Student Actors Make Great First Impressions

Student Actors Make Great First Impressions During January Term Theatrical Audition Course

The getting-ready-for-prime-time players--John Grassilli, producing director of Summer Theatre at Mount Holyoke, gives pointers to students in his January term course "Getting Cast." The course prepared aspiring actors for those all-important theatrical auditions.

"You can disqualify yourself in the first six seconds of a two-minute audition," says John Grassilli, producing director of Summer Theatre at Mount Holyoke and coinstructor with actress Susan Daniels '79 of the January term course The Professional Audition: Getting Cast. "It's called 'the flop,' when the auditioners toss your photo and résumé onto either the 'call-back' or the trash pile." Avoiding the auditioners' trash heap is what the course is all about.

Grassilli described the eighteen-hour course as a bridge between the academic theater and professional theater worlds. "It was a very accurate replica of a New York audition class that prepares you for general auditions, the first step for most actors." General auditions, known as 'cattle calls,' are large-scale group auditions where as many as two hundred representatives of live entertainment organizations look for fresh talent. "I auditioned 2,200 actors last year myself for twelve positions at the Summer Theatre," points out Grassilli, "so you need to know what's expected at a casting call."

Theatre major Danielle O'Connell '00 is planning to audition for summer-stock positions at the New England Theatre Conference in March. "It's my first general audition. I needed help gaining more confidence and understanding the experience ahead of time. If I had not had this class I would have made a fool of myself, but now I know what casting directors want."

"What we teach is to control the critical factors that you can control: level of stage confidence, use of voice, and use of body," explains Grassilli. "We talk about accepting rejection, and encourage young actors to remember that they're always auditioning for next time."

Twenty percent of course time covered the mechanics and business of theater, while the rest was devoted to selecting, preparing, performing, and critiquing each student's two-minute audition piece.

More than half of the twelve women in the class have a serious interest in acting, while some came for fun and because they've enjoyed participating in school productions. Dilrukshi Fonseka '00 was involved in school theater productions and competitions in Sri Lanka, where her school performed Shakespeare and modern playwrights such as Tennessee Williams. Fonseka, whose audition piece is from Neil Simon's Chapter 2, is thinking of choosing a theater minor. "A theater audition is like a job interview. The way you walk on stage and say your name, for example. Even though J-term is a time for doing what you want, the class was useful for learning how to perform in front of a group."