Audition Doctor Lessons – Tackling the Bard and More
While Adrian Lester has been getting rave reviews in Othello at the National, it seems that someone else in the public eye is also looking to tackle one of the greatest roles in British theatrical history. Mike Tyson has announced that he is temporarily foregoing his main preoccupations of boxing, raping and cannibalism to try his hand at Othello – or in his words “that black guy”. He articulately predicts that the experience will be simply “awesome”.
“My career as an actor has blossomed,” he said. “I never considered myself a comedian or actor, even though I was in movies and shows helping out friends … a lot of my friends are actors and directors and they say: ‘Mike, we need you to concentrate and take it seriously.’ They say my skills are horrible, but I have the natural timings for it. I am working on my skills.”
Mike’s friends are right. Even though you have all the natural timing in the world, skills need to be sharpened and developed if you want to be taken seriously as an actor. Appearing in Passion Play, Zoe Wanamaker says that returning to the West End is “nerve-racking”; the hardest part is the challenge of trying to attain perfection for six nights a week and two matinees. “You want people to love you and think you’re marvellous and that kind of stuff.”
But the audience can only think you’re marvellous if they trust in your artistic abilities and if you, as an actor, are confident in your proficiency. Drama school is where you acquire the technique which will allow you to begin to master the craft. Although some actors who haven’t been to drama school say that not going has given them the gift of childish amateurism, the verbal, physical and emotional dexterity that actors practice seemingly effortlessly onstage is, in reality, the result of in-depth professional training. Audition Doctor sessions are invaluable in that they give you concentrated blocks of time to focus just on you. Whether you have problems with accessing a particular emotion or are unsure of the emotional journey of the character, Audition Doctor allows you to tackle your own specific queries.
Aside from helping people with public speaking and drama school applicants, Audition Doctor also works with professional actors for auditions. Carey Mulligan spoke about her “crazy” audition for The Great Gatsby in The Telegraph – “It was in a loft somewhere in New York and usually auditions are just a camera, you and the casting director, or whatever. This was at least three cameras, one 3-D camera, one guy walking around with a camera and Baz had a hand-held one. Then there were were two photographers taking pictures of the whole process.”
Auditions can be nerve-wracking and unpredictable which is why coming to Audition Doctor will ensure that you enter the audition space feeling as calm and clear-headed as you can possibly be in the circumstances. As a result, you will not squander your audition no matter how many cameras and eyes are focused on you.
