Auditioning for Romeo & Juliet
 

Tomorrow morning marks the beginning of auditions for my school's production of Romeo and Juliet. This will mark my second time auditioning for a lead so I'm pretty nervous.

I know the character pretty well and I'm used to the language but I'm getting the nerves. Any tips to combat my nervousness?

Just remember that you're taking your first step to fame, and as a first step, you're allowed to stumble. If you pick yourself up and keep going, you may find yourself in more important roles. Shakespearean acting is nothing but preparation for sitting in a captain's chair.

In short, break a leg and have fun. It's a school production. Chances of you being discovered by someone big in this are the same as being struck by lighting, twice, standing in the same spot, when it's brassy day. You trip over a line, worst case scenario, you'll probably just get a smaller role, and it won't be the end of the world. Don't sweat the small stuff.


Edit: I mean crap, John Travolta didn't get the lead the first he did Grease. He was Doodie. The movie was an upgrade for him. Chillax.

Start getting a good night's rest. As hard as it is, you've prepped about as much as you can. Have some faith in yourself and you'll do fine.

Or put another way, BELIEVE IN THE YOU THAT BELIEVES IN YOU!!!!

Seriously though, have confidence and do you're best. Good luck tomorrow.

Try and think of your audition as something you're doing purely for the fun of it, not something important. Think of it as something you're doing for it's own sake, not to get a part, but just an audition you want to do because auditions are fun.

Just go in and have fun. If you get the part then great, if not at least you had fun auditioning.

kill the others, that way you're the best! or just go out there, and get the part anyway. Whatever works for you. either way, good luck.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it.

Go, make you ready.

Also remember that no matter how horribly your audition might or might not go....

http://www.shakespearefilms.com/imag...and-juliet.jpg

...some dumbass has already fucked it up worse than you ever could. And they still made a movie out of it. That helps with the nerves, ne?

Hey now, in the 400 odd years since Romeo+ Juliet was written only one version has even approached being passable and it's that one.

Smarty's right. I mean, Mercutio was a black drag queen. Best version of all time.