by Bel | Jun 3, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
The Stage asked Maria Friedman to give advice on auditioning: “Preparation, preparation, preparation. Bring yourself, not someone else, to every audition- you can’t hide you, so get to know yourself and what it is you have to offer; and know that is your three minutes – so don’t allow something else to dominate it, whether it’s your fear, or travel on the train – and use them. Come in and enjoy yourself and do the performing you wanted to do all your life.”
Aside from the depth of preparation that each actor achieves at Audition Doctor – something that is difficult to achieve alone – Audition Doctor’s popularity lies in the fact that work is only done on speeches that enhance your particular ingenuity, individuality and boldness. Audition Doctor sessions, particularly for drama school applicants, are as much about rehearsing monologues as figuring out the kind of actor you are, working out your strengths and weaknesses and finding it within yourself to identify with a spectrum of roles.
Similarly to the work done Audition Doctor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman said: “The first thing I looked at was how were they similar to me and how were they different to me. I had to cover those bases…so I could create this person who was not living my life but living someone else’s life.”
The best speeches to work on are those that provoke an expansion of empathy or understanding.
Benedict Cumberbatch said: “As an actor you have to find a level of empathy and understanding of your character and I think to carve out anything that’s two-dimensional, whether a character is thumbs up or thumbs down, I find that limiting…I want to find out the three-dimensionality, what motivates them, what’s human about them. That’s not to soften the edges at all, that’s purely because it’s near to a human experience so that there’s some common ground for audience to understand the character’s motivation because then it isn’t something that’s ostracised from us, something that’s telling us how to feel and think. I personally get bored watching that type of work and bored doing that type of work.”
The work that actors undertake at Audition Doctor forces them to go beyond the parameters of their perceived capabilities. Imagination and craft are exercised and pushed to places which offer up a whole, truthful and bold performance.
Lisa Dwan spoke in the Guardian about her role in Beckett’s Not I : “Do you know what’s so gorgeous about this role? I’m not a woman, I’m a consciousness. It’s stretched me intellectually, emotionally. To get out of my blonde hair and body and be this thing, I can’t explain the gift.”
Roles that allow actors to experience this are few and far between, however, taking the time to choose the speech that gives you the opportunity to challenge yourself is essential. Once chosen, Audition Doctor sessions encourages actors and drama school applicants to get out of themselves and authentically live out the role.
by Bel | May 27, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
In an interview for The Stage, Samuel Barnett spoke of his experience playing Posner in The History Boys at the National: “…it was in that role I started to really learn my craft. Drama school is amazing, it teaches you so much about how the industry works, but it’s the work itself which teaches you your craft: timing and delivery and subtlety.”
Aside from drama school applicants, a large number of Audition Doctor’s students are professional actors who want to continuously better their craft between as well as on jobs. The appetite for improvement and readiness to be challenged is what characterises all Audition Doctor students. However, many find that the sessions are about acting less and refraining from doing more than is necessary.
Robert De Niro said in an interview: “It’s simpler than you think. It’s very hard for many actors and I get caught up in it myself, where you think you have to do more, do something, you don’t have to do anything, nothing and you’re better off and it’ll work.
[It’s like] the way people are in life, they don’t do anything. You know, I’m talking to you and I’m looking at your expression and you could’ve been told that something terrible happened to your family and you’re still going to have the same look on your face. That allows the audience to read into it rather than telling them what they should feel…Sometimes you don’t have to spin it or interpret it, you just have to do it and it’ll take care of itself.”
Audition Doctor sessions are useful in paring down whatever you’re working on to the simple truth without ridding the performance itself of nuance and complexity.
Barnett went onto say how different spaces have affected his performances. “[The National] can be a tricky space in terms of making contact with the audience.” He feels as if he’s done his best work in spaces such as the old Bush Theatre. “I adore those small intimate spaces where you really do feel like you can look people in the eye. It is a different kind of technique, I think. You can give what is a very televisual performance, people can see every flick of your eyes. In the Olivier, it’s not that you need to be bigger in your performance, but perhaps more driven and more intense – though I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules.”
The advantage of Audition Doctor is that the interpretation you come to perform can be modulated to any space. Furthermore, having a professional who can make you aware of how you can inhabit and command a space puts you at a distinct advantage at auditions.
