How to Choose an Audition Side

Video Transcript

STEVE CAVERNO: Steve Caverno, on behalf of Expert Village, here to talk to you today about dialogue. Now we're going to go through an audition side and show how this might be incorporated in a scene. Let's look at the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, the famous "get thee to a nunnery" scene in Hamlet. This has a decent amount of--one of the things you want to look at is have an equal amount of lines; that way, each character gets seen. And you also want to have a good interplay. So let's look at that in this scene as we read through it. Start with Ophelia's line. "My lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver; I pray you now receive them. No, not I; I never gave you aught." So right there we begin that scene. Ophelia has something she wants to return to Hamlet, and Hamlet says, "No, I didn't give you that, give that to you." So right there there's a conflict. We grasped the conflict. We're immediately launched into a conflict at the beginning of the audition side. And then she says, "My honoured lord, you know right well you did; and with them words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich, their perfume lost. Take these again. There, my lord. Ha, ha! Are you honest? My Lord? Are you fair? What means your lordship?" So here we have a conflict. We have a moment. We have a scene where they're engaged in a struggle. "That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty." "Could beauty, my lord, have been commerced with honesty?" Ah truly, for the power of beauty will soon transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness." "This was sometimes a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once." "Indeed, my lord, you made me think so." "You should have not believed it. I loved you not." "I was then more deceived." So in this scene then Hamlet is messing with Ophelia and Ophelia is confused. She's trying different tactics to understand him, and she's trying to get him to come back to her. So each character has a different reason to--a different motivation for their scene. "I was the more deceived." "Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" "It would better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my back than I have thoughts to put them in, imagine to give them shape or time to act them in. Go thy ways to a nunnery! Where's thy father?" "At home, my lord." "Let the doors be shut on him that he may play the fool no where but in his own house. Farewell." And then Hamlet--and then Hamlet goes to exit. Now Ophelia said, "O, help him, you sweet heavens!" And then Hamlet turns back around and says, "If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Thou be chaste as ice, as pure as snow. Thou shalt not have escaped calamity. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. Go to a nunnery. Go, quickly into. Farewell." "O heavenly powers, restore him!" So in this scene we have that drama, that conflict between Hamlet. Ophelia is trying to reason with him and she's trying to get him to be his old self and Hamlet is charging Ophelia. He's insulting her, and he's saying all these horrible things to her. And so in this scene we have a great opportunity for drama, and that's what you want to look for in an audition side.

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