1. The work itself is fleeting.

There’s always a honeymoon period that’s filled with misconceptions in any fledgling career. Time spent idealising the future of that career with montages glorifying your passionate work ethic. Unfortunately, acting is even less likely to follow this vision than a more linear path. There are many occupations that are just as all-consuming as acting, but that run in a more linear manner where the work that you put in equals the achievement that you get out of it.

Acting is the epitome of a codependent relationship. It’s the healthy kind, where the collaboration between two parties makes both the stronger for their interaction, an ecosystem, if you will. Not even touching on the international scale of operations in film, and sticking with the example of the more localised process of theatre, there are pressures involved in casting, your director’s vision, your fellow actors, all of the collaboration involved that precedes you being given the opportunity to actually do some acting. Even in a cabaret or solo show, putting aside all of the collaborative efforts and going straight to the source, you need to rely on audience attendance if you want that show to count as a career success. It’s an exhausting list.

This is the decidedly unartistic definition of a career, which demands that you make money out of your pursuits. It is a tough industry in which most of your work will never see the light of day, and you’ll rely on a whole heap of different cards being drawn in precisely the right order before you can start acting in this career sense of the word. If you are someone who needs to be constantly occupied or busied with the work that you rely on to pay your rent, then pick up a lucrative hobby, or consider another channel through which to support your passions. Maybe you can dive further into the passion that has drawn you this far along the acting route. Is it acting itself that you are passionate about, or is it the human connection and expression that you feel can’t be achieved in any other medium than theatre or film? Is it the importance of the film industry in expanding awareness and representation globally? Are you drawn to becoming an actor/producer, or actor/director, or actor/lighting designer? It’s worth considering a bunch of different avenues that compliment your acting pursuits.

If no related activities appeal to you, you might want to reconsider your motives for acting. The likelihood of a career in which you can engage in acting in isolation is precisely zero. Find the route of your passions and soon, the acting itself will become less mysterious and cruel, and simply another form with which to channel that higher purpose you’ve chosen to follow throughout your life.

2. There is no concept of a regular life.

If there’s a white picket fence and 2.5 kids in your future, then pursuing acting as a career is not a particularly good idea. Coming from a conservative viewpoint of raising said white picket fence family in a white picket fence way, you will need to provide funds for all sorts of adult things for yourself, and the humans that you brought into this world. A steady income is going to be essential if you want to pay for mortgages, insurance, school fees, food, clothing, transport – the list goes on. If you have a non-negotiable vision of future stability, then you have to choose between the instability of an acting career, and the stability of a typical, regular life.

A typical acting career is one where nothing is guaranteed, and every job brings a new adventure. This is one of the major drawcards for many aspiring actors. Unfortunately, this doesn’t jive with building a healthy, well rounded life outside of acting. You’re required to drop everything at the very whiff of a potential opportunity, and while you may thrive on this sort of devotion to your craft, the little humans that depend on you will not.

This is all spoken from an idealised white-picket-fence scenario. There are plenty of actors who make it work, and they are gods among men. We’re talking about the 99% of actors here, by the way. We see Hollywood superstars having kids all the time, right? A few points to consider: Many of them have oodles of money to throw at education, nannies, chefs, travel expenses for their kids to visit them on set, and many of those children have become celebrities themselves. In the judgement free zone of Stagemilk, this is neither a positive or a negative upbringing, but it is up to you as to whether that is an ideal lifestyle in your mind. The other point regarding the 1%, is that many of them are having children much later in life, and you would still not regard their lifestyle as ‘settled down’. Their career came first, always.

It is a rough path, but there are so many advantages to raising children in alternative environments. The crux of the matter is, if you are concerned about the regularity and pay bracket of your pay check while weighing up potential career paths, then acting is off the cards. you can make it work, sure, but the sacrifices are going to be higher than the monetary compensation. This is the time when you need to get real with your expectations and accept your gut feelings. If family, home, or stability are a priority, and your career comes second, then acting should be considered as a hobby instead of a career. You can always be an authentic, successful and passionate actor on the side of your main source of income.

3. You will become part of a world that will change your life.

The entertainment industry can be a harsh mistress, but the camaraderie that is built upon these shaky foundations is incomparable to anything else. You will meet the most inspiring people, the most visionary souls, and you will get to work with people who are so selfless and pure, dedicated to a lifetime of bringing emotion and meaning into the world. These people will hold your hand through some harrowing shit. They’ll help you become a better artist, and by virtue of this, a better person. Sure, there’s the shills and the corporate types, those who seem hell-bent on giving the people what they want, but they are quickly picked out and very rarely are you alone in your opinion of the vultures of the art form.

