Tips on Cold Reads when Auditioning

Cold Reads

Your only have a few seconds and need to get into character
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for me. The original play that I was rehearsing for the last couple of months fell through and was canceled by the director one week before we were to perform it. Fortunately, another director asked me to fill in at the last minute for an actor that fell ill. The crazy thing is, I only had seven days to get “off book” and on stage for opening night! The first weekend was pretty tough because us actors really didn’t have a feel for each other due to us only having two rehearsals together, only one of which was with the director. Crazy. Luckily we had a second weekend of performances and things really came together. It was a great experience, especially considering the nebulous nature of show business.

Speaking of show business, I was lucky enough to hear about and attend a cold reading casting workshop with the casting director of Comedy Central, Toni Magon. What the seminar entailed was she paired up the entire room and gave us sides for us to work on and perform. I was paired with a young man who is a working stand-up comedian and our script was about two athletes, one who is the stereotypical ego driven man, and the other guy trying to organize a party without getting thrown off the team. Of course, I didn’t know any of this back story so the lines barely made sense. The choices that the two of us made reflected this ignorance.

Still, it was great to get up in front of Toni and a total group of strangers and listen to Toni’s feedback. She liked what he did with what he had to work with and didn’t like what I did because I was completely wrong in how I played the character. A few months ago this would have devastated me to listen to her and I might have gotten defensive. Instead, I did what I wouldn’t have done before. I listened to what she had to say. She proceeded to give us the back story of what was going on with these characters (gave us notes) and let us perform it again. I would love to say that we killed it the second time around, but it just turned out to be an opportunity to show her that we could take her notes and work with it. I wish I had done better, but I am pretty sure that I am a better actor because of the experience and that made it totally worth the money and drive up to West Hollywood for the seminar.

I learned a lot from watching the other actors and listening to Toni give her thoughts. These included:

1. Don’t try to create a character or affect some crazy accent when cold reading if you are not required to. Try to read between the lines and find the comedy in the subtext. I saw a few people try this and none were successful. Their performances ended up being a distraction.

2. Listen to each other when you are on stage. Pacing is important in comedy and if you fail to work with the other actor in delivering snappy dialog, the scene will fail. Toni talked about one of the things she really looks for when casting is if the actor who isn’t delivering lines is reacting to what the other is saying. I think I was able to do this well (or at least that is what I keep telling myself). Maybe it’s because the guy I was acting with was so over the top, which was what the script called for.

3. Try to understand the jokes that you are telling. A lot of the humor comes in beat changes, or changes in intention. A lot of the actors were just running through these lines and all of the humor was lost.

4. One of the other things that Toni pointed out was that taking classes with outfits such as Second City or the Groundlings is pretty important to a lot of producers. One time an actor gave a fantastic reading, but when the producer asked about her education and experience she said that she had none. She didn’t get the part because the producer couldn’t trust that she had some formal training to draw upon.

The seminar was the fastest two hours I have ever spent. I found a lot of value in her feedback and now you got the quick and dirty without having to spend the money or drive in LA traffic to get there. Who says this blog isn’t worth reading? I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me and I think the next step is to check out when the next Second City class is scheduled. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

Fred