Auditions…. What is it about them that sends most singers into paroxysms of fear and anxiety? Well, except for the supremely confident and the thickest skinned, just about everything. The preparation and anticipation, the waiting, the wanting, yet not wanting, to know the outcome, all set the adrenaline racing and the insecurities flowing freely. So why do we submit to auditions at all? Simply, because, for most of us, we have no choice. Of course there is a step on the ladder of achievement when they become redundant, but to reach that step, few will get by without enduring the audition experience. But even if we accept that auditions are unavoidable, do they have to be the cause of so much anxiety and unpleasantness. Whilst I grant that not every audition experience is a miserable one, and indeed some are positive, exciting and fulfilling, the fact that some (and taken overall, that’s a big ‘some’) are not, needs to be addressed. Many relationships are destroyed, much confidence sapped, and happy memories blighted, by a mishandled audition. Why is this so, and is there anything we – singers and audition panelists – can do to prevent it?
Pondering this question lead me to several observations about the purpose of auditions. Inevitably, they serve more than one purpose, but once a singer had identified the purpose of the particular audition they are undertaking, they are immediately in a stronger position to protect their fragile feelings and self confidence. If they are genuinely going to an audition for ‘audition practice’ then presumably they have no expectation of being given a role, and if they do, it is a lovely bonus and everyone benefits. However, most auditions are undertaken in the hope, even expectation, of being cast. It is that hope and expectation that makes us impossibly vulnerable. When we expect nothing we can’t be disappointed and we can’t be hurt; when our expectations are shattered, our feelings shatter with them.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that audition panelists can do much to encourage – falsely or otherwise - this feeling of expectation and it is much easier for them to do this when we know those for whom we audition. There is much to be said for auditioning for strangers. How can we expect anything of strangers? We don’t know their agenda, their preferences, their background, and we have had no previous good experiences with them to boost our expectation that they too want to repeat those good experiences. When we audition for people with whom we have successfully performed many times we assume a good will that goes both ways – from them as well as us. We assume our loyalty to them is reciprocated. And thus we open ourselves to being hurt by them. We should never forget that auditions are not for us, they are for the audition panel, and the power they wield is total. In all human relationships the power for manipulation, exploitation and negotiation is constantly played out in different contexts, and no less in the relationship between the audition panel and auditionee, and we learn this at cost to ourselves, not to them.
So, the best audition situation for us has to be to audition for those who don’t know us. They may have an agenda a mile long, but we can’t be personally on it, because we have no history with them. If they reject us, then even if they do so rudely, it is nothing compared with the insulting and patronising get out clauses used by those with whom we have performed many times when they decide that our face no longer fits. If they accept us, we don’t know why, but we can tell ourselves that it was because we were the best for the role and set out to prove that, even if it we were someone’s third choice!
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But then we face a new problem… After one show with a new company we are no longer strangers! We hope that having done a good job once, we will have worked a few steps up the ladder of approval and the next audition we do for them… Well, we hope that they want us anyway, and the audition is just a rubber stamp because they have to hold auditions. And maybe it is, but for how long? What do we have to do to ensure that we are cast every time from now on? Continue to sing well and be reliable, we hope. And then arises another problem! Singers generally complain when companies use the same singers again and again (unless they are those singers, of course!). We say it shouldn’t be a closed shop, that new people should have an opportunity. We can’t win, even in our own befuddled minds!
But herein lies the real issue. As singers we believe that audition panels should act as we would have them act, as we believe we would act were we in their shoes. And we forget that audition panels really can do what they like and really don’t care what singers think about it! One answer, I suggest, is that everyone is more honest about this, audition panels included. I don’t want to be told by an audition panelist that they are really sorry they couldn’t cast me. If they really were sorry, they wouldn’t have turned me down! I don’t want to be told that auditions are open and all parts available when some have been effectively pre-cast. It’s a waste of my time and theirs. They are entitled to pre-cast – it’s their company – so let’s just be honest about it. And I certainly don’t want to be lead to believe that I will be cast, only later to be turned down. Just be up front from the beginning and tell me that it’s not likely I’ll be cast this time because the MD, director, company manager, whomever, is looking to change the face of the company!
Another answer, even more radical and not entirely practical, is to get rid of auditions, not quite altogether, but in most cases. I am involved in running a company which never auditions. We openly and honestly mount productions for the singers we want to sing with. When occasionally we need to find someone to fill a role we can’t cover between us or because someone can’t make the date then we approach someone who has, perhaps, been covertly auditioned through working with them on a production with another company, but they would never be subjected to a formal audition. Yes, it’s a closed shop, but it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. Another company I have sung with recently seems to have started off on the same basis, but then held auditions to increase the pool of singers available to them, and now appears to be planning its next production around those singers. Presumably they will hold auditions for parts they cannot cast from that pool, or bring in more people by word of mouth, but there is a refreshing honesty about a company which effectively says ‘We’re starting by casting the parts we can from those who we want to be in it and only after that will we cast the net wider.’
So here’s my manifesto for easing the trauma of auditions; audition committees take note!
1) If you want to cast particular people for roles, just do it, tell everyone about it and they all know where they stand.
2) If you know someone wants to audition who you have no intention of casting, tell them, and don’t waste their time or yours.
3) Audition only for genuinely available roles, especially if you are requiring people to learn a lot of new music for the audition
4) Don’t pretend that you wish that you could cast people when you don’t. No one is fooled.
Name Withheld.
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