There is an endless supply of mutual respect and support, which is why the industry is built on networking. It may seem unfair and impenetrable at times, but the prevailing reason for the insular community is to keep it safe, and maintain a sort of quality control for the soul. There is an obsessive quality to anyone pursuing a career in the arts, and this leads to encyclopaedic knowledge in their area of interest. By maintaining this clique, the movers and shakers of the industry can keep a finger on the pulse of production, direction and content. There’s a reason why social justice often begins to take flight from within the entertainment industry. By producing plays and films that address issues that are close to the artist’s heart, they gain traction and begin to spread through the global consciousness. The people in this industry care deeply about the product they create, and when a like-minded artist joins the fold, it’s like finding a diamond amongst the coal. If you are that diamond, you’ll never meet a more welcoming and selfless set of kindred spirits.

Hopefully this article has illuminated a few important considerations for what to expect as a prospective actor. There are so many nuanced differences between career trajectories that it can be hard to find anything other than the response of ‘it depends’. These are the three questions that I find elicit a knee-jerk response in those who want to dip their toes in. Usually, the go-to advice that I find the most eye-opening is “If you can see yourself doing absolutely anything else, then go and do that instead.” If you draw a blank on that question, then welcome to the fold. You will never work harder at anything in your life, and every second of it will be worth the fight.

The post Things to Consider Before you Begin your Acting Career appeared first on StageMilk.

First thing’s first, don’t stress out. Acting is life, right? You are allowed to pause. Your thoughts are allowed to be organic. Relaxing will let you reset, recompose, and soldier on within a split second. Meanwhile, The Blank will throw a tantrum. The Blank wants you to notice it. Do not, under any circumstances, give The Blank what it wants. It is a toddler throwing a hissy fit in a supermarket, and nothing bad will happen if you calmly observe until it blows over.

A bit of a harsh truth to drop on you here: there is nothing you can do to go back and make The Blank disappear. The only way to avoid a blank is to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, until your performance is second nature. When preparation isn’t an option, or the turn around between being cast and opening night is 24 hours, a quick reset is the best you can hope for. Breathe and stay in it, and then continue.

You might be able to pass off The Blank in a natural way. You might simply cycle to neutral and pick up right where you left off, leaving a brief, but professional, moment of suspension. Do whichever you feel more comfortable with, and make that decision now. The less time you spend in The Blank deciding your course of action, the more disruptive it will be to the scene. By automating and repeating your Blank Plan, you can alleviate the chaos that consumes you in those stressful few seconds, as well as making it a practiced reaction that will become faster and faster each time you use it.

The only way to avoid a blank is to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, until your performance is second nature.

Another point to keep in mind is that The Blank is harder on your scene partner than it is on you. They have no control over the situation. As they’re in a state of reaction, they’re not entirely sure that you’ve dropped a line until you’ve fully boarded the train to Blank Town. It will help both of you if you can focus on helping them out of this Blank. As soon as you’ve readjusted the focus of the problem to outside of yourself, it becomes like one of Declan Donnelan’s Targets. Problems are difficult to see, let alone solve, when they reside inside of us, but stepping back and putting a little distance between you and the issue gives you clarity and full visibility of the situation. Instead of making The Blank all about you, frame it as though it’s your scene partner’s problem that you can solve. Once you have given yourself some distance and an actionable objective, it is far simpler to see a solution.

The performer in us is naturally worried about the audience, wondering if they’ve noticed, or if they’ll think you’re a bad actor. Try not to indulge in these thoughts while you’re in the scene. Not only does it take up precious time, but audiences tend to be more lenient with Blanks than they are with boring acting. If you can pick up the scene professionally and continue to give a confident performance, no one will be talking about The Blank in the foyer. If you make it super obvious and apologise for it for the rest of your performance because you were so shaken that you’ve thrown your whole game off, then the audience wont be so forgiving.

Blanks aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Many casting directors, producers and teachers talk about forgetting lines being a gift. It is a chance to break out of the mechanical acting you are trapped in. Especially in an audition situation, forgetting your lines and having to think in the moment can be exciting. Thinking on your feet and improvising brings the scene to life. Once you understand that blanking isn’t the end of the world, you can relax. Remember an audition isn’t a memory test. of course preparation is important, but if you forget a line it might just land you the role.

