Ten top tips for your Drama School auditions.

Preparation:

1. When choosing the perfect audition speech, you should spend some time identifying your best assets as an actor and focusing clearly on these particular qualities in order to find the text/character that delivers them for you. What are you good at? What kind of emotions do you find easier to connect with? What kind of human do you have the most tangible connection to?

2. Read the play. It seems perhaps a little obvious, but all your clues to character are in the text and will give you a rich source of ideas to provoke your creative imagination.

3. Once you have chosen your speech, you need to get to know and understand your character. It's important to remember that everyone will play any one character differently- that's what makes the process of interpretation so interesting. It's the same as getting to know someone for the very first time. So... ask questions, as many as you can think of, in order to delve deeper and come to a greater understanding of your human.

3. Why am I speaking? Often called the 'Objective' or 'Super Objective', you need to find a strong purpose or need to speak at that particular moment. There has to be a reason why you speak uninterrupted for 2 or 3 minutes other than the writer giving you the words to say. I need to...? I must...? Try to challenge your self with a high stakes Super Objective and change it if it doesn't work for you. A lot of creative work is down to a healthy amount of trial and error.

4. What's just happened? The tone of atmosphere, significance of a plot twist or even your character's response to a seemingly banal question, can have a profound affect on how you start to speak.

5. Where are you? It's important to to inhabit a world of your making. As with any character development, you need to keep asking questions. Are you inside or outside? Are you familiar with where you are? What can you see? Etc, etc. Create the entire world in your head; a bit like being your own personal set designer.

6. Who are you talking to? Is it one person? A crowd? God? An inanimate object? The possibilities are endless of course, dependant on the play, but again you must use your imagination to see and know who your speech is directed at. If it is a person or people, cast who you want and direct them to suit your needs; it is for you to create a world that both you and importantly, your panelist believes in.

Delivery:

7. On the day of your audition, remember that your job is to make it as easy as possible for the panelist to see you and your work. They are excited to meet you and the prospect of what you might have to offer. You are wonderfully unique; this individuality should be celebrated, so don't succumb too much to trying to be like anyone else or what you feel you should be like.

8. A useful rule of thumb if you are talking to someone in your speech, is to check with the panelist if it is ok to direct the speech at them or to the ambassador present. You may wish of course to imagine the person you are talking to, if that is how you have rehearsed, but always useful to at least establish this before you begin.

9. When the inevitable moment arrives when you are told to start in your own time, please take this time and focus. Step into the imaginative world that you have created and remember your Super Objective. Start only when you are ready. No one is looking at the clock.

10. Allow the nerves that you may feel on the day to help you. That may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it's just your body gearing up to deliver something important. Allow the dry mouth and wobbling legs to be a normal part of the process- everyone's in the same boat after all. You're nervous because you care about the outcome of your performance. You care because you have found a passion in life. What a wonderful thing to celebrate.