Shakespeare References in Audition

Michael Shurtleff’s Audition: Everything An Actor Needs To Know To Get The Part contains several references to Shakespeare. The first play mentioned is actually Tom Stoppard’s play about two minor characters from Hamlet. Shurtleff writes about being a casting director for Broadway plays, and lists a few of those plays including Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (p. 3). The next play he refers to is Romeo And Juliet: “The actor should ask the question, ‘Where is the love?’ of every scene, or he won’t find the deepest emotional content. This does not mean that every scene is about Romeo and Juliet-type love; sometimes the scene is about the absence or deprivation of love” (p. 36). Later Shurtleff asks, “Would Laurence Olivier’s RICHARD III be half so beguiling without that incredible humor that attracts us to the man as we despise ourselves for being so attracted?” (p. 76). Shurtleff mentions Shakespeare when talking about wit: “Ask them what wit is, and most can’t even define it. Since Shakespeare is full of wit, you’d think that would give them a clue; but Shakespeare gives them a clue to nothing, since all that concerns them when they perform him is The Beauty of the Verse. (I see whole productions of Shakespeare in which I can’t follow the plot or determine the basic relationships because neither the actors nor the director ever gave those essential elements a single thought)” (p. 130). He then mentions Hamlet: “All good plays have mystery and secret for actors to explore. Hamlet’s curiosity about his mother’s remarriage is never really answered to his total satisfaction. Something in Gertrude eludes him. And Gertrude is perplexed over her son’s odd conduct. What is the secret he is keeping from her? Why is he acting in this unexpected way? What does he want?” (pages 141-142). A moment later he mentions Hamlet again: “The character that Al Pacino played in DOG DAY AFTERNOON is in some ways almost as complex as Hamlet” (p. 142). Hamlet is again referred to a little later on, when Shurtleff writes, “You don’t have to fit the action to the words in the audition situation the way you do in performing” (p. 181). There the reference is to Hamlet’s advice to the players.

In the chapter on auditioning with a monologue, Shurtleff writes, “When there is more than one character in the scene, as is so frequently the case with Shakespeare (where there can be a whole courtful of people for you to deal with), then place the different characters in widely different locations on stage, give them each a single simple attitude toward you that you are either combating or using as agreement” (p. 189). And regarding soliloquies, Shurtleff writes, “Soliloquies are regarded with great suspicion by most actors as a mean and alarming stage device invented by playwrights, chiefly Shakespeare, to torture the actor” (p. 191). He mentions Shakespeare again a few pages later: “Shakespeare’s plays retain their undiminished popularity because they are everlasting romances” (p. 197). He then tells an anecdote regarding Hamlet: “I didn’t cast all of Richard Burton’s HAMLET but was only called in by producer Alexander Cohen for an emergency one-shot job. Normally I turn them down, figuring I’m not a troubleshooter but a casting director who needs to be part of the creative effort from the beginning, not doing patch work after it’s all too late; but this was to work with director John Gielgud on finding a new Ophelia. I’d never worked with Sir John so I said an immediate yes. It turned out it was not Sir John’s idea to fire the actress he had; the producer and others wanted her replaced, so Sir John pacified them by coming into New York from the pre-Broadway tour for a day of auditioning new Ophelias” (pages 235-236). There is then a reference to The Tempest. Shurtleff is talking about pantomiming props during an audition, and writes, “You don’t have to search for the proper vinyl-topped table to put it on, either; just let it go into thin air” (p. 252). That’s a reference to Prospero’s line, “These our actors,/As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air.” He then mentions Romeo And Juliet again: “Love is not always Romeo and Juliet. Most actors seem to think it is. Ideal love, or nothing, is how they view it” (p. 253). There is one last reference to Romeo And Juliet: “If love had to have the romance, youth and perfection of Romeo and his Juliet, most of us would never experience love at all” (p. 254).

Audition: Everything An Actor Needs To Know To Get The Part was published in 1978.