To wrap all this up, just breathe, relax, and trust that it will come to you.

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What is a problem play?

We usually come across the term in reference to Shakespeare, but it was first defined late in Henrik Ibsen’s career, as a response to his focussed body of work on social issues, not just used as dramatic devices. It was then retroactively applied to Shakespeare’s work, and only three of his plays are technically classed as Problem Plays.

Shakespeare’s Problem Plays:

Measure for Measure

Troilus and Cressida 

All’s Well That Ends Well

The borderline classifications are The Winter’s Tale, The Merchant of Venice, and Timon of Athens. It’s not clear as to the intention of the message in these three, and whether the interpretation of the social issues in them is affected by a more progressive society than Shakespeare’s original audience. To this end, and admittedly at a stretch, Hamlet is also grouped in with the problem plays. As a whole, tragedy wins out with Hamlet, but in individual characters and passages, the themes of a problem play can give purpose and clarity to your performance. And here we get to the meaty stuff. For an actors intents and purposes, all 4 of these can be included in the classification. As we aren’t worried so much about pure literary theory, an actor can still play with themes and direction to find something sparkly in our delivery.

How to use this knowledge about problem plays to your advantage

When you are choosing a monologue, these problem plays are a good place to start, especially if you resonate with material where your character has something to fight for. These plays are also great material for those who tend to feel deeply about the state of the world, whether that be socially, politically,  or economically. Whatever larger tragedy in the 21st Century that really fires you up, this can be utilised in much of the material in the problem plays through substitution and targeting. I’m not encouraging anyone to broadly think about The Starving Kids In Africa while delivering Angelo’s “Fie these filthy vices!” This is an opportunity to marinate in something that you struggle to express or put into action in the broader, global context, and identify that within a monologue. Yes, this is a whole activity in of itself, but it will pay off. If news reports about alternative facts make you furious, you need to identify why this is, and use that root theme to choose a suitable monologue or character. Maybe the theme is corruption, which is in fact a reaction to your desire for justice – and by identifying those terms, you can begin to associate with The Merchant of Venice. You grab that one off the shelf and have a rifle through, finding the particulars that make your blood boil and boom – automatic, organic resonance, clarity, and purpose. Then you go about the rest of your homework, getting specific with your targets and actions, secure in the fact that you have a default emotional foundation.

Conclusion

Doing this work does require a familiarity with Shakespeare’s plays, in their broad thematic content at the very least, but if you aren’t quite there yet, don’t stress. It’s important to get specific with the themes that you resonate with before picking up a script and trying to project. Simply take those keywords (justice and the broader theme of corruption) and plug them into Google with the word Shakespeare. Have a poke around and before you know it, you’ll be a bonafide Shakespeare database.

Use your newfound knowledge of Problem plays, and get to work. Identify the social, political or economic issues which resonate with you, and explore that in your acting work. There is no excuse to stop challenging yourself, especially if you love the work.

The post How to Use Shakespeare’s Problem Plays as an Actor appeared first on StageMilk.

It’ll be easiest to cover this with another analogy. When you first learned how to write, it was not natural. Think of all the areas of disconnect that were involved. First, holding the pencil. Each finger at an angle, your grip using hidden muscles through your fingers, wrist, forearm, positioning your elbow while hunching your shoulder, trying to unhunch your shoulder while craning your neck – and the adorable tongue poking out the side in concentration. And you haven’t even begun to make the pencil put the marks down that you want it to. Fast forward to when picking up a pen has become so automatic that not only do you not think about the specifics like grip and posture, but you don’t think about forming the shape of each letter, or even each word. There’s a direct passage between the flow of your thoughts and the flow of ink. Poetry, prose, analytical observation, all spill onto the page naturally. 

The analogy is relatively direct. You didn’t do handwriting lessons for your entire school life, but you did begin to study Language and Literature. So this concept of ‘acting naturally’ is your handwriting, and your acting as a craft is the language itself. Once you know how to write, you can use this tool to unlock an entire world of concepts and content to explore. If acting is a muscle that you need to consistently build, maintain, and flex throughout your entire career, naturalism is your gym membership. It is neither right or wrong, but simply one way to give you an opportunity to work.

