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.

Script Changes

Swear words are used constantly in 'The Audition' and it is important to keep them in in some instances, however, having these limits the people who can come to see the play.

Even without swear words in, I will put a disclaimer out that the play is not recommended for under 14s. The play contains sexual references, drug references and more things that would be inappropriate for younger students. 

The only swear I will remove is when Stella and Lauren are discussing men and Lauren says that all of them except her father are c**ts. The word makes I for one, and many other people uncomfortable and is unnecessary I believe. I've found a way to easily cut the line out and still have the scene make sense.

Another script issue I have come across is the scene in which Stella and Lauren kiss. I think this is a vital moment as it is full of tension and of course, is forcing Lauren to feel a new emotion of Lust, and soon after, Embarrassment. 

Lizzy has no issue with kissing another girl, however, if the girl who plays Lauren has a moral reason or is uncomfortable this will bring up some problems. I will try very hard to encourage the actresses but if it is a resounding no, I will change the scene slightly so Lauren is feeling the emotion of Lust and is going forward to kiss Stella then stops, inches from her lips and skips straight to the line 'S...s...sorry, I'm... I'm sorry about that'.

Characters

'The Audition' has two female characters:

Stella: A fearsome and sadistic director who embarks on a campaign to push Lauren to her limits both psychologically and physically.

Lauren: A young, ambitious actress desperate to impress with her modern day rendition of Ophelia.

The basic plot of the play follows Stella manipulating Lauren into any character that she sees fit and Lauren giving herself willingly, an example of society's increasing need for 'fifteen minutes of fame' in this pop culture and reality TV-obsessed era. Stella and Lauren take turns vying for control in the master and subservient dance that is all too familiar in theatre and film. Along the way there are drugs, sexual abuse and a game of Russian roulette.

I wanted to put on a play with a cast of 10 or less. This is because I will be doing most of the work over the Summer holidays and it is likely that people will be abroad or busy and it will be hard to get the whole cast together to rehearse. 'The Audition' is a dark play in some senses therefore I plan to cast people between year 11 and year 13.

While reading through the play I kept reading Stella's line in the voice of a girl in my AS Drama class, Lizzy. Lizzy is a fantastic actress and is particularly good in psychopathic, evil and satirical characters so I thought she would be absolutely perfect for the part. After showing her the script and explaining my ideas she was very interested and agreed to playing the part of Stella. 

The role of Lauren will be harder to cast: as said by Stella in the script, the character has to express emotions of '...Isolation, Elation, Paranoia, Embarrassment, Confusion, Excitement, Lust, Honesty, Anger, Sympathy Regret, Obsession'. I plan to advertise the production around the school and hold an audition for 15-19 year olds, however, in my audition I don't plan to offer my auditionees drugs or play Russian Roulette with them!  

Sets and Stages

The set described at the beginning of the play is a naturalistic audition room set with table and chair, a chalk board and a door. I plan to have the set remain simple as the most important element to this play is the words spoken.

There are several types of stages I could use, including: traverse, in-the-round and proscenium.

Proscenium stages work well for audience sightlines and work is easy to block but the audience feel very removed from the action and I feel the audience feeling like they are in the scene is important in this production.

In-The-Round stages create an intimate and exciting atmosphere: it also adds to the fact that Lauren feels like she can't leave the room after a while. However it is hard to make entrances and exits on an in-the-round stage and sight lines are an issue.

I feel that the most effective stage for this play would be a traverse stage. The play is very intense and scenes of confrontation seem the most real on a traverse stage. Traverse stages work well with sets of minimal props which my set will have. The table and chair will be at one end of the stage and the blackboard at the other as these are the only two large props and are not in the way of audience sightlines.

 

An Introduction...

My name is Izzy Watkins and I am using this blogger page to present my journey in directing a play. When deciding upon what to do for my EPQ I knew I wanted to do something theatre or musical based- being a music and drama AS student.
As I plan to study musical theatre at University, my first thoughts were to direct a musical however I came across issues before even beginning: my school is small with predominantly girls, only having boys from the ages of 11 to 13. Due to this I began looking up musicals with all-female casts. I came across the website 'stagescripts' where hundreds of play synopsis' and scripts were on show. I was spoilt for choice and the idea of a musical was thrown out the window when I found a play called 'The Audition' by James Johnson.
'The Audition' drew me in straight away with it's synopsis:

Lauren is like most wannabe actresses - she wants to be famous, and to be famous you have to suffer the audition process.So when she attends an audition for a 'must-have', career-building part, little does she know that the Director, Stella, has very strong views about how an audition should be conducted; about how the person auditioning should be tested and what should and should not be said. Stella is about to push Lauren to her mental, physical, emotional and ethical limits. Each of her auditions lasts for a complete day, and they are very much one to one.Close to her breaking point, Lauren is subjected to alcohol, drugs and mind games as part of the audition process, all so that Stella can find out the answer to one question. How far will an actress go to get the part?

So, now begins the next few months of: casting a Lauren and a Stella; finding a location in which to perform the play; creating sets; selling tickets and so much more. I'm feeling very excited for this project as i've never had the opportunity to direct before and the play is magnificent.