• The most important part in preparing your audition, frankly, is having someone to watch you and to listen to you. This person has to understand the acting process, and, ideally, have experience in directing. Your coach should be honest in assessing your skills, and be someone with the experience to target coaching to help you improve your performance.
• The next most important aspect is practice. You have to practice as much as you can. You cannot merely learn your piece and then hope for one of those magical, (and mythical) moments when it all comes together for you and you give “the greatest performance of your life.” This never happens. You have to have such comfort with your material and control of it that even the inevitable nervousness that you will have at your audition will not distract you from a confident and natural delivery.
• Finally, you need to select your audition piece carefully.

More on this, to come…