Essential Drama School Audition Advice

It’s that time of year again… All over the world, actors are beginning their prep for a drama school audition that may well change the course of their careers—hell, their entire lives. And while we may have only flipped our calendars to June of 2025, the deadlines for 2026 will be looming and past before you know it. So, while time is still technically on your side, let’s go over some essential drama school audition advice. Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

This article contains essential, practical advice on how to approach your drama school audition. It covers logistics, preparation and the best ways to be ready for the audition/self-tape itself. Whether you are interested in studying next year, or are simply looking ahead to the time when you may be ready to take this important step in your acting journey, you can never do enough research and preparation for what to expect and how to triumph over it.

If you were to do a quick search on StageMilk for the phrase “drama school”, you’d see that we cover this topic a lot, and from a myriad of different angles. Today, our focus is less of a how-to guide on auditioning, or even where you might go to study. It’s about the solid, practical advice you pick up from being in the trenches yourself: exactly the sort of thing that gives you an edge over your less-prepared peers.

Enough pre-amble: we’ve got a lot to cover!

The Preparation

This is the part of the process where most actors, especially those who are younger and less experienced, tend to fall down. More often than most would care to admit, it actually comes from a place of arrogance than actual carelessness. “I can act, I know I can act, I don’t need to spend months getting ready for this!” The problem with this thinking is that ignores what most audition panels at drama schools are looking for: students, not actors. They want people who will show up, do the work and not question their methods. How can they trust you for three years if you didn’t do the reading before you even began?

Prep Early

Months ahead. Not weeks, and certainly not the weekend before. Drama school audition material needs to be learned and explored with time to spare. This will give you the space you need to explore and interpret the text, meaning that your interpretation can stand out from the countless others doing the same, good-enough-I-guess rendition of a very famous scene.

Every moment you spend on your audition material ahead of somebody else is an advantage over them. Get in now, thank us later.

Many Eggs, Many Baskets

Got your sights set on the perfect drama school? Had their banner on your wall since birth like Rory and Harvard? That’s all very well, but audition for a wide array of drama schools, not just your main pick. A plan for your acting career that hinges upon a single binary choice of study/not-study is not a plan. It’s a coin-toss.

So look at additional options for where else you might seek tutelage, just in case that first option doesn’t pan out. If you’re set on becoming an actor, this will be a stumbling block rather than an all-out stoppage. If it is … perhaps you need to reexamine what your priorities are.

Sure, it’s more work. But you’ve started prepping early—weeks, even months ahead!—so you’ll be fine. And don’t forget that prepping for one school will help you with the others; it’s all good practice,

Speak to Current Students and Recent Grads

Do you know anybody currently studying at the drama school/s you’re auditioning for? Are there any recent grads you can call up and bribe with coffee in exchange for their knowledge? Research into a school is one thing when you’re drooling over brochures and being razzle-dazzled at the open day. You’ll learn a lot more by speaking to people who’ve been through this experience first-hand; most will be happy to sit down and chat.

From a drama school audition standpoint, you might like to ask what to expect when you’re in the room. What kind of questions did the panel ask? What did they respond to? Who stood out to them in the room, and were they offered a place in the year group as a result?

Look at Old Audition Material

Did you know you can find a lot of drama school audition material from previous years online? A quick google search will reveal audition handbooks, full of monologues used in the room, are freely available for you to download. Get on it! Start browsing through to get a sense of the kind of pieces you should be preparing. And while we’d never suggest this as something to rely on while you prep: there’s a fair chance that a monologue from a previous year might even make a comeback…

Old audition material is something you should be finding and using to practice. Even if you don’t end up performing the monologue you discover in the official booklet, you’ll be on your way to developing a process—a way of using your acting skills to tackle text. This process will make all the difference when you settle on your actual monologues, as you’ll know which techniques work best for you.

