Sweating through a shirt, trembling hands and quivering voices can be results of auditioning for a play. Learning how to calm nerves and fulfill a true character’s role can make or break an actor in auditions. Jane Cox, director and theater professor at Iowa State, alludes to a few hints that she looks for in an actor for the role in the play she is directing.

Physical characteristics

Depending on the time period and location of the play, physical characteristics of an actor are observed. For the upcoming play, ‘Love and Honor: Iowa in the Civil War,’ actors, especially men, should be scrawny since food is scarce, and the brutal conditions of war.

“The men’s roles in this play, they’re all in the civil war, they are not very well fed, and they’re going through a lot of depravation. So they have to be able to look that way, otherwise the audience won’t buy into it,” Cox said.

Character intuition

The actor must make the director believe they can easily become that character in that time period. Since the Iowa State Theatre does not use microphones, so actors must be able to project their voice for the audience to hear each word enunciated.

“To be good actors, people have to have good intuition about people. They have to observe people a lot and see what makes me think this person is happy or what makes me think this person is upset. You look at people’s faces, you look at people’s bodies, you listen to people’s voices,” Cox said.

Passion

Showing enjoyment for playing a different role, other than yourself, has to be a quality desired by a person who auditions. The lines should burst from an actor’s mouth with confidence, making it difficult for the director to forget the performance.

“You have to have a passion or love for what it is you are doing,” Cox said. “I guess that it is one of the big things I look for is some kind of spirit, some kind of inner life that says this person will be able to bring a character to life.”