VIDEO - What to Bring to Auditions

Not sure what to put in your audition bag? Here's my quick guide to the MUST HAVES for every audition!

I always bring at least five copies of my headshot and resume (stapled together, back to back, with the excess paper trimmed off), pens, pencils, and a highlighter, a journal, a snack and some water, and my #1 lifesaver - my headphones! All this goes in my bag that I pack the night before, so I don't have to stress about it in the morning when I'm trying to get out the door. I don't know about you, but I'm not a morning person. I also often bring a phone charger, depending on how long I'll be out and about.

Of course, if you're auditioning for musical theatre, you'll need to bring your book of sheet music, and if you're expected to dance, certain clothes and shoes may be required. Bring what you need to succeed, and have a stress-free audition!

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Breaking Down the Bard VIDEO - Verse vs Prose

Do you know how to tell the difference between verse and prose?

This is something that trips a lot of people up, but my quick, minute-long video shows you how to tell the difference INSTANTLY. Check it out!

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Top 5 Mistakes Actors Make in Shakespeare Auditions!

Breaking Down the Bard VIDEO - Character Name Pronunciations in A Midsummer Night's Dream

I wanted to go over something that's a pet peeve of A LOT of casting directors, producers, and directors in the industry: when actors come into an audition or rehearsal setting and don't know how to say the names of the characters, it looks just plain BAD.

Sure, Shakespeare's character names don't always roll off the tongue, but that's no excuse when you go into an audition setting. Do your research and know how to pronounce the names, and you'll avoid this huge audition mistake, getting you one step closer to getting cast!

Let's start with the characters in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, because it is so insanely popular. Check out the video I've made below!

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Breaking Down the Bard - Dactyls

A dactyl is not a dinosaur - but "dinosaur" is a dactyl!

A dactyl is a metric foot in poetry that is one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. You could also think of this like a musical triplet. 

 

 

 

Some words that are dactylic all by themselves are:

Endlessly

Cabbages

Murmuring

President

Mockingbird

Hamilton

... and...

You guessed it: Dinosaur.

Take a look at these dactylic lines of verse, where I've shown the line first as it would appear in a script, followed by how I would scan it:

Julia (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain

TRAMP-ling con-TEMP-tous-ly ON thy dis DAIN

 

*Pronounce "contemptuously" con - TEMP - chuss - lee to keep it four syllables.

Titania (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

I am a spirit of no common rate

I am a SPI-rit of NO com-mon RATE

Claudius (Hamlet)

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

 

MAD-ness in GREAT ones must NOT un-watch'd GO.

There is usually more than one way to scan a line of verse. A lot of people would make Titania's line perfect iambic pentameter:

i AM a SPI-rit OF no COM-mon RATE

And while that is completely acceptable, I really like the choice of dactyls for this line. Midsummer is a play that is largely in perfect iambic pentameter, so looking for opportunities to utilize other rhythms and shake it up is a good idea. This is especially powerful here, where Titania might be showing her magical abilities to impress Bottom, who is trying to escape the woods while she is willing him to stay.

Making Julia's line dactylic can help to emphasize the physical action of her stomping all over the torn pieces of the letter she has received. Also, attempting to make this line perfect iambic pentameter sounds really strange:

tramp-LING con-TEMP-tous-LY on THY dis-DAIN

Nope. It's weird. So is Claudius' line:

mad-NESS in GREAT ones MUST not UN-watch'd GO.

Dactyls are pretty frequent in Shakespeare's verse, so when you see a line that can't be perfect iambic pentameter, check to see if it could be dactylic instead!

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Breaking Down the Bard - Sonnets

If you've ever wondered what a sonnet is, I'm gonna break it down for you right now!

Simply put, a sonnet is a type of poem, following a set structure. There are many kinds of sonnets (which this Wikipedia article details). It doesn't necessarily have to be about love, but a lot of them are, because love is a wonderfully rich and complicated topic! We're going to look at the type of sonnet Shakespeare is famous for, called the English Sonnet, the Elizabethan* Sonnet, or the Shakespearean Sonnet.

*Elizabeth I was Queen of England during much of Shakespeare's life, and he wrote many plays and poems during the Elizabethan era.

 

 

The basic structure for this type of sonnet is three quatrains and a couplet - click the links if you missed those or need a reminder. This type of sonnet is typically in iambic pentameter and has a total of fourteen lines. One way to think of the rhyme scheme is this:

- - - - - - - - A

- - - - - - - - B

- - - - - - - - A

- - - - - - - - B

- - - - - - - - - C

- - - - - - - - - D

- - - - - - - - - C

- - - - - - - - - D

- - - - - - - - - - E

- - - - - - - - - - F

- - - - - - - - - - E

- - - - - - - - - - F

- - - - - - - - - - - G

- - - - - - - - - - - G

Let's look at Sonnet 91:

 

 

And here's the same sonnet, but I've shown where the quatrains and the couplet each start and end:

 

 

In the first quatrain, we see that "skill" in the first line rhymes with "ill" in the third line, and "force" in the second line rhymes with "horse" in the fourth. This is contrasted by the couplet that ends the sonnet, where two lines immediately rhyme with each other, "take" and "make".

Another noteworthy Sonnet by Shakespeare is in Romeo and Juliet. The very first time the young lovers speak to each other, they share lines that form a sonnet! Check it out:

 

 

Here, I've marked the structure so that you can easily see the Sonnet form that's hidden in Act I, Scene 5:

 

 

I think it's really cool that Shakespeare had his two star-crossed lovers so on the same page that they could improvise a Sonnet together at their very first meeting!

Shakespeare is not the only person to try his hand at the Elizabethan Sonnet - in fact, many others did, too - but he wrote at least 154 of them, and now you know what makes them tick!

What's your favorite sonnet? Let me know in the comments!

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