BONUS: Read the Whole Script

Once you’ve picked the pieces you’re going to do for the audition/s, read the whole damn script the monologue comes from. There’s no excuse not to do this, and it makes all the difference to the audition panel when they discover you have no understanding of the larger context of your character’s arc, the narrative or the story world.

Know the text, practice some script analysis and use this to make interesting—if informed—choices to set your rendition apart. A drama school audition panel can tell when somebody has made intriguing and unique choices in their acting. Just as they can tell when somebody’s done something different to desperately stick out from the crowd.

The Audition

As the actual audition draws nearer, set yourself a clear deadline when you move from your research/prep phase and into rehearsing material out loud. A lot of actors start this part of the process too late—often because they equate rehearsal with the milestone of memorising lines, rather than the ability to explore and modify a piece based on their discoveries. Your best work will happen when the piece is known to you and well and truly in your head. So get there fast and early.

Practice Self-Taping

An increasing number of drama schools are using self-tapes to whittle down their auditions process. You may find you need to submit a tape, in order to progress to the in-person auditions on-site. Self-tapes are seen by many actors as a hassle: there’s extra work to be done by you in your own time/home, and it requires an investment into equipment and space that is less than convenient.

However, it puts you at an advantage. Self-taping means you can give your monologue as many goes as you need and send off the perfect take. It’s not a one-and-done situation like some auditions. And it means you can start working on your performance early, and even receive feedback from others about what you send off before you do.

Here at StageMilk, we have advised many of our Scene Club members on exactly this … and watched many of them go on to receive placements at their drama school of choice.

Practice Live Performance

If you nail the self-tape round, you’re likely to be called in to the drama school to audition in person. Practice live in front of people, and get comfortable performing your monologue/s out loud. It’s one thing to memorise it, understand your character’s objective and what motivates them. It’s another thing entirely to command a space with your voice, find your character’s physicality and be comfortable displaying vulnerability in a room full of strangers.

Are there opportunities for you to perform live before the audition date? Can you bring some people together at your school, your house, or even find a showcase you can participate in? Hell, you could sign up for a talent show if there’s one available. Just be sure that your moment in front of the audition panel isn’t the first time you’ve performed the monologue—an entirely different thing from simply speaking the words out loud.

Be Ready To Talk

Be prepared to answer questions about the material you perform. Have an opinion about the play, the character, the scene and the larger context that surrounds it. Don’t think of this as a quiz: they’re not looking for a particular opinion or idea for you to bring up. It’s about seeing how you’ve engaged with the piece beyond the page—evaluating you as the potential student, rather than an actor they can take from ‘pretty good’ to ‘very good’.

And if your interpretation differs wildly from what others thing, that’s okay too! Just be sure that this interpretation is anchored to the original text, so that if prompted you can point definitively to something on the page that supports your finding.

‘The First Day of Class’

Here’s a pointer for nerves in the audition room: and it’s an absolute classic. Treat your dram school audition like your first day of class. Show up prepared, with your own opinions and full of enthusiasm, and act like you’ve already gotten in. Give the panel a taste of what you can do, and then be open to their notes, to their questions and suggestions.

Don’t forget that whenever you step into an audition room, the panel wants you to be the one. They’re not looking for excuses to reject you, they’re looking for reasons that you’re the best: even if the person before you in line was literally the finest actor they’ve ever seen. They’re looking for reasons to have you succeed, to be the one. So help them to that conclusion with your own belief and attitude.

Be Prepared for “The Awful Question”

“That was great. Try it again … and can you show us something different?” Does anything lock an actor up more than this? What was wrong with your performance? Why didn’t they like it? Different how? Faster? Angrier? Doing star jumps?!

Be prepared for this question. And by that, we mean understand what they’re asking for: ‘different’ means to experiment, not ‘do it again, but better’. It’s about exploration, about knowing the material well enough that you can reinterpret it in a meanignful, exciting way.