Now that we’ve got our priorities straight, hopefully this tool of naturalism is a little less overwhelming. It is partly an organic process too, and having patience to bear faith in the process is half the battle. Consider that Geoffrey Rush studied clowning at Lecoq’s school and added this to his toolkit, but this doesn’t mean he only ever performs through clowning. It’s incorporated into his final performance because it has been incorporated into his toolkit. 

As with many acting exercises, discovering naturalism in your acting is a process of repetition, analysis, correction, and repetition. Make your life easy by using a monologue from a Naturalism play. Strindberg is an excellent choice, maybe Chekhov if you’re feeling brave. This works even better if you have a scene partner, as real time feedback on your delivery is invaluable. Memorising this is not the objective, so script in hand is okay for beginners. Stay present with your delivery, take it slow and find truth in every action. Take it as slowly as you need. In this exercise, you are saying something very important to someone who loves you very much, and is patiently trying to understand not just what you are saying, but why you are saying it and what it means to you. They aren’t going to interrupt you, so take your time in conveying the purpose behind these words. Why these words and not other words? What motivates you to try to reach your scene partner, or monologue target? Did you choose these words through love, desperation, spite, chaotic rage? It’s a difficult metric of success to work with, but you can really feel the words landing when you have reached naturalism. It’s the difference between a phone call with a personal friend versus one with a receptionist.

Once you identify what natural acting feels like to you, don’t try to judge it or mould it. This will take you back to square one, to an artificial style. It’s more important to explore the wonders of the library than it is to write the perfect alphabet.

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Selfish, or solo acting. It’s the mindspace that you get sucked into every time you start thinking to yourself, “I am nailing this!” or “What if I react like this?” or even “My scene partner is really talented!”

Selfish acting doesn’t always mean arrogance and scene-stealing. Hopefully, if you are here studying up on how to improve, this is one of the first attitudes that you shed. That sort of selfish acting is barely acting at all, as you aren’t really in relationship with anything except your own ego. Selfish acting can actually be any time that the situation becomes more about you than the relationship that is being formed in the scene. Even in monologues, selfish acting is a scourge, because you need to be in an unselfish relationship with your targets, your images, or your actions, depending on what type of homework you have done on your script.

Drama is real life with all the boring bits cut out

As soon as you enter your scene, you need to be giving your whole, undivided attention to your subject. This is more difficult than simply focusing intently, and is akin to that feeling of trying to hold water – gripping tightly is counterproductive, whereas holding it in your cupped hands will succeed. It’s a gentle touch that takes more practice than an intense approach. By supporting your focus and guiding it in a direction that is always outward rather than inward, your performance will be at once more easily read by the audience, as well as more vulnerable and less monitored by self conscious behaviour.

Selfish acting is that feeling when you are sitting across from your friend over coffee and your mind wanders. This isn’t a bad thing! It’s how we process information as humans. We relate their words or intentions to a situation that we have experience with in order to process their meaning correctly. It’s a necessary part of acting, this internalisation of our partner’s performance in order to feed back the appropriate response. The problem comes when this takes longer than a split second. This is the difference between acting and real life. In acting, we need to snap back with the perfect response. We have no time to internalise, much about with options, and decide on delivering one – but maybe it doesn’t land, so you try another tactic – and then you’ve lost the audience. Clarity in performance is so important, so any moment of internalisation has to be imperceptible to the viewer. Drama is real life with all the boring bits cut out, and watching someone who is stuck inside their own thoughts or experiences is boring.

It’s a bit of an esoteric concept, but Selfish Acting is a very common occurrence. Make sure you are an actor who is aware of this inevitable slip up, and maintain a constant vigilance to stay out of your own head! But not too vigilant… Remember that light touch.

The post Are you a Selfish Actor? appeared first on StageMilk.

Relaxation

Why is this work? Because doing it properly is HARD for people who are constantly on the go, constantly engrossed in their work. Because your passion is your work, and your work is your self, and your self is your product – it’s a messy tangle of knots.

We hold physical tension, mental tension, and emotional tension. Focus on one of these at a time, and get set for some Rest and Relaxation. It’s a crucial aspect of your homework. The lines between them blur, and sometimes relaxing physically will bring up some emotional tension, or maybe relaxing mentally suddenly makes those headaches go away.

The take-away is don’t get caught up wondering if the focus of your relaxation is correct or not. Wanting to be correct causes tension, and tension is the enemy. Shift the boundaries wherever you damn well please, maybe focus on relaxing your little toe for a whole day, however small you need to break down the pieces of tension you are holding, go for it. The only take away here is that you focus on one area at a time, and calm it right down. Maybe put it away entirely for the day.

