Acting Auditions - Adding Conflict and Keeping it Slightly Comedic

By Kirk Baltz


Conflict is typically avoided by the majority of people. It can inevitably lead to anxious feelings, fear, and chaos. However, during an acting audition, conflict is essential to delivering an impressive reading. In order to have a good audition, it is necessary for an actor to find the conflict within a story and within a character.

The majority of persons and characters have internal conflicts between desires and feelings. External conflicts can also permeate a person's life in the form of struggles between man and God, fate, the world, and Mother Nature. And, of course, relational conflicts exist as well. When an actor reads for an audition, he or she is only given the bare framework such as a story overview and the lines. Every story and character has interior conflicts, with some being harder to uncover than others. It is the actor's job to find the hidden conflict and give it life in their audition.

Conflict is always interesting. Instability provides a story with movement as well as depth. After you have gotten a handle on the personality of the character, there are naturally going to be difficulties and obstacles that that character must face. That is life. Our life's hurdles must be overcome and manipulated until they become collaborators in our lives. "Midnight Run" is a perfect movie to consider. Robert De Niro plays a bounty hunter who is responsible for the capture of Charles Grodin's character. Jack (De Niro) is required to track down Mardukas (Grodin) in order to collect his bounty. Jack experiences numerous conflicts in the form of other bounty hunters, his personal turmoil, and, of course, Mardukas.

All of the answers may not be provided to you in the material provided to you at the audition. Improve your acting audition by using the dialogue and the clues therein to create a character full of depth and truth. In this way, you will be more likely to grab onto and hold the auditor's attention and make the performance more real for the viewer. There is nothing worse than performing a one-dimensional reading of a character with no emotion and conflict. With these skills, your auditioning skills are sure to improve.

Make sure that the conflict you create is multi-dimensional. The typical person has numerous inner demons that are in constant turmoil. Keep this in mind when doing your reading and you will be sure to add intrigue to the character you are portraying. Creating a character's personality is far more important than the lines that are being read.

Although your character may be the only live person in the scene, there are doubtless other hidden forces affecting his or her life. To have a successful reading, you as an actor must know how to draw these emotions and circumstances out of the text and take the character to the next level. There is another thing to remember about conflict. A small amount of comedy should also be present within any conflict. Even the largest conflict will contain some levity. Neglecting to add comedy will make the reading unwatchable. In short, conflict and comedy are both an integral part of a successful and impressive reading.




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