Michael Laskin Studio

Haiku:   A type of poetry from the Japanese culture that combines form, content, and language in a meaningful yet compact form. The most common form for Haiku is three short lines.  The first line usually contains 5 syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line contains five (5) syllables. Haiku doesn’t rhyme. A Haiku must “paint” a mental image in the reader’s mind. This is the challenge of Haiku – to put the poem’s meaning and imagery in the reader’s mind in ONLY 17 syllables over just three (3) lines of poetry.

It’s Pilot Season once again.  The madness begins.  If you are in the mix, you will be tested.  If you are not in the mix, you will be tested in a different way. The audition is the great leveler, the door through which we all must pass.  How we pass through it is up to us.

Consider this:  If your talent is a lyric poem, then think of your auditions as a Haiku:  short, compact, intense – embodying all characteristics of smart, informed, excellent acting – but compressed. Compressed doesn’t mean faster, by the way. It means emotionally immediate.

All actors have at least one thing in common:  we all struggle with auditions. Rarely do we feel that the audition experience fully shows our talent.  If you could design a “minefield” for actors, you’d design the TV or film audition: scant preparation time, little in the way of guidance, long drives (and long walks from the parking structure) to your meeting, little or no direction, sometime meaningless feedback.  And on, and on.  It can feel a little like target shooting in the dark.

The television and film scenes that are chosen for auditions usually show some important change in the character’s arc, some conflict, or some dilemma – all things they want to see in your work in that room in real time. They choose the scenes that are definitional to the character.  Our task in the audition is multi-layered:

• Discover the obvious changes in the scene – creating your “roadmap” for the scene
• Find (and earn) a moment that you think no one else might find – a moment that is unique to you
• Change the rhythm of the audition room
• Treat audition opportunities as a job and conduct yourself with that narrative
• Create space for your authentic self to be in that room as an equal, a collaborator, a solution

Let’s be honest.  We ALL want it; we all want the job.  We also all want that phone call from our agent or manager telling us that we have an offer.  If we didn’t want it we wouldn’t be human.  We want that “gold star” up on the blackboard by our name, the specialness of being chosen. But beware, if that specific narrative comes into the room with you it’s deadly.  They can smell it coming all the way from the parking structure – the need (that is inherently in our nature) and sometimes the desperation that stops everything dead in its tracks . So we have to trick ourselves to go against our very nature: we simply have to consider these opportunities to be jobs.  Period.  You have a job – it just happens to be on the Warner Brothers lot at 4:45 on a Thursday afternoon in Building 142, Room 10.  And – you actually may get a chance to do that job again, for money, on a soundstage, or on location. But for now, it’s your job at 4:45 on Thursday. Your job.

Is creating this new narrative for yourself easy?  Not always.  Here are some of the obstacles.

I’m an actor, and I love actors.  I understand them.  I understand the mental game of  bringing our own “personal brand” into these transactions.  I understand the test of each day, each opportunity, each disappointment.  For these audition opportunities, we must create a compressed, immediate, and dynamic version of ourselves, one that they get the minute you walk through the door – a Haiku.  Your “blink of an eye” factor is already there – you may simply not be fully aware of what it is.  It starts with knowing who you are.  Combine that with talent and strategy…..you will be on your way.

Through the dark doorway

My true light shines from within

I am your answer

ML