No matter how ready you make yourself for acting auditions, your audition panel will almost certainly want to see how you respond to the unprepared. This is a test of your basic instinct as an actor to ‘keep the curtain up.’ Most staged performances suffer glitches, even if it is just the audience reacting in an unexpected way, and the good actor knows how to respond to that in a positive, non-alarmist way. Auditionees also need to show that they have an active imagination, because often that is a source of inspiration to both theatre and film director.
It is not easy to practise the unexpected, but at least you can get used to a degree of improvising by taking a part as an extra. One good way is to watch how other performers manage it, whether by studying them at work over a run of performances, or reading about their work. Stand-up comics, if you can ignore the jokes, are useful for this: they are constantly on a knife-edge with their audience, and it is possible to see where they succeed and fail, and learn strategies for yourself from that.
The more you acclimatise yourself to performance of the unknown and unexpected, the more you will have to offer when you go into auditions or casting calls. The side-benefit is that you will gain in self-confidence, and look forward to your next auditions.
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Tags: acting auditions, Auditions, casting calls, extras