The work done at Audition Doctor pushes students to make more daring choices and to challenge themselves to tackle characters that don’t fall into their safe zone. However, the advantage that Audition Doctor’s students have is that Tilly encourages them to enhance their own particular qualities and singularities in such roles. This echoes Meryl Streep’s response to people asking why she chose to play characters seemingly so different from her:
“Well, why did God invent imagination? Should I have played women from central New Jersey all my life? The people I have played in movies and in the theatre have all felt like me to me.”
by Bel | May 20, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
In his new book, Year of the Fat Knight, Anthony Sher recounts his experience playing Falstaff in the RSC’s production of Henry IV. In an extract printed in the Guardian, Sher wrote:
“To an actor, dialogue is like food. You hold it in your mouth, you taste it. If it’s good dialogue the taste will be distinctive. If it’s Shakespeare dialogue, the taste will be Michelin-starred. If you’re learning lines before rehearsals, you have to learn in neutral, in a way that won’t cut off the creative choices that will happen when the director and other actors are involved. So I’m speaking Falstaff in my own voice, I’m not attempting any characterisation.”
For both professional actors and drama school applicants, the frequency and intensity of the sessions mean that lines are generally learnt through a kind of organic osmosis. However, professional actors have found that the intense characterisation that is undertaken at Audition Doctor – work that has often landed them the job – is the characterisation that is pushed even further in the professional rehearsal room.
Perversely, the depth of research and work on a character that is explored at Audition Doctor, however, never leads students to become rigidly fixated on one interpretation. The extensive knowledge of their character means they are aware of the myriad of artistic choices that they have chosen not to take. Consequently, in an audition room, students are always flexible and open to bold experimentation.
The process by which a student reaches an understanding of a character is highly individual and Audition Doctor has no prescribed and one-size-fits-all method.
Robert Duvall’s advice to young actors was: “It all begins with listening. I talk you listen, you talk I listen and it goes from there…that’s the journey in an individual scene. Rather than going for the result, let the process take you to the result.” Similarly, the nature of the Audition Doctor process is that the result is often the unexpected. Consequently, audition panels are confronted with an original and exciting interpretation.
In a recent interview, Kevin Spacey spoke about acting as “Putting yourself into someone else’s shoes and trying to plant seeds about what a writer’s ideas are and what they’re trying to say, what they’re trying to express…The only thing that interests me is what scares me. The only thing I’m interested in is what I think I can’t do.”
Audition Doctor sessions are sought after because students invariably enter their auditions with a fearlessness, originality and humanity that marks them out.
In their auditions, the work and commitment that they’ve undertaken with Tilly echoes Maria Freedman’s comment that “The best thing about theatre is that it’s a beautiful hand-out to remind us of each other’s fallibility and frailty and humanity. It’s a ‘Hallo, you know me and I know you’ and it’s done with words…”
by Bel | May 13, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
Following the General Election, much has been written about the fears of playing it safe with regards to programming in an age of belt-tightening and budget cuts. There seems to be a retaliation by many theatres to the idea that another five years of diminishing subsidies means performing safe and unchallenging work.
Elizabeth Newman, incoming artistic director of the Octagon said: “[theatres must be] risk-aware, not risk-averse. The greatest risk we can take is not to take any risks.”
In Sheffield, Daniel Evans staged a Sarah Kane season. Fearing walkouts and actors playing to empty houses, Evans was surprised: “The reaction from our audiences was beyond anything we could have imagined. While there was the odd walkout, the content of the plays prompted not one complaint. In fact, the opposite occurred. People were writing to us, tweeting, blogging, thanking us for the opportunity to see Sarah’s work. Audiences want to see challenging work. They are not afraid. They want to interact as deeply as possible.”
At Audition Doctor, risk is paramount to the working process; it’s a space where you are encouraged to pick a character or a speech that pushes you to the fringes of your artistic ability. Leo Bill, currently appearing in A Light Shining in Buckinghamshire at the National, spoke of the importance of “[exploring] every single corner of that character. That’s all you can do: go everywhere, go to their extremities.”
