A few weeks back I told you to always “feel free to make it your own.” Remember? I said that hosting auditions mostly want to see YOU not necessarily their copy.
Well, I am eating crow right now because I was SO wrong, at a recent audition.
Here’s what happened. When I received the insanely lengthy copy I was told there would not be a teleprompter or a copy-board, so I would have to memorize the content. No prob… until I read the verbosely written copy. As I like to say, it was written for the eye not for the mouth. Meaning, it was not easy to say and didn’t sound like people talk.
So, what did I do? I made it my own, of course! I paraphrased, shortened and generally tightened it up to sound great (or so I thought!). Well, by the time I got to the audition with my version permanently engrained in my brain, they had worked out having a teleprompter on set. Great, right? Um, not so much.
Here’s the deal, it can be hard to read from a prompter if you’re saying things entirely differently from what’s in front of your eyes. Bottom line, my commitment to my copy made me feel unable to handle their original copy. I was screwed.
They didn’t want any kind of a departure from their copy. They loved their version. In fact, their EP wrote it and was excited to hear it! Crap. I hadn’t worked on their copy at all since I knew it was going to be a memorization nightmare. As I read from the prompter, I was flying blind which is a terribly unsettling feeling.
I left there disappointed in myself, bummed about my performance and frankly very much like a rookie. I knew better. Always serve thy master first then serve yourself. On the brightside, I knew I had something valuable to share with you guys 😉 And, here it is: Always be ready with THEIR copy and feel free to have yours in your back pocket. Sure it’s more work, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Curious how it turned out?
Well, evidently they liked me a lot (I can’t account for people’s taste!) and I was in the running for weeks… until just 10 minutes ago when I chatted with my agent who told me they had enough blonde, white girls. It happens. No biggie. I’m just happy I wasn’t nixed when I thought I deserved to be.
In the infamous words of my husband, Marty Metro, “Good luck and be yourself!