Your Sixty Seconds of Fame
Auditions, no matter what anyone says, are often won or lost in the first sixty seconds. One minute is really all the time you have to truly establish a solid presence and make a definite claim on our attention. The first moment we lay eyes on an actor is rarely forgotten. That may sound  prejudiced, but it is, in fact, true. And the sixty second countdown begins as soon as you approach the stage, even before you speak your first line. Just your mere presence radiates an aura that the spoken monologue will only confirm or contradict. Yet in that first minute it can often be love or hate at first sight.

Don't think of an audition as a contest with other actors. You are really competing with the clock and the short attention span of your listeners; especially short if they have seen a lot of other actors during the same audition. They want to be captivated by someone special, someone who is a professional and who won't waste time. They are looking for a person with an appetite for work; someone who can become part of an ensemble and withstand the pressure of concentrated effort. Auditions are frequently tense because the eventual rehearsal process and performance is even more intense. Show them, immediately, that you can bear the weight of an opening night performance. If they choose you for a part, so much time and energy will go into you - your competence and reliability must be demonstrated by your audition and your cv.
 

1. 1 Preparation
2. 2 Relaxation
3. 3 Concentration
4. 4 Compensation
5. 5 Motivation
6. 6 Characterization
7. 7 Physicalization
8. 8 Revelation
9. 9 Resolution

Preparation
Read the play from which your audition monologue comes, several times.
Investigate its background. Study its sources, context and content. Look at your speech in detail. What about it surprises you, moves you, makes you laugh? What about the strong contrasts between words, the darkness and light that often inhabits the best speeches? What are you trying to accomplish and convince us of in what you are saying? How does the monologue build in expectation and arrive at various plateaux or sudden bursts of recognition? All good speeches build to some climax. Why do you need to say this particular speech and why say it now? Does it make you angry? Does it settle some personal score? Does it say something about you?

Relaxation
Auditions & indeed life produce tensions. And tensions are the actor's great enemies. But muscular tension, especially around the neck and shoulders and in the voice, can be freed and relaxed through a proper physical warm-up. Arriving early can help calm nerves - it gives you time to adjust to the surroundings. Deep breathing, mental relaxation exercises, focusing on the mood of the character you are about to portray, can take one's mind off the self-absorption that leads to nerves.

Concentration
Enter your character's body before you take the stage. Dwell on motivation, the why and 'what if' of your character. Concentrate on the events and circumstances leading up to the speech. Enter the scene with energy and purpose. Enter it as a character with something important to say.

Compensation
Always be prepared to compensate for the things that go wrong. Your partner doesn't show up, the room is locked, your name's not on the list, it is cold, you are late leaving work or arriving. Something always goes wrong. Compensate. Seek alternatives. Always be prepared, for instance, to sight read an unfamiliar script. Expect that the room for your audition will have shifted to some other place. Adapt to each change in plans.

When things go wrong - and they will - don't make excuses. Simply adjust, compensate and push ahead. If variations arise in your presentation, enjoy the variety, Show you are resourceful and make use of the change. Directors look for dimension and range and flexibility in a performer.

Motivation
Studying the motivation of the character we are presenting gives us reasons for doing and saying something through performance. It makes us perform an action or say a speech. Unless the actor knows why he or she sits in specific chair, why we are talking to another character, why we are taking drink, or why we are saying a speech, any task of acting will only be vague. Understanding a character's motivation gives conviction to the lines.

Who am I? What do I want in this scene? Where am I going? What obstacles stand in my way? Who am I talking to? What am I seeking or saying, beat by beat, word by word? Let the will, needs, and desires of your character totally absorb you. Let the motivation of the character become a replacement for self-consciousness.

Characterization
Entering the world of a character is a lengthy and prolonged process. It means trying many different tacks before settling on the right one for you. The actor dives into the character repeatedly in the hope of penetrating all the layers. This is a rich process of discovery for the actor and is never arrived at instantly.

Find personal parallels with your own life in the character's life. For auditions you should choose a cast of sympathetic characters who are extensions of yourself. The substance and shading that you give your characters will also be carefully noted. Keep working on character. There is always something new to discover. What new inflection can you add to a speech? What new turn on a phrase? Establish in your own mind the main features of the character's personality very clearly, but then be willing with each audition performance to explore new aspects of the character as you perform. This keeps a freshness in the performance, so that it doesn't sound like a recitation from memory, but a first time portrayal of actual events.

Physicalization
Acting is disciplined, hard work. It demands stamina along with mental concentration. It requires gesture as well as verbal agility. The eyes are remarkably important as instruments in a performance. Keeping your body alive and interesting on-stage should receive as much work as the way you deliver a speech. If you are pliant, physically, a director will see that he or she can work with you.

Revelation
Revelations give speeches and performances the satisfaction of having arrived someplace important. Every good monologue contains a crucial moment when the whole speech reveals its intention. Find that moment to build your whole performance around. It may come at the beginning, middle, or end of the speech. A moment of revelation can be prepared for and scored. What, for instance, is the kernel of the speech, its most important word or phrase?

Resolution
Always leave them with something to remember, and leave them wanting more. The end of a monologue can be fast or slow, a fadeout or a blackout. But it should be obviously the end, and should show your control of the material and yourself.