He also mentioned how he has in the past, taken a job for the sake of working: “I’ve done it and regretted it every time”. While Olivia Poulet also talked in The Stage about the downsides of settling with and the importance of waiting for the parts that challenge her:
“Yes, the money’s not great, and sometimes you’re a bit hand to mouth for a bit, but the challenge of doing a part that is really exciting and fulfilling is just so worth it,” she says of her work in theatre. “Of course you’ve got to make money, but I think as I’ve got older I’m definitely very much about the part and I feel less desperation to just be working for the sake of it.”
In the same vein, particularly with drama school applicants, Audition Doctor encourages students to be patient in their search for the right speech and not to compromise with a speech that doesn’t ignite them. Al Pacino said recently: “I look for that thing that moves you, I don’t know what it is.”
Once the speech is found, Audition Doctor provides a space in which to experiment, discuss and pick apart the script in a way that resembles a collaborative rehearsal process.
At Audition Doctor, like any other rehearsal process, requires an amount of repetition. However, in no way is this monotonous or unimaginative. Pacino went onto say:
“I like repetition. I like the saying “repetition keeps me green”… because there’s this idea that we do performances over and over again and doesn’t that get boring or stale? No, because it’s in the repetition that the creation comes or the expression comes. I was doing Richard once…and there was a court scene and I didn’t understand why I was in it…On the 85th performance of Richard, on my 85th entrance, I understood it.”
At Audition Doctor, the marriage of practice and risk-taking means that students always enter the audition room with a profound understanding of their character’s motives and desires. Consequently, they often land professional jobs and drama school places.
by Bel | May 6, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
Prominent actors such as Julie Walters and Mark Strong have publicly protested the inaccessibility of drama school for those from under-privileged backgrounds. They frequently cite the £9,000 yearly fee as being a prohibitive barrier to pursuing an acting career. The Stage wrote a rebuttal that said “It shows concern, which is welcome, but actually comments like this are not very helpful.”
The increase in tuition fees was not particular to drama schools and while there is a lack of actors from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, The Stage argues that the problem isn’t funding.
“The difficulty seems to be that the training industry is struggling to find ways of getting the message to socio-economically deprived young people that yes, they can train vocationally if they have the talent and potential to benefit. They may belong to families for whom the idea of drama school seems derisively effete. No one locally knows much about professional performing arts training. The press continuously reports well-known actors inaccurately bemoaning the financial impossibility of it. And everyone focuses on actor unemployment. The messages are all negative.”
There is an assumption, especially during our “age of austerity”, that the arts are (to quote Sam West) “an add on” as evidenced by “the double squeeze of Arts Council cuts and local authority cuts.” Consequently, disadvantaged young people shy away from drama school training because they see themselves as acquiring loans and subsequent debt for an industry that is fast shrinking.
Many of Audition Doctor’s students have been successful drama school applicants and are able to fund their training through the audition waivers, free lunches, DaDA grants and bursaries that The Stage writes about. Drama schools understand the obstacles that their students face and have made concerted efforts to ease the financial strain on their students.
The other main contingent of Audition Doctor students are professional actors, many of whom have varied stories about how they entered the profession. Regardless of whether or not they went to/are going to drama school, all of Audition Doctor students approach their work with passion and a determination to unceasingly push their training to the next level. Those that come to Audition Doctor regularly as well as work on their speeches find that they do better at auditions and consequently decrease their chances of unemployment.
Finally, it’s also worth noting that even the best actors have had their doubts when it comes to the validity of their profession. When interviewed by James Lipton for Inside the Actors Studio, Meryl Streep said: “When I was applying to law school and thinking that acting was a stupid way to make a living because it doesn’t do anything in the world, but I think it does, I think there’s a great worth in it. The worth is listening to people who maybe don’t even exist or who are voices in your past and through you, through the work you give them to other people. I think giving voice to characters that have no voice is the great worth of what we do because so much of acting is vanity. I mean, this feels so great to come out here and sit here and have everybody clap but the real thing that makes me feel so good is when I know I’ve said something for a soul, when I’ve presented a soul.”
by Bel | May 2, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
This week, The Stage wrote about how the concerted effort drama schools have made to encourage their actors to self-produce and self-create has paid dividends.