“But I love acting and theatre and movies! That’s how I relax!” Not a good enough excuse. How many times has the stress of an audition driven you to wish you never started down this crazy path? (Never? Is that just me?) This kind of tension is linked to procrastination. You usually procrastinate over something that you actually love doing because of the fear that you’ll do a bad job. If you’re proven to be bad at the thing you love doing, your ego and your identity take a massive blow, so your brain is protecting you from that by pushing the task back, prolonging the inevitable. This is literally tension pulling you between the thing you want to do, and the fear of doing it. Caring too much is exhausting.

Hobbies and friends are great for switching off, but make sure it isn’t closely related to your work. The gym doesn’t count, singing doesn’t count. I’ll let you have macrame or surfing. For a double whammy of redirecting your passion and joy somewhere new to give it a break from caring SO MUCH about your acting, spend time doing macrame with a friend who hates it when you talk about acting. The important thing is to switch off deliberately. Scrolling Instagram or binging Netflix is a limbo state in which you’re kind of procrastinating your relaxation. Go out of your way to engage in something alien, and find something you are passionate about in even the tiniest way. That way, your identity isn’t so threatened by potentially doing a bad job at acting. This is crucial, because as we all know, Making Mistakes is Awesome.

Tension In Performance

Dealing away with tension in performance is critical in all genres, styles, and mediums of acting. There is never ever never a good way to be tense in performance, even if your character is in a tense situation. It’s your job as an actor to convey a sense of tension while being in complete control of your performance. Tension robs you of control, because you become less reactive and less able to respond with a natural, flexible, and readable response. This is because tension is part of the flight-or-fight response, and is actually closest to a rabbit in the headlights – aware of danger, aware of protecting yourself, and trapped in that moment of indecision. Tension can really get in the way of the clarity of your performance. It’s difficult to tell if the actor is tense or the character is tense, and then whether that tension is fear, rage, anxiety, or smitten-in-love. Make performing easier on yourself and do away with that tension in performance through a few simple pointers.

Vocal Warmup

Your voice work should be like working on your fitness – you do it every day, not just ten minutes before you run a marathon. Not only will maintaining your vocal fitness give you a stronger base to work from, with the added bonus of the nerves-buster of having confidence in your abilities, but you’ll also be chipping away at that underlying tension a little bit everyday. Good vocal technique includes healthy breathing, and the yogis are certainly on to something special here. Practicing deep diaphragm breathes helps the nervous system calm down. You can bet a rabbit in the headlights is holding its breath. Lying down and keeping an imaginary feather floating steadily atop a steady stream of your breath is a great exercise to encourage your breathing, and your whole nervous system, to relax.

Stay in Relationship

It’s far easier to obsess over your own physical state when you get stuck in your own head. Ever had that feeling that you don’t know what to do with your hands? That’s a key indicator that you’ve fallen out of relationship with your scene partner or your targets. If you can maintain your focus on something outside of yourself, the specifics of your movement and voice will take care of themselves. It’s a bit like breathing – very simple when you trust that it will regulate itself.

If you have trouble guiding your mind away from your tension in performance, you can think of your targets in terms of curiosity. This eliminates the intensity of words such as focus, and intention, whose implications can sometimes cause more tension as they are so strong and direct. It can be a smart way to circumvent that tension if you can – instead, explore and be curious about your partner and targets. Notice things in someone’s expression and let that inform the way in which you respond. Try to think of your targets in a different light – if you are delivering a monologue from a place of despair, experiment to seek out some hope within your words. These are much more layered concepts than “What am I doing with my feet? Do I usually stand so still?” and this will help you to pull yourself out of a tense moment immediately.

It’s a bit like meditation in the sense that you can sit down and light incense, settling in for a half hour session, but you can also tap into the concept during a split second of panic while your boss yells at you. You should be practising this regularly in rehearsal, so when it comes to your big opening night, you have an instant tension-buster that you can rely on at your fingertips.

Hopefully this article has inspired you to get to work on relaxation, and will help you relieve some of that tension in life and in performance. It’s a process, and just by working on a little bit every day means that you’ll have achieved a lot over the course of a year. Good luck!

The post Actor’s Worst Enemy: Tension appeared first on StageMilk.

Enter Personal Work.

