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Tips For Preparing Your College Audition Material |
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Written by triplethreat
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Tips For College Auditions
College auditions are unlike most other auditions you will attend in your performing career - there is no specific production to focus your audition pieces around, so it can seem overwhelming when trying to pick material. While every college is different, there are some basic guidelines that will help you narrow your focus.
- Pick age-appropriate and type-appropriate material. Colleges want future professional performers in their programs. By choosing material that suits your age and type, you are showing the audition panel that you understand what your limitations are, and that you know how to market yourself to your strengths. You should never use material belonging to a character that you could not realistically play at the professional level.
- Remember that high-school casting is not a good indication of your type. Highschools must cast teenagers as middle-aged characters and may even cast females as males. If you have mostly performed in highschool productions, you may not have a realistic view of your type. To get a realistic view of your type, try feedback from an agent or a site like areuastar.com
- You can't start too early. You just can't rush finding the "perfect" audition material - it takes time and effort. Listen to tons of cast recordings and read tons of scripts, and keep track of the ones you like. Spend time at the library. Trust me - the audition panel can tell who has spent a significant amount of time doing this and who picked the first song & monologue they found in an anthology.
- Remember that obscure does not mean better. Realistically, the audition panel has been holding college auditions for years. They have heard just about every possible audition song - good or bad. So if your only goal is to find a song they wont have heard before - good luck! And if you DO find a song they haven't heard before... do you think there might be a good reason for that? Yes, there are songs that are just too overdone to even bother with, but your goal should be to choose the best song for you.
- Don't use cold material if you can help it. Once you have chosen your material, do everything you can to get experience presenting this material before you start your college auditions. Cabarets, coffeehouses, workshops and other auditions are all great opportunities to "work the kinks out" beforehand. Not only will you identify potentially embarrassing problems ahead of time, but you will also gain a great deal of confidence with the material.
- Keep things in perspective. However much it may feel like it, college auditions are not the be-all and end-all of your career. Many professional performers have taken many different paths to get where they are - so don't panic. You can audition again, you can take a year off to gain work experience, you can get a degree in a related field, you can start a "day career" while continuing to perform in the evenings... there are so many different ways to get where you want to go, and college is just one of them. Take these auditions seriously, of course! But don't feel that your career is over before it has even started if it doesn't work out for you the first time.
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