The Great Acting Blog: “Preparing For Failure”

The Great Acting Blog: “Preparing For Failure”

Too often we prepare for failure. The purest example of this can be seen in the audition  process – it takes so many auditions before actually landing a part. It involves many, many knock-backs, so that eventually we learn to dare not want anything too badly. We start to expect the knock back, we aim for it even, in order to give ourselves a feeling of control when the knock back comes. Clearly this way of thinking has a corrosive effect on our work and on our selves.

Why not reverse the process? Why not expect every audition to yield a positive result? The reality is that most of them won’t, but the point is we’ll keep developing in a constructive way and we’ll have a far better time than if we just trudge around the place waiting for the knock back. It’s just a question of mindset.