Your professional work should be thought of like a musician who diligently does their homework on their scales, chords, and intervals, performing master studies composed by the classic greats. Your persona work is when that musician takes what they’ve learned and strings a few of those chords together in a way that feels good to them. It doesn’t have to be complex, it doesn’t even have to be good. But by re-contextualising the knowledge they gleaned from what is essentially copying, it becomes more deeply engrained, and more personal. Now when they are playing their Beethoven’s and their Bach’s, those favourite chords that they re-contextualised into their own little ditty will hold some sort of significance, and imbue their ‘copying’ with something genuine and individualised.

If you aren’t familiar with the saying yet, get acquainted: Great artists steal. Steal from your favourite movies, plays, actors, and from other art forms. Steal from your favourite musicians and visual artists. Steal feelings, images and intentions. Like a magpie, pick up anything that looks shiny to you and then weave it all together into a nest that is eclectic and stylised. No one needs to see your character’s monologue from the Chekhovian take on Pulp Fiction with its soundtrack by The National and Busta Rhymes. Just make things that you think are cool and continue to craft them by sewing in more cool things as you stumble across them. If you liked the way the old lady on your bus talked to strangers, steal it. Make a character. If you don’t like writing dialogue, just do some movement work on her. Come up with a hypothetical Broadway musical that she would star in. You’ll start to notice the things that really intrigue you and got you inspired popping up in the rest of your work.

These snippets of personal work are what gives you an edge over everyone else who is learning the same monologue for the same audition for the same character. These little magpie-trinkets will wheedle their way into your work just by virtue of you having seen them and paid them special attention. Ever learn the meaning of a new word, and suddenly you hear it everywhere? It’s not the world that has started using the word more. It’s you, whose mind has opened to start picking up what the world is putting down.

At it’s bare bones, an X-Factor reads as connection. When the audience feels connected to you, you have found it. So stay curious to what your taste is, to what speaks to you, and don’t censor or judge it. The audience doesn’t need to like classical music to be moved by an actor who is moved by classical music. What is truly inspiring to see in an actor is when they are feeling something, anything. Find what you like and let it move you in new, unique and unchartered ways. It’s in that space where you’ll find your X-Factor.

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Auditions are not ideal acting conditions. They have a time limit. They have the unusual pressure of the audience knowing more about your character than you do. They are judgmental and measured, rather than expressive and emotive. All of these limitations create an environment altogether removed from actual acting. The best way to approach this situation differs from actor to actor, but here are a few options to play with if the mere prospect of auditions leave you in cold sweats.

After the requisite vocal warmups (that we’re sure you are in the habit of doing daily) and a bit of a physical limbering up (Yes, this is non-negotiable even for shoulders-up self tapes. Casting directors can tell a tense performance from one that is free and uninhibited by some pesky hip tension.)

There are a few things you can incorporate to mentally prepare. For one, know your material back to front. Be able to recite your lines in your sleep. Beyond this, do your due diligence in regards to character. Don’t just research, go further and make your own decisions. They may not be “correct” or even “appropriate” but whoever is casting doesn’t need to read your notes. This is similar to giving your character a secret. If you get nervous before auditions, then over prepare and create an entire narrative for your character. Even if they only have a brief introductory scene, they will be more fully realised in your mind, and you won’t slip up and make those generic choices that every other actor is presenting. This foundational work can be fun, too. If you work visually, sketch out some wardrobe options your character would wear in each different season, artist ability not required. If you like words, write some diary entries from their perspective. And remember remember remember that no one but you ever needs to see these!

On the flip side, another option is to engage in something completely unrelated to acting that you absolutely kick ass at. If you are an amazing soccer player, juggle a ball in your living room for ten minutes before you go to the audition. Nail some air guitar. Belt a show tune in your car. Do anything that makes you feel like you don’t need to get this job after all. The more confidence you have in your abilities that don’t revolve around acting, the less ‘Now Or Never’, ‘It All Hangs On This’ attitude you’ll convey. That is a tense attitude. Tension is the enemy. If you walk in with an aura of competence and success, it will read as magnetism both on camera and in person.

The more you audition, the more comfortable you will be, swanning into the waiting room, filling out your wardrobe form, delivering a knock out audition scene, and then treating yo’self afterwards, whether that’s with yoga, a beverage, cake, or Netflix. Auditions are rough, and it’s a job in of itself to try to land a job. Be kind to yourself, indulge in something successful, and over prepare.

