Mastering the Shakespeare Audition: A Quick Guide to Performance Success

Description

Mastering the Shakespeare Audition is a handbook for actors of all ages and experience, whether auditioning for a professional role or a place in drama school. Many actors have no idea where to start in preparing a Shakespeare audition speech. Yet many auditions - professional or drama school - require a well-delivered classical monologue. Mastering the Shakespeare Audition shows performers how to focus rehearsal time and spend it well. Starting with how to choose a piece that plays to each actor's particular strength, casting director Donna Soto-Morettini provides a series of timed exercises and rehearsal techniques that will allow any actor to feel confident and truly prepared for performance - in sessions totalling just 35 hours. Offering progressive and clearly marked exercises detailing the time necessary both to read and complete the work, Mastering the Shakespeare Audition also features extended exercises for those with more time to spare, allowing a deeper understanding of the ideas and skills involved.

Donna Soto-Morettini has served as Director of Drama for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Head of Acting and Dance for Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and Head of Acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She has worked extensively in television and is currently a casting director for ITV's The Voice. Donna's book Mastering the Audition: How to Perform Under Pressure is also published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.

As far as skill/how-to books are concerned, one would be hard pressed to find another on this subject that is as imaginatively specific or better presented than Mastering the Shakespeare Audition. Ms. Soto-Morettini's analytical text breakdowns, her examples, her exercises and her suggestions to promote skill ability and imagination are all smart in choice, focus, clarity, and creativity. Her references, resource and book lists harken from the forefront of the industry ... Beyond the audition, in many ways this book is so comprehensive and rich that its ideas and process could easily be directly transferred into a semester syllabus for an actor's voice and speech class, an acting class or both; it is, therefore, applicable to educators and coaches alike ... Mastering the Shakespeare Audition can become a treasure for those interested in the Shakespeare audition and performance. Its instruction is direct, honest, well-honed, experienced, imaginative, and inspired. I therefore advise readers to "buckle up" and truly surrender to the technical ride. There is much to be experienced, learned, enjoyed, and accomplished. * Voice and Speech Review *