NOV
3

Virtual Auditions and Self-Tapes

By Chase Conlin 

Chase is a Colorado native who spent his childhood in the beautiful mountain town of Conifer, where he graduated from high school in 2019.  He started acting in his local community theatre and got his first professional acting gig his sophomore year of high school doing Spamalot.  After high school, Chase found himself getting more acting jobs and decided to pursue an acting career, eager to start contracts with other theatre companies across the country...  until the 2020 shutdown happened.  Finding himself displaced, adapting to virtual theatre, and most importantly, looking through the classifieds, he was thrilled to land a customer service position at Pioneer Drama Service, where he can remain in the realm of theatre and hum Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” on his way to work every morning. 

It’s sad that most live theatre is still on hold.  Broadway and regional theatre seasons are on pause, or even worse, shut down for good.  School and community theatre programs are trying to figure out how to teach and present theatre without a stage, a live audience, or even a classroom or rehearsal space.  Everyone’s trying to figure out what “live” even means anymore!  This leads us to the world of virtual performances and the even more challenging virtual auditioning.  Having to adapt to a virtual platform may feel impossible right now but I assure you, with practice and help from others, virtual theatre does work, including virtual auditioning.

Actually, virtual auditioning has been around long before the COVID-19 pandemic, though it has become much more prevalent now to keep the actors, directors, and theatre space safe.  Pre-pandemic, I was sending self-tapes to audition for theatres across the country, as well as to casting agencies in various cities.  Back then, it was for the creative team to make a decision as to who to invite to an in-person callback.  Now, it’s almost guaranteed that for now the entire audition process will be held virtually.

Typically, in the past few months as I’ve been ”live” auditioning virtually, I’ve sent in a self-tape first, then if I made callbacks, it’s on the Zoom platform.  But making it to this step takes a good quality self-tape, so let’s start there.

The Self-Tape

A self-tape is a pre-recorded video of an actor performing the audition material provided by the theatre company or their own audition material as requested, all from the comfort of their home.  The self-tape is submitted to the casting team and is typically a precursor to a callback (if you’re lucky!).

While some might find the process of making a self-tape more stressful than in-person auditions, I personally like sending self-tapes.  I feel much more comfortable and less nervous since there is no limit to how many times I can redo something if it isn’t right, and I also have more time to process my thoughts.  Without nerves holding me back, I feel much freer to make choices I wouldn’t have otherwise made for a live audition.  For example, depending on the type of character I am portraying, I feel more at ease to get silly with my voice or body movement.  In front of a panel of directors, I might be too shy or really overthink something and make the wrong choice.  Like most actors, I love performing in front of hundreds of people, yet singing my 32-bar cut to a table of six people whose job it is to judge me is much scarier.

On the other hand, as a stage actor, I never really know what to do when a camera is recording me.  Like most people, I absolutely hate watching myself on tape.  I think we’ve all had that “yikes” moment where we watch ourselves and think, “Ew, do I really look like that?”  or “Oh no, does my voice really sound like that?”  But I’ve learned that watching myself — and my mistakes — over and over is the best way to not repeat them.  Hopefully, as more actors are making self-tapes in this new age of theatre, they’ll experience what I have:  that being forced to watch myself has made me a better actor.

When I first started, making a self-tape was a very uncomfortable and painstaking task.  However, with lots of practice and some trial-and-error, the experience has become a little less painful and a little more second nature.  Even better, I discovered I can get really creative with how I film and edit to make myself stand out from other auditionees.  And while it is nice to have an ultra-fancy set-up, it is not necessary.  When I make a self-tapes, I make sure that I have: 

1. Good lighting.
2. A clean camera lens.
3. A plain background like a wall, so there’s nothing distracting going on behind me.
4. Some kind of editing software or app.
5. A test video of sound quality, whether I’m using headphones or relying on a different microphone.
6. If I’m singing on the self-tape, I also do a test video of the song I chose to see how I am attaching the accompaniment.
7. “Slate” my name for the camera, along with mentioning my age, height, vocal range (when applicable), and what material I will be performing.
   And most importantly...
8. A great attitude to prove that regardless of the format, I will listen, adapt, and be enjoyable to work with.  No one is expecting me to be flawless, but everyone is expecting me to be willing to pay attention and learn.

I was a total fish out of water when it came to making my first self-tape!  I found that watching other actors’ tapes on YouTube was a great learning tool.  It helped me see not only what they did that I liked and wanted to incorporate, but I was also able to see what didn’t work for me.

The Virtual Callback

So when I’ve been fortunate to receive a virtual callback, I’ve been sent a link to sit in the virtual waiting room at an assigned time until I’m invited into the video call for a private session, where we go through things like a normal audition, just on Zoom or the like.  From what I have experienced, I think this system works great.  It’s almost like traditional auditions except now I can do it all from the comfort of my home.  And with my name at the bottom pinned to the screen, the directors don’t call me by the name of the other skinny white guy with glasses at the audition!

It is important to note, however, that even though the format of our auditions has changed, our audition etiquette has not.  I’ve had so many casual Zoom and Facetime calls with friends and family, that when I go to these sites for auditions, I have to be very cognizant to maintain a professional demeanor.  Even though the casting directors are in my home through my screen, I must remember to act as though everything is taking place at the theatre.  A word of caution:  make sure to look into the camera and not at your own image on the screen.  It’s easy to look at yourself to see how you’re doing, but it doesn’t look right from the director’s perspective.

Earlier, I talked about making bolder or broader choices with self-tapes, and in callbacks I’ve received comments on some of those choices that have helped me in the “live” audition.  For example, I’m not overly confident when it comes to dialect, so when reading on my self-tape for A Man of No Importance, I didn’t focus at all on my (not-so-good) Irish dialect because I was focused more on the singing and acting choices I was making.  In callback, directors noticed that I started getting in my head about the dialect, so they reminded me how I did my self-tape and the choices I made there.  They reminded me that a dialect coach could help me later.  After that, I felt even more comfortable making more bold choices to showcase my talents.  Having that open communication takes the edge off and makes the audition experience much easier and more enjoyable for both the creatives and myself.

While there’s practically nothing good about the limitations with this pandemic, the opportunity to teach and practice virtual auditioning might actually be a rare silver lining.  Your students who plan to pursue professional acting during or after high school will greatly benefit from this experience!  You might even consider making virtual auditions and self-tapes a permanent part of your high school theatre curriculum.  That would have been extremely helpful to me since I launched myself into the world of professional auditions while still in high school.

There’s no point wishing for our traditional in-person theatre to come back, since it’s out of our control when that wonderful day will be.  So let’s instead learn to work with this virtual theatre format, if nothing else, for karma’s sake and to adapt better to the hurricane that has been this past eight months!  And in the meanwhile, we can develop new skills that will be beneficial both now and whenever live theatre returns.