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Mistakes are just a way that we negatively frame something unintentional. There’s that lovely clarification, ‘happy accident’, because accident also has negative connotations. Slip ups, oopsies, errors – I can’t think of many positive words for mistakes, but mark my words, mistakes can be a good thing. Mistakes can be awesome.

Mistakes are the only time when you can surprise yourself. If every action you carefully prepare aways comes out exactly as planned, there’s no opportunity for spontaneity, and that is the spice of life. Method acting is so prized because it puts you in a starting position where the ‘mistakes’ that you make in performance are in tune with your character.

It is Clark Kent who we are rooting for when we cheer on Superman.

Mistakes are what make a character believable, because flaws are a label for the identifying features in humans. Flaws are simply deviations from the ‘perfect’ structure, and the perfect structure is just an idealised average of everyone in existence. Nothing about the Exact Average Human is what we want when we are trying to define a character in performance. In fact, we want to highlight those flaws and deviations to really push the intention, therefore we actually want to create an atmosphere that is conducive and encouraging to making mistakes.

When watching a particularly talented actor, it’s the private moments when they are most vulnerable that are the most captivating. We can relate to them in these moments. It is Clark Kent who we are rooting for when we cheer on Superman. The only way to organically find these moments in performance is to accept that your character makes Mistakes with a capital M. There’s things they are ashamed of, that they are hurt by, that they feel guilty about. Find these things and bring them to the surface. Let them affect your reactions and wear them on your sleeve.

We want to watch drama, not perfection, and the only path to drama is through mistakes.

Outside of your character, be brave in performance, especially in rehearsals! Experiment, and make all of the mistakes you possibly can. Literally make yourself a challenge, that you won’t settle for an action until you’ve tried every single possible wrong choice. See how much variety this gives your final choice. It will be more nuanced and informed, and also it will be more decisive. This choice is now, unarguably, the right choice with the peak dramatic potential.

We want to watch drama, not perfection, and the only path to drama is through mistakes. Get cozy with them because Mistakes are the bricks with which we build beautiful, affecting performances. Let us see your fear, your doubt, and most importantly, your bravery to be vulnerable and make your mistakes with pride.

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Let’s start by talking about the foundations. Accent work is to voice as a type of gait is to movement. It’s all the same bread with a different brand of butter. So before you start freaking out on perfectly rolling your R’s, make sure you have a solid base to work from. Without good vocal technique to support your accent work, you have zero chance of impressing anyone.

Impressing someone in an audition is a tough thing to do, which is why many audition guides suggest you throw in something that’s left-of-field, and unexpected. A fully mastered accent is never going to catch anyone by surprise. Best case scenario, they think you grew up there. It’s more like a tidbit of pleasantry. By no means does this encourage you to do a bad accent just to get some attention. There’s a reason Tommy Wiseau was never cast by anyone other than himself.

So in the ‘Yes, you have to master the accent’ camp, we have the coveted American accent. If you are a native English speaker, especially if you have no other languages under your belt, then you really have no excuse but to have this one mastered. There are too many resources online, free, premium, courses, etc. for you to have any excuse. The majority of plays you will perform using an accent will be either American or British, and the General American accent is so widely accepted that you must be fluent in it. British is a little more lenient, because outside of the classics to be performed in Received Pronounciation, you really should be using a regional accent. But General American? Get onto it. For Americans, you will expand your opportunities when you tone down a specific accent, and for anyone hailing from outside the US, it’s a prerequisite for an international film and television career. Unless you are staunchly opposed to ever acting in anything outside of your state, General American mastery is a priority.

And now for the ‘Don’t worry about it’ argument. This is focussed on the important stuff, which is that acting comes first. Casting directors have a few non-negotiable when they head into a project, and if you tick those boxes for them, they will happily forgo a polished accent. If you give them an amazing performance, filled with passion, listening, vulnerability, and nuance, then you’re iffy vowels are hardly going to lose you the role. This only works if you are the perfect fit in every other sense as well, but if you aren’t, well, you wouldn’t land the job no matter how well you may have mastered the accent.

To wrap up this fence-sitting response, the accent alone is never going to win you the role, nor will it necessarily lose you the role. Depending on the time frame between auditioning and shooting, the budget of the production, the importance of the accent in the thematic content, and on the strength of your foundations as an actor, (in all these cases, shorter/smaller/less means your accent needs to be more refined) make your own decisions as to how much time you dedicate to accent work, and how much time you dedicate to the rest of your preparation.

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