I often hear actors say “I hate auditions.” This logic completely baffles me. 

How can you expect to get into a rehearsal with any regularity if you hate auditions?  To get any job you will, almost certainly, have to go through an audition first.  The way to be successful in this business is to be good at auditioning.  Yes, the audition process is an unnatural, imperfect system where the best people don’t always get the jobs.  And you can’t assess the true depth of someone’s talent, professionalism and relative degree of mental health in a five minute appointment slot.  But until someone suggests a better system it’s the one we all have to work with.

If you secretly harbor self-defeating attitudes like the ones above, I suggest you put them aside.  They are guaranteed to keep you in your survival job.   I hated auditions.  I knew I would be good once I got the job, but I was frustrated I wasn’t always able to deliver the goods at the audition.

It wasn’t until I decided I hated waiting tables more than I hated auditioning that I started to think outside the box.

One career-changing day, it dawned on me that, in practical terms, my job as an actor was auditioning! After all, at that time I spent far more time auditioning than I did actually working.  Yet, I spent most of my time in acting and voice classes training to do roles I rarely got because my audition skills were inconsistent.  It was clear.  The only thing standing between me and a job was a successful audition.  My focus needed to shift.

I stopped paying for acting class and voice lessons every week and used the time I would have spent rehearsing scenes working on my auditions.  I read everything I could on the subject.  I worked incessantly on my audition pieces.  I figured out how to prepare physically and mentally so my head was in the game and I was ready to rock the room the moment I walked in.  I learned what I could control and I learned to let go of the things I couldn’t.  I developed strategies for staying focused in the waiting room, practiced talking to an accompanist, making a graceful exit and everything in between.  And it paid off big time!  I started to book like crazy and I had the cash to go back to my acting and voice coaches so I could stay sharp for my next gig!

Realizing the key to reaching my career goals was being very good at my job, auditioning, changed everything.  

Once you realize auditioning is your job, you know where your focus needs to be.  The rest is just work.

If you’d like to learn how to reach your career goals by rocking your auditions contact me HERE and we’ll discuss different ways I can help you. I hope to talk to you soon! 

If you found this article helpful please….

All my best,

Philip

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Philip Hernandez is a respected acting teacher and singing coach in NYC. He is also the only actor in Broadway history to play both Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. He created principal roles in Broadway’s Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Paul Simon’s The Capeman. You may also know him from his many television appearances: The Blacklist, Gotham, Blue Bloods, The Path, Bull, Nurse Jackie, Elementary, Person of Interest, Law and Order, Hostages and Damages to name a few. For information about acting lessons CLICK HERE or singing lessons CLICK HERE. 

Follow him on twitter @philip24601, on Instagram @philip24601 and on Facebook at @philip24601.