“Traditionally drama schools focused on developing stage skills and getting paid jobs in theatres at the end of it. And for that, the wisdom went, you needed an agent because he or she would work miracles for you in return for a 15% commission on all the work you did. Cynics have described drama school as a one-way ticket to a showcase – and all those brilliant agents hungry to snap up you and your talents.”
However, there has been a sea change with regards to the way drama schools educate their creatives. The difficult reality is that even with a final showcase at a top drama school, “common sense and arithmetic suggest that many of them will not get agents or paid jobs in companies.”
Many actors would strongly identify with Toni Collette’s recent comment: “I think acting arrests me, it keeps me awake. The way people live their lives, the whole psychological labyrinth, is what turns me on, so the job itself feeds me”. Not working and waiting for your agent (if you have one) to ring can be hugely dispiriting. This is why drama schools are pushing students to form their own theatre companies so they can make work for themselves. Mischief Theatre Company is one such company, born out of LAMDA graduates, that recently won an Olivier for The Play that Goes Wrong.
Audition Doctor is another example of being proactive and increasing your chances for professional work. Actors, whether in or out of work, have found regular sessions at Audition Doctor to be an invaluable driving force in pushing their careers in the direction they desire. The continual character exploration and textual analysis mean that whenever an audition arises, Audition Doctor students never feel they are “out of practice” and always have new approaches and ideas to experiment with.
Toni Collette said: “The great luxury of being any kind of artist is that you explore and challenge yourself. You can paint different pictures. You don’t have to draw a cloud every day.” What Audition Doctor fosters is the hunger for the new, fleshing out aspects of character that you have yet to inhabit.
The success of Audition Doctor students, however, lies in Tilly’s ability to draw out aspects of your individuality in the speech. It reflects Michael Sheen’s description of acting as “being like a sound desk, fading sliders up and down on aspects of your personality until you have someone.” The advantage of coming to Audition Doctor is the total focus on you and what you are creating. Many actors have found the one-on-one Audition Doctor sessions to be essential, as they find that they are consequently able to give more back in the collaborative work that they do with their theatre companies or in rehearsals for professional jobs.
Ultimately, those who attend Audition Doctor are there to improve their craft and to create art, which Stanley Tucci defined as “taking whatever is in front of you and making it into something else. To me that is what art is.”
by Bel | Apr 8, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
The Times this week featured an article centred around the current crop of British male acting talent and the evolving face of theatre. Tim Piggot-Smith spoke of how “British theatre has been forced to become leaner, less complacent. “There’s not as much theatre around now which means there’s much more competition for less and less work.” This competition, in turn, raises everybody’s game. The result? A virtuous cycle of effort and ability.”
Mark Strong commented on the difficult nature of vying for the same roles as your peers: “It’s a complicated dynamic, a really odd balance because you form these very, very tight relationships with people. They’re your pals, but then you’re also competing with them for work. There are a lot of us chasing a few jobs.”
The rise of professional actors coming to Audition Doctor is evidence of actors being aware of the need to continuously push through their own creative barriers in order to be real contenders in auditions. Actors who come to Audition Doctor are conscious of the value of relentless practice.
As Helen McCrory said: “I’m aware that I have been very lucky but I have also grafted hard. Acting isn’t something that’s just in you. As with anything in life, you have to learn it, and work at it, and improve yourself all the time.”
James McAvoy also voiced the importance of actors being vulnerable enough to stretch themselves to emotional brinks – something that Audition Doctor students are pushed to do.
“The source of theatre is human sacrifice. The first time we killed someone in front of a crowd to make the gods like us better, that’s where we got our theatre. And I think there’s still an element of that, when it’s frightening and electric, and you’re watching actors who are giving themselves in such a committed way that they are almost sweating blood. And that’s what I always try to do. I’d rather people went out twice a year to see a really good, dangerous piece of theatre in which they were genuinely concerned for the actor on stage, rather than just going to see loads of dead-easy bourgeois f***ing pieces of s***, the dead-easy stuff that gets put on just to sell out quickly.”
Consequently, the speeches that students choose to work on are important. Speeches that give students a chance to commit and sweat blood are the monologues that Audition Doctor urges students to pick. The reason for the success of Audition Doctor’s students is the emotional depths that they plumb. These come as a result of rigorous analysis of both character and play.
