time.
If an actor decides, after a tremendous amount of exploration, to perform an “overdone” monologue, they must be aware of how often those monologues are done and feel so strongly about the character and the monologue they are performing that they are certain that even if a dozen other auditioners use that same monologue at the same audition on the same day, their performance of the monologue will be so fantastic it will be light years beyond any other performance!
Follow these guidelines on choosing monologues and finding a great private acting coach, and you’ll be on your way to grasping the brass ring of success!
In my next blog, I will be examining the different kinds of preliminary and callback auditions you might encounter at school, college, graduate school, conservatory, and professional auditions!
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.
Photo by Janko Ferlic on Unsplash
