What are your favourite audition pieces?

— St Gabriel’s Drama (@StGabrielsDrama)

What are your favourite audition pieces?

— St Gabriel's Drama (@StGabrielsDrama) January 13, 2021

My dear, I think it would be far more useful if I told you my least favourite audition pieces. If I told you my favourites, they’d quickly become my least because everyone would start doing them. And there is nothing as bad as something that is overdone – we only need to look at James Corden to see that.

Many people will say they don’t mind hearing any audition speech, as long as the actor keeps it nice and fresh. But, believe me, after sitting in mouldy church halls for the past 30 years, nothing terrifies me more than an actor doing a speech I’ve heard hundreds of times. Yes, they may do it differently, trying different accents and gurning intensely, but my damaged, dramatic heart begs for something new.

My first tip is to steer clear of speeches that everyone does. Some examples that spring to mind are Willy’s ‘To be or not to be’, various speeches from Mamet plays (Glengarry Glen Ross being a multiple offender), countless monologues from Stoppard’s ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Overused’, speeches from A Streetcar Named Desire and Fat Pig by Neil Labute.

Also, avoid those audition monologue books. Everyone else will be reading them so your lovely new monologue will be the same as everyone else’s.

Another big no-no is famous speeches from movies. I recall an embarrassing rendition of the ‘you can’t handle the truth’ speech from A Few Good Men, where the auditionee leaned across my table and shouted it millimetres away from my face.

He was very passionate and really sold the character, but he’d clearly had a lot of garlic the night before, which ruined everything (garlic ruins even the most marvellous theatrical performances, dear).

As an old friend once said: “Don’t do something famous. Do something that will make you famous.”