Viggo Mortensen recently spoke in the Guardian of his legendary commitment to research when it came to approaching roles: “I just think that the more realistic and specific you are with the details, the more universal the story becomes.”
Audition Doctor students succeed in landing jobs because they give something more in auditions. As a spectator you end up not merely watching a performance but getting the sense of being actively involved in the story.
by Bel | Apr 1, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote in the Stage of the pressure young actors feel to unquestioningly take directors’ decisions as gospel.
“For years, the gratitude I felt for anyone who had given me an actual job, coupled with the embarrassment of disagreeing with them, meant that I simply nodded eagerly when I was handed an abhorrent costume or told to make a ludicrous entrance. I didn’t say anything because it’s not my job. I am ‘just an actor’.
It has taken me too long to learn that if you’re an actor and you disagree with your director, you are allowed to pipe up.…don’t be afraid to challenge things politely. Our job is about storytelling and if you feel like you’re not telling the story in the best way possible then crack on and politely shout about it.”
The originality of interpretation that results from an Audition Doctor session often rests on the creative debate that arises between a student and Tilly. Questioning and experimentation are viewed as essential parts of developing a character. Testing different approaches to a scene and contesting why some of them fail to work as well as others is strongly encouraged. Consequently the work that students end up performing at auditions is always wholly their own. Furthermore, during the discussions that sometimes arise after auditions, Audition Doctor students are unfailingly articulate about why they chose to stick to certain decisions and why they abandoned others.
Audition Doctor’s popularity with professional actors and drama school candidates rests on the experimental nature of the sessions. There is no mono-methodical approach, especially when it comes to Shakespeare. This is an advantage for students because style of delivery is in constant flux. The current trend for performing Shakespeare naturalistically is constantly being challenged.
For example, Maria Aberg said in today’s Guardian:
“I feel like it’s your responsibility as an artist to stop thinking naturalistically…I think that’s the main problem. We think realism and that trips us up especially when it comes to Shakespeare. It’s not realism, it’s not naturalism. It’s a metaphor, the whole thing is metaphor.”
The reason for Audition Doctor’s popularity with trained actors is also down to the fact that drama schools only teach their students so much. As Tom Hardy said in The Times:
“When you go to drama school, you get a certain amount of camera classes but nothing really prepares you for: ‘You’ll now be working with Steven Spielberg’s company and you’ve got to be on this mark’,” he said. “And you go: ‘What’s a mark?’ Though I didn’t say that. I said: ‘Yeah, course I’ll be on my mark.’ Until somebody said: ‘You’re not hitting your mark […] it’s this thing on the floor.’
“You never admit you don’t know something, do you? Not when you start out, that’s a sign of weakness. Only that’s what keeps you stupid. Make mistakes: that’s when you f***ing learn.”
Audition Doctor is the place where students make mistakes, get better and continue to challenge and develop the tools that drama school equipped them with.
by Bel | Mar 18, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
In an interview for The Stage, Guildhall acting teacher Ken Rea spoke of the qualities that certain actors possessed that marked them out separately from the swathes of actors he has trained.
“They’re unafraid of danger,” he says, mentioning Antony Sher with whom he worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company before Sher was famous. “He was by far the bravest risk-taker in the rehearsal room,” recalls Rea. “It’s the freedom to be unpredictable and spontaneous within the form that marks out people like him. When I see actors I trained working, and when I visit them backstage afterwards, they often ask ‘Ken, was I dangerous?’ because it’s a key element.”
For both professional actors and drama school applicants, risk is one of the main reasons to come to Audition Doctor. The work undertaken at Audition Doctor is unfailingly original as texts are explored through the prism of your experience and your vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the speed of progression rests heavily on your openness to risk.
Particularly with Shakespeare, the likelihood that a panel has heard your speech before is high. However, the intensity of research and experimentation at Audition Doctor means that the complexity of your character’s psychological process is palpable even for the short duration of a monologue. Audition Doctor students are offered recalls because they show the potential and capability for expansive emotional and intellectual inquiry.
Rea also mentioned the necessity of enthusiasm in rehearsal: “Just as one negative nay-sayer in a rehearsal room can drag everyone down so, conversely, an energetic enthusiast can raise the level of everyone’s work.”
