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I have watched hundreds of auditions and have seen a few moving performances in which the actor chose to cry. To that end, I have seen even more actors make the crying choice and leave me less than impressed. The method of arriving at such intense emotion is personal, but the result needs to be the same-honesty. Dishonest reactions are obvious to both auditors and audience, so it is important to choose a method that evokes honesty in you.

Many actors, when asked "how do you cry on cue?" respond, "I think of a sad time in my past." Although this method can certainly bring tears, I question whether they are really honest tears. Is the character crying or is the actor crying? These past memories belong to the actor, not the character, thus, the character's reaction is dishonest. When I see actors employ this method, the crying looks contrived and fake because it is not really the character feeling the emotions. I also wonder how healthy this method can be to an actor, constantly conjuring horrible memories from her past before every audition, rehearsal and performance.

I encourage actors to take a different approach to crying on cue. Perhaps it will help you in an audition situation one day.

Imagine that you have essentially two bodies: your physical body and your "life" body. Your life body can expand or contract, rise or fall, depending on your physical body's emotions. Let's say you are handed a script at an audition. You are unfamiliar with the play. The scene you have been assigned is somewhere in the middle of the play, so you have no idea what happened to your character before the scene.

In the scene you are reading, you are flirting with a woman. Eventually, you ask her out on a date, and that ends the scene.

So, think of your lack of knowledge of the play as an advantage. You get to invent what happened to your character in the previous scene and make a powerful choice how your character will approach this woman.

What, if in this example, your character was just fired from his job in the previous scene? How would this affect your approach? You could also try imagining that, in the previous scene, your character was just given a promotion. The idea is to decide what you feel the strongest choice would be and go with it.

Let's choose the promotion. OK so, your character is probably very happy. Happiness does something to our life bodies. In effect, our life bodies rise to unnatural heights, heights that our physical bodies could never obtain. Try imagining that-imagine

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