Shea McDonough

Acting Studio III

Twelve Guideposts
Michael Shurtleff was a prominent casting director on Broadway. He was also a
successful teacher as his audition course helped launch many careers. In this book, Audition,
Shurtleff gives invaluable advice about approaching auditions and giving them gravitas. He sums
up his ideas in his twelve guideposts: relationships, conflict, the moment before, humor,
opposites, discoveries, communication & competition, importance, find the events, place, game
playing and role playing, mystery & secret.
Relationships are essential to acting. In order to create a fully realized character, an actor
must contemplate how their character relates to others. Simply giving titles to relationships is not
enough to create intriguing connections. One must understand the emotion behind relationships.
Conflict is crucial for an actor to find in the audition process. Conflict creates drama and
piques the interest of the audience. Therefore, it is important to raise the stakes and strive for
maximum conflict. That is not to say one should chew the scenery and get too ridiculous,
unless a campy style is warranted. Actors should access their goal in a scene and find who is
standing in the way of that goal.
Scenes innately begin in the middle of the action, so the actor must consider the moment
before. Actors are responsible for concocting plausible explanations of what happened moments

before any particular scene. Sometimes heretofore moments are not enough to give a scene life.
Actors will sometimes have to go back years or even decades to provide adequate back story.
Humor is vital to auditioning. But humor is not merely defined by jokes or funniness.
Humans use humor not only in casual social settings, but also in the heaviest, most serious
situations. Humor exists in the grimmest, solemnest moments. In real life, humans do not often
like to directly deal with conflict, so they look for ways to cope with the awkwardness. Humor
eases those difficult situations.
Life is not generally black and white in most situations. Humans often contradict
themselves. Therefore, every aspect of a character should be handled with opposite perspectives
at least once. People inherently take on different identities in everyday life; consequently, people
change their minds and shift perspective depending on the circumstances. Since these
extremities do exist in all of us, then they must also exist in each character in each scene.
Humans are constantly making discoveries and absorbing new information and
experiences. Though some of us are prone to experiencing dj vu, no two moments in time are
identical. Thusly, scenes should also feature discoveries or bits that happen for the first time. No
matter how old-hat a particular situation is, there are always unique elements. Kerry Graves
stresses actors should live in the moment. With more discoveries, actors rely less on overrehearsed, affected acting.
Communication is obviously rather imperative when it comes to relationships.
Communication should be achieved through the dialogue you have with other characters. The

story should also be communicated clearly to the audience and adjudicators. Competition keeps
the performance energetic.
Importance relates back to conflict in regard to auditioning. The contents of a play or
movie are of heightened interest and increased conflict. Drama features the most important
moments so as to keep plays and films succinct and effective. Audiences often respond poorly to
shows in which there is seemingly nothing important going on. Audiences do not want filler;
they want to feel entertained and stimulated. But finding the importance in a scene can be
difficult as we are trained to avoid confrontation in real life. But confrontation and conflict are
the lifeblood of drama.
Actors must find the events in a dramatic work. An event can be a number of things,
including a change, confrontation, or climax. The climax is the high point. Finding the events
helps create a clearer picture in the actors mind of what the most important moments are. These
bits should be dealt with deliberately and purposefully. Events keep the story flowing and
focused.
In most audition situations, the actor is given a chair to work with at the most. Otherwise,
the actor is given an empty stage, which does necessarily lend itself to a superior scene with
authentic movement. As a result, the actor is responsible for developing the place or setting.
The physical nature of a place is only the beginning. The most important element is how you
feel about the place. The feeling is most important. It is a good idea to draw up a floor plan and
study stage directions as it will only add to your performance. Once an actor is comfortable with
his/her immediate surroundings, he/she is free to call upon their prior research and character
work.

Like humor, actors can incorporate game playing and role playing to make their acting
more believable. We use these tools to avoid the harshness of reality. We assume different
identities. The best acting always has a quality of Mystery and Secret. Commence into the
unknown and let that propel your performance.