The Great Acting Blog: "The Audition - A Short Script - Part 1"

This week, I decided to do something different and publish a short film script I wrote. Why? Well largely because the script deals with something I've been wanting to write about, namely, how an actor can participate in his own downfall by being too eager to please outside forces, a subject relevant to The Great Acting Blog. The script in question is called The Audition, and you've probably already guessed, it's about an audition, and particularly the way auditionee and auditioner interact. We all of us participate in a hypocrisy at various times of our life, and we participate mainly because we are frightened. In the case of The Audition, the interviewer is frightened of losing his position of power over the actor, and fails to explain himself properly in order to hold all the cards, and it may even be the case that he fails to explain himself because he may not know what he is talking about, and wants to conceal that fact. The actor in the script, “Tony Wallis”, participates because he is frightened of offending his interviewer by asking him to explain himself properly, or be seen to not understand and therefore risk being seen as a “bad actor”. Either way, he is ultimately frightened of losing the possibility of employment. The script was inspired by something which happened to me seven or eight years ago while working on a short film. Everytime I said my first line in my scene, the director would shout: CUT! - and tell me I wasn't doing it right, and would then speak my line of dialogue back to me in order to show me how it should be done, and then he would repeat the way I was saying the line in order to hi-light the difference between the two. The only problem was, I could discern no difference between the way I was doing it and his version of the line, and, to this day, I swear I still haven't got a clue about what he was talking about. Anyway, this happened perhaps a half a dozen times, until the director, still unsatisfied, finally and wearily ordered everyone just to get on with the scene as the clock was ticking, and made no attempt to masque his disappointment with my “interpretation”. I don't look back on this incident with bitterness or anger, but with a fond affection for a formative experience on this strange and wonderful journey that is the actor's. Anyway, the dialogue for this scene has been rattling around in my head for a number of years now, and obviously the original incident has been reworked by my imagination, and now takes place in an audition situation rather than on a film set. I intend to shoot the film in one static shot, focussed on the auditionee, Tony Wallis (as it would be in a real audition situation) who we first see when he sits, and we only ever hear The Interviewer off-screen, we never see him. Also, when the line “this here land is my father's land” is spoken in the script, it should be said in an identical way each time. And so it is then, I offer this simple and fun short script. I hope you find it enjoyable to read, and I thank-you for taking the time to do so. Please visit The Audition - A Short Script - Part 2, for the actual script.