Acting Auditions: How to Work With a Reader

by Ruth Kulerman

Tips on Connecting

I shudder internally when someone says after an audition "I had a really good connection with the reader." Please do not scream heresy, but "connection" is highly overrated. Remember, you will have a reader only if you are doing "sides," a passage from the script. You probably will have had the sides in advance and have decided on your delivery.

Your line delivery at an audition is in your control. Do what you have prepared. If your reader does not feed you what you need or expect, go ahead with your prepared interpretation anyway--unless the reader's delivery elicits a bolder, more interesting response than the one you had prepared (a most unlikely scenario!). The audition committee is much more interested in you and your acting than in your connection with their reader. Connection does not determine the degree of talent. Remember that whatever connection is necessary is determined by the listener. Hopefully in a audition with sides you will be speaking more than you are listening!

As in actual performance, at an audition you should be a sponge to what the reader (or the other actor) is saying. This "sponge" idea will may you a better listener. However, someone very savvy (whose name I probably never knew) said: "Actors are the only people on earth who stare into each other's eyes when they are talking to each other." So making eye connection--or even making a "great connection" with a reader probably does not even carry a vote when it comes to electing whom to cast. Remember: The listener looks. The speaker thinks.

Ruth Kulerman is an actress and acting coach in New York.

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