Audition Doctor’s popularity with actors is also down to the passion that characterises the lessons. They are never one-sided lectures but a collective rigorous exploration that ensures character decisions are never generalised and above all, yours.
Even when they’re not auditioning for specific roles, actors come to Audition Doctor to continue to test their psychological elasticity and take risks in parts that perhaps they would have less chance to be cast in.
Maxine Peake’s Hamlet is an example of this. Peake said: “I mentioned it in jest [ to director Sarah Frankcom] at first. I felt why, as a woman, can’t I do it? I had always been attracted to it because there aren’t many female warrior roles. Hamlet is fearless.”
The encouragement and safety that have come to define Audition Doctor sessions are why it has become the place where actors feel fearless and able to gamble with the text as well as their emotions.
Television and film actors increasingly come to Audition Doctor because the sessions are very much like the rehearsal process for a play.
Ruth Wilson in the Guardian: “I come from theatre and I feel like I have to go back to it every few years because it’s like nourishment for the soul. And, as an actor, it’s the place you have most control, no one cuts or edits you and you get to tell the story each night. It always boosts my confidence and my choices in the film and TV work I do after that. I tend to make bolder and more interesting choices after I’ve done theatre.”
The freedom of expression and discovery that Audition Doctor sessions instil mean that actors from all mediums have come to view it as an invaluable part of career improvement.
by Bel | Mar 10, 2015 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
In an interview for BAFTA, Michael Shannon said: “The main thing an actor needs is a great script because you can be the greatest actor in the world but if you don’t have a good script you’re just a mime.”
Audition Doctor’s popularity with both professional actors and drama school candidates lies in both originality of direction and the selective choosing of speeches. The speeches that students pick have a significant bearing on the kind of impression they will have on the panel. A speech can be the vehicle through which actors can showcase their versatility and complexity of emotional intellect while simultaneously hiding whatever weaknesses every actor has. There is no one-size-fits-all speech and the initial stages of Audition Doctor sessions centre around finding the one that feels most suited to you. This can take a couple of sessions, however, the importance of putting aside the time to do so cannot be underestimated.
John Hurt described the sensation when playing Romeo: “I remember playing to complete silence when talking about death and realising that the words I was speaking were so powerful and extraordinary that I could understand Michael Bryant saying “I never want to do anything outside the National Theatre ever again because I only ever want to deal with fantastic writing.” I kind of understood that onstage.”
While actors at Audition Doctor are directed and creatively pushed, an actor’s primal connection to the text cannot be forced. Juliette Binoche spoke of the relationship between actor and director in last week’s Guardian: “I’ve never seen a director deciding for you how the character is. You can discuss things, you can guide somebody in a direction but there’s nothing imposed. Never. It’s too precious. It has to come in a very mysterious way because those words were written a long time ago and the connection you have to have to them belongs to you in a sacred place.”
Whether it is a text for screen or stage, Audition Doctor’s work on character, motivation and emotion is the same. While a huge amount of work is of course done by the actor, Audition Doctor provides a space where this incredibly personal and “mysterious” process is nurtured into fruition.
Binoche spoke of her part as an ageing actress in Olivier Assayas’ soon to be released film The Clouds of Sils Maria: “You know when my character is saying, ‘I don’t want to rehearse because otherwise all the spontaneity is gone…’ this is bull—t. Because you work a lot and then you find the spontaneity. This for me is somebody who doesn’t know about acting, but at the same time [Assayas] doesn’t need to know, it’s fine. It’s his fantasy about actors.”
Audition Doctor sessions are like rehearsals. Unpicking the same speech over and over again can feel repetitious but it is only through in-depth excavation that originality and the spontaneity that Binoche speaks of is achieved.
The hard graft that actors go through at Audition Doctor means their performance at auditions are unforced and instinctive which is why they often go onto landing the job.
The Stage asked Maria Friedman to give advice on auditioning: “Preparation, preparation, preparation. Bring yourself, not someone else, to every audition- you can’t hide you, so get to know yourself and what it is you have to offer; and know that is your three minutes – so don’t allow something else to dominate it, whether it’s your fear, or travel on the train – and use them. Come in and enjoy yourself and do the performing you wanted to do all your life.”
