Acting and auditions are two different animals. Why? Because acting is meant to move an audience, auditions are meant to get a job. Yes, you might say that in an audition there IS an audience of one, or sometimes a few. But truth be told, you are acting in these auditions as an infinitely specific test of your skills since the auditors are NOT there to be entertained in the way an audience comes to be entertained - they are there to see if you fit a certain role that is in need of casting.

So these gate keepers, if you will, can’t allow themselves to get lost in the story you’re telling, actually they are sick and tired of the story you’re telling - they’ve seen and heard it about forty times that day alone. These casting directors, directors, producers, are actually there to judge you. And what happens when we feel judged? Our acting goes out the window and we start to please. We no longer live in the fragile but rewarding fantasy we construct when the creative gods are with us; we start living in the horrid fantasy of parental pleasing. Acting and auditions have little to do with one another in the final analysis, but the few among us who can play like children and turn those testing facilities into their childhood playgrounds, sometimes under the most adverse circumstances, will always win the day.