In Backstage, Timothy Simons (who plays Jonah Ryan in Veep) spoke about the importance of approaching an audition from a personal perspective, rather than the perceived perspective of those on the other side of the table. “You don’t want to go in trying to force yourself into some archetype that has been thought up by a director and translated by a casting director,” he said. “If you have a particular read on it, go in with your point of view, because it doesn’t make sense trying to go in with somebody else’s point of view.”
Many of Audition Doctor’s students come to work on Shakespeare speeches. Students often come with idea on how to “act” Shakespeare; performances are often more declamatory and not approached in the same way as they would a modern speech. In their initial Audition Doctor sessions, they often begin by having no clear cut vision of their character’s emotional journey. However, as the sessions progress, students find that they cease to copy the performances of other actors that they may have seen, and instead, come to develop something truly original and wholly their own.
This is what audition panels are looking for and Audition Doctor has helped countless actors reach this by eliminating all extraneous and unhelpful preconceived notions on acting Shakespeare. Students are encouraged to approach the text with the aim of creating a truthful human being as opposed to “ A Shakespeare character”.
Audition Doctor has no one size fits all approach and each student benefits from different kinds of advice and practical exercises. What they all need and receive at Audition Doctor, however, is the gift of guided preparation.
When preparing for her role in “Two Days, One Night”, Marion Cotillard worked extensively on her character’s backstory. She said: “I wrote her life before. I wrote scenes I would use later when I needed some support to be able to burst into tears out of nowhere. I needed to build a structure of stories that I could use when I needed to reach this or that emotion.”
Audition Doctor students have done similar exercises. The reason why most students sign up for at least several sessions is because many find that their abilities and subsequently, their confidence, progress significantly once they have had the time with Tilly to identify which methods of approach works best for them.
Through working with Audition Doctor, students routinely report how much their confidence improves. Last week, Eddie Redmayne said in The Telegraph: “…if you begin to believe in yourself too much then you can’t access the fragility of the characters you have to play and you are not listening enough to play them.”
At Audition Doctor, students always gain the right kind of confidence – the assurance that grows through the results of the rigorous work that is achieved in the sessions, as opposed to any kind of mistaken self-belief.
Students rate Audition Doctor so highly because they also remain open to vulnerability, astute to direction and unafraid of making unconventional artistic choices.
