I felt a lot of things when I made the decision to attend my first in-person EPA* since March 2020, and knew that I needed to create some rules for myself to protect my energy and wellbeing. I hadn’t been in this kind of environment in a long time!
Here are the rules I settled on that day:
Prioritize sleep over being close to the top of the EMC list. This might mean I won’t be attending very many of these types of auditions in New York City, which requires me to wake up VERY early. When I review my audition log from 2019, I notice that the rate at which I was even given a chance to sing at one of these auditions was very low. I could have saved the money I spent on a Greyhound and the food I ate while there in favor of sleeping more. And I could have avoided standing in line in the cold for hours in favor of sleeping more. My body needs adequate sleep in order to perform well!
Wear comfortable shoes! I am realizing how much pressure to look very feminine I was feeling in pre-COVID times. I love wearing skirts and dresses, but I feared that if I didn’t wear heels in an audition, I would be deemed not attractive enough to play insert-soprano-role-here. Going forward, I will only wear heels if a theater invites me for an appointment or callback AND if I feel that wearing heels will help me portray the character in a more authentic way. Or if I simply WANT to.
Look at an EPA as a way of keeping in touch with a theater or casting director. Employers are REQUIRED to hold these calls, and therefore, may not even be planning on casting anyone from the pool of actors they see that day. If it’s a project that excites me, or theater I would genuinely love to work for, I will use it as an opportunity to say hi and to show them who I am as an artist. It’s not about booking the job, but about building a relationship.
Maybe I’m late to the game on these rules. I suspect that number 3 is commonly held by more seasoned actors. As I grow, I find that my favorite thing about rules is that they are made up (I just made these up) and therefore can be discarded. If any of these don’t work for me, I will simply change them. We’ll see how it goes! Do you have any audition day rules?
*EPA stands for Equity Principal Audition, a type of audition that professional theaters are required to hold. Learn more about different types of auditions here.
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