VA Tips! Let’s talk auditions.

I see a lot of VAs on my TL saying they agonize over HOW to read auditions, re-recording individual lines, etc...

Now, there may be some CDs who care about if you can break down and understand the scene, but when I cast, it’s not crucial at all.

What I’m listening for is:

1) Is their diction good?
2) Can they act?
3) Is this the voice I need for this character?

Even if you interpret the scene completely wrong and give me something off the wall, as long as I’m getting a sense of your chops, I don’t care.

As a director, I know that once we get to the booth, I can direct you to understand the scene and what’s actually going on. I just need the audition to hear if you can provide the voice I want, and if your general acting skill and first instinct reads without a director are good.

But, if you tweak and tweak and tweak your reads to perceived perfection before sending in your audition, you may actually be doing yourself a disservice, because you’re NOT presenting the product you’ll actually give me once you step into the booth and start cold-reading.

Which may frustrate both of us. So try rattling off your first read next time and see if you can make peace with it. If not, practicing your cold-reading skills can really help! And of course, I’m not saying don’t pre-read audition scripts or go for a take two—

But rather, don’t kill yourself if you think you said Line 5 “wrong” for the scene. In the grand scheme of things, it won’t ruin an audition that is providing the right voice & a general sense of good acting skills. CDs can see past small mistakes, they’re doing big picture work.