Where might you look to experiment? The actions of your characters (their tactics) are a great place to start. If your first performance was about guilting, see what happens if you try flirting instead? You can also modify the given circumstances to change the context, and the moment before to affect the emotion and state of your character just before the scene begins.

The only way to fail at this is to not prepare for it. If you wing it, your ‘different’ will be the exact same thing, only faster and louder.

BONUS: Plan Your Route

Our bonus point in this section, keeping up the tradition of statin’ the bleedin’ obvious, is to plan your route to the audition. Know where you’re going, know how to get there. Plan for traffic to be awful and the trains to be on strike. If you’re headed to a particular building in a large university or college campus, know how to find that particular building. Ideally, scout ahead the week or day before so there is no doubt whatsoever in your mind.

I was running late for my drama school audition; my ride eventually dumped me in the middle of a gridlocked main road and told me to “Run.” And while I got there, got into the school and have never looked back, it’s not an experience I’d wish upon my greatest enemy. Make the time before your audition a peaceful, zen-like experience—not the mad dash at the end of a romantic comedy.

The Aftermath

Once you’ve actually managed to get through the process of your drama school audition, build some rest into your schedule. This is particularly important if you are auditioning for more than one place, as your down-time between auditions or tapes may be very short. Be sure to remain sustainable, treat yourself kindly and know the difference between relaxing and actually recharging.

Reward Yourself

Here’s a fun one: promise yourself rewards for completing a drama school audition. Acknowledge the hard work you put in, the simple achievement of showing up and putting yourself out there—regardless of the outcome.

This pointer is not just a matter of self-care or shameless treatery. It’s an opportunity to train yourself to recognise the smaller milestones in your career—the ones related to effort and process—rather than the big ‘wins’ of successful auditions and securing work. Whether you hear back from the school or not, the fact that you went for a place distinguishes you from 99% of the other people out there calling themselves ‘actors’.

You did the work. Acknowledge that.

Post-Game Analysis

Eventually, after a period of what will seem like an eternity, you’ll start to hear back from schools. Hopefully you’ll hear some yesses; most likely the no category will outweigh the former. Can you think of why? And can you determine a reason that doesn’t relate to you being the suckiest actor of all time?

Analyse your performance after a drama school audition with honesty and impartiality. Evaluate your performance, never judge it. Were there things you nailed? Things you could have done better, or been better prepared for? The most important question is: what can you learn for the next go around? Even if you get in to the drama school of your dreams, there’ll be auditions in the future that can benefit from a little post-game analysis.

Have an Alternate Plan in Place

Finally, we have to contend with the worst-case scenario. Let’s say you do everything right—everything on this list you could possibly do. And the answer is still ‘no’. Make plans for your acting career that don’t include drama school. Just in case.

Is there a short course in your city you can do? Could you try auditioning for independent theatre productions? Perhaps you could write your own cabaret, direct a short film, or even start a scene study class with your actor friends? Don’t be deterred when you’re knocked back from drama school. Such things are so far beyond your control, in terms of what the panel is looking for. So use the time to improve your craft anyway: and show them the next year what a year in the wilderness looks like for somebody as determined as you.

Besides, in a few months, the process for auditioning will begin all over again. And think about how much more ready you’ll be this time…

Conclusion

I’ll be honest with you: I did not think this article would be quite so expansive when I sat down to write it. But the truth of the matter is, there’s so much you can do to be ready for a drama school audition, so much you can prepare for and meet not with trepidation, but genuine enthusiasm.

In fact, let this be the parting piece of advice at the bottom of everything. Show enthusiasm. Prove to the selection panel that you’re not just committed to bettering your craft, but to elevating the experience of the others who might hope to share this journey with you. Allow yourself to get excited for what comes ahead, because the person who shows up every day just positively absolutely thrilled to be there is the one who gets the place. Then the agent, the roles, and the career full of friends and collaborators who would do the same for you.

Get excited. Because this is only the beginning.

Good luck!