Top 4 Secrets to Booking Auditions!

Learn the Top 4 Secrets to Booking Auditions!

At any audition, the casting directors await you and the door separating you can often be seen as a barricade. In reality, you should view it as a gateway and treat it as though it is your stage. Whether it’s a pre-read for an associate or a full-blown director/producer callback session, this is your time, your experience. This is your opportunity to do exceptional work.

Often actors, in every stage of career and life, think they should have gotten a part and become frustrated when they learn that a famous name booked it instead. Though the economics of the industry have changed, they often rely on a star to make content bankable. Nothing much you can do about this, but continue to train and be the best because cream always rises to the top.

Claire Chubbuck from Ivana Chubbuck Youth shares the top 4 secrets to booking auditions:

1. Never try to please what you think “they” want. After all, people pleasers never win in any venue.  Make sense of the character’s journey as your journey.   In fact, don’t even think of it as a character, thinking of your role as an alternate person creates a degree of separation in the playing of it. Therefore, making the audience aware they are watching a performance. The best acting should make the audience feel that they are watching a documentary and feel included into a secret world. Being a part of a shared secret always makes people feel special. This affects not only the audience in this way, but the other people you work with as well.

2. Consider that there are certain primal constants that all human beings have. We are driven by the instinct to survive, both emotionally and physically. This is true of everyone. However, how we manifest our needs is what makes us all quite unique. This is what they want to see: Your individuality brought to the role, and not a “cookie-cutter” version.

3. Be confident in your choices! Never, after you have done a reading for a CD, look at that person and imply with that look, “That sucked.”   They may have liked your reading!  I’ve seen mediocre actors get work because they, themselves, thought they were great.

4. One must understand how to break down a script so as to have focus, depth and colors in the audition that the other young actors will not have. Without study an actor can only rely on instinct, and that’s usually not enough to book a role.  At Ivana Chubbuck Youth, we use the Chubbuck Technique to break down scripts and add dimension and truth to that role. Casting directors, Directors and producers don’t want an actor of any age to perform the character, but rather to BE the character. Especially when it comes to youth, one must be skilled technically to book a role in this highly competitive world.