Ideas for auditions

Although I won't be auditioning for a while, I am already planning how I will audition girls for the role of Lauren.

Before the girls come to audition I will give them a snippet of the script to prepare and also to get to know the play and character. 

At the audition I will have the girls read the following scene with Lizzy in the role of Stella:

I think it's important to see how they act with Lizzy because they may be able to do monologues well but that doesn't necessarily mean they can work well in scenes with other characters.  

I will then have each girl also do one of the most intense scenes in the play in which Lauren thinks she is about to be killed. I need to see that they will have the confidence and the acting ability to pull of such a hard scene.

I will end the audition with a hot-seating exercise. Within a hot-seating exercise, the auditionee is in character while the director asks them questions and they must answer as the character. This will help me see if the girls are good with characterisation and will help them come up with their own ideas about that character that they can use later on if they get the part.

Advertising Auditions

The part of Laura is crucial and I need a good actress who can pull of such a hard role. Therefore, I am going to advertise the play all over school in hope that people will come to audition. 

Advertising it will also make people aware of the play and hopefully get people interested in coming to see it. 

I will send an email with information about the play to people age 15 and above as well as in posters I will put around the school, similar to the draft one I made above. 

Producing

Within this project, I will also be taking on the challenge of producing a play. I have practised directing in Drama classes before but i've never had the opportunity to produce before.

I researched what the job of a producer is and I found that they are the very first person to start the process of the play by choosing a script; so I've already started producing!

Other jobs of a producer include:

-Finding a director

-Securing funds

-Finding a venue

-Scheduling auditions and rehearsals

-Hiring support staff (e.g. lighting)

-Casting

-Arranging purchase of props/ sets

-Advertise the play

-Reimburse the staff

There is a lot of work to do as a producer and a lot of costs involved; therefore it is important for my to advertise the play well so I make a profit from ticket sales.

Stella's Costume

Stella is a harder character to dress. Most directors would wear smart casual clothes to a casting audition however Stella isn't like most directors. 

In the script, Lauren refers to Stella's outfit: '...you've got this student top, blazer jacket thing going on'. So I will dress Stella in a blazer.

Most of the pictures of Stella on the internet are of this woman in the University of Cambridge production. If you didn't know what play this was a picture of you would never guess she was a director: this costume shows Stella is not at all like other directors. I would choose the colour black over white: white has connotations of purity and innocence which doesn't suit the character. Red is a good colour for Stella too because if gives connotations of lust and danger. 

I plan to dress Stella more like this actress: a blazer jacket with a red top underneath. I don't want Stella to look too out of place as a director because I want her manipulations of Lauren to come as a shock to the audience. 

Lauren's costume

Lauren wants desperately to be an actress: therefore she would have put a lot of thought into what to wear to her audition. I picture her with a fair amount of makeup on but nothing too heavy and with hair in a fashionable up-do.

What you wear to an acting audition is vitally important: before you even open your mouth you are being judged.

I asked my drama teacher what are the best clothes to wear to an acting audition and he said that it is important to wear something you can move in; so trousers rather than a skirt, and nothing extravagant such as huge earrings or an outrageous hair style that will take the attention away from your acting. He said it is also important to dress to show off your physical assets, but not over the top on this. i.e cleavage on show. 

There are few examples of past performances of 'The Audition' online but here are a few I have found:

 This Lauren has put effort into her hair and makeup without over-doing it and has a simple top and jeans on. The top shows off her assets; in this case, her waist and chest. 

I'm not so much of a fan of this Lauren: her hair is a mess and she is not wearing makeup: Lauren wants to be Ophelia badly so she would put effort into her appearance. It is also not recommended to have patterned clothes on, but rather a plain coloured top. 

This is the most effective Lauren costume in my opinion. The colour of her top shows her youthfulness and her hair and makeup is appropriate for an audition.

Props

Many small props are used throughout the play, these are:

-Black board and chalk
-Stella’s bag
-Chair and table
-CD player/ laptop
-Lauren’s bag
-A script
-Cigarettes
-Gun
-Fake cocaine
-Mobile phone

Some of these will be easy to come by such as the CD player, a script and a mobile phone because these are things most people own anyway. 

The prop that will be hardest to find is a gun. It is crucial that the gun looks realistic because during the scene the audience and Lauren are supposed to feel like Lauren is about to be murdered and it will ruin the anticipation, tension and fear if the gun is clearly a child's toy brought at the 99p shop. I looked online for prop guns where I found plenty of websites dedicated to stage props so I have no issues about finding a suitable looking gun.

I want the play to be as realistic as possible therefore I am choosing electronic stage cigarettes so it looks like Stella is really smoking. I found these online too. http://actorcigarette.squarespace.com

Script cuts

The play comes in either a two-act 120 minute version or a one act 60 minute version. Online, I brought both as I didn't know if too much important stuff would be cut from the 60 minute version. 

Having read both scripts I preferred the one-act version all apart from a section near the end where Lauren injects herself with heroin. Cocaine use is risque enough to talk about and act out using in my school but heroin is obviously a lot worse. This was not in the original 120 minute play so I found a section of the script in the two-act which is practically the same as the one-act and cut to change the rest of the play back to the long version. 

I read through from start to finish of the new cut to check everything made sense and the cut worked perfectly and avoids any sections that wouldn't go down well.