The Audition Technique With Gregory Apps and Robyn Gibbes

January 17, 2025 | Neil Turitz
Photo courtesy of Gregory Apps and Robyn Gibbes.

Insights: What You Need to Know About The Audition Technique

  • Distinguish your auditions with dynamic movements, eye line changes and props to stand out.
  • Be creative and break traditional audition rules to showcase a unique character interpretation.
  • Invest in audition technique training to enhance your performance and leave a memorable impression.

Gregory Apps had been working as a casting director for nearly three decades when self-taping became the norm. He was one of the first major casting directors in Australia, and throughout a thriving career, he had seen all the various changes in the business. With this innovation, going through these tapes with Robyn Gibbes, his partner in both business and life, the two noticed something.

“We saw so many fabulous actors come into our studio and they were just failing at the gates, you know?” Gibbes recalls. “We knew that they could do it. We knew that they’d be great for the role. They were perfect for the character, but they just were failing in the audition process. And we understood why.”

The reason was straightforward. They were conforming to a pattern that had been ingrained in them by a system developed by casting directors decades before: Keep it simple. Bland background. Engage the camera as your scene partner. Stay centered in the frame.

Unfortunately, any chance anyone had of setting themselves apart was lost in the morass of the expected, dictated by the conforming aspects of an audition. The “standard issue” was a standard issue, and Apps and Gibbes saw a solution that would help so many of the actors they liked and respected.

“They would have a laundry list of all the things you can’t do,” Apps explains. “You can’t turn around, you can’t move in the frame, you can’t do this and you can’t do that. What we tried to do was bring a bit of life into the actor’s space. So the actor can feel freer in being able to show us who they are and what the character is.”

Casting director Gregory Apps onstage teaching an acting class.Photo courtesy of Gregory Apps and Robyn Gibbes.

The Audition Technique: Explained

They refer to it as “The Audition Technique,” and what Apps and Gibbes have been teaching, for more than two decades, is almost alarmingly simple. Altering your eye line. Moving within the frame. Gesticulating. Bringing life to this little piece of video. Though of course, it’s more nuanced than that, with deeper lessons to be learned along the way.

“We’re trying to break down the conformities and bring life into the frame,” he says, then tells a story of a fairly recent event that perfectly explains the bigger picture. “A drama teacher friend analyzed the Dacre Montgomery audition for Stranger Things. He said, ‘he broke every rule in the book.’ Our attitude is, there’s rules?”

He laughs and continues, “it’s the creative arts. The performing arts, and there’s rules? Surely, as with all creative pursuits, the people who stand out are the people who break the rules, not the people who conform to them.”

Apps likens it to 20 student artists all painting Sydney’s famed Harbour Bridge, but only being allowed to use three colors. How to judge the best painting? Simple.

“The answer is the person who actually does something different with it,” Apps says. “You’ve got to actually challenge our thinking. Challenge the way we perceive the character. I’m not saying you change the lines, but you can change the relationship and the foundation between the character and the reader.”

That is where the notion of taking an angle to the reader comes in, thus changing that relationship. There’s also the moving toward the camera, changing perspective from a medium close-up to something different. Talking with your hands, maybe even using a prop. All of it allows the actor to take more control over their audition.

Casting director Gregory Apps and Robyn Gibbes conducting an acting seminar in a theater, with Gibbes laughing at a joke.Photo courtesy of Gregory Apps and Robyn Gibbes.

Breaking the Rules

Over the years, as Apps and Gibbes refined their technique, their reach extended. Modern technology allowed them to teach the class all over the world. Miles Mussenden is an American actor who has been working in film and TV for 15 years. He’s working a lot now, showing up regularly in the Sylvester Stallone drama Tulsa King, and he’s got a role in the upcoming biopic of boxer Christy Martin, starring Sydney Sweeney. Mussenden was making a perfectly fine living as a day player, getting small roles in lots of different shows and movies, but he wanted something more. He took The Audition Technique class, and almost immediately things changed.

“My first feedback I got from Greg was, he told me I was vanilla,” Mussenden recalls with a laugh. “This was after I’d been one of the last three guys up for a role. I heard the other two guys audition, then I went in and thought I did something interesting, but they said, ‘We’ve seen it.’”

After finishing the course, he auditioned for another show, going in several times for several different roles before he was finally cast. On set, he found himself with one of the show’s producers, who had seen him repeatedly come in.

“He said, ‘We knew from the first time we’re going to have you on something, we just had to find the right role,’” Mussenden says. “The thing was, they kept bringing me back because they knew I was gonna do something fresh, something different, something new, something to look at, something to consider.”

Now, when Mussenden talks of Apps and Gibbes, he says, “I would do anything for them.”

Reaping the Rewards

The Audition Technique has an even farther reach than just getting a role. Australian actor Cam Maull and American leadership coach Elizabeth Hope can both attest to that. Maull was, like Mussenden, getting work as an actor, but was looking for more. After taking the class, it led him to an unexpected place.

“It led me to start actually creating characters,” he says. “Some friends of mine that were equally frustrated with all these theatre scripts that were coming in, we decided to apply the TAT approach to our rehearsal experience and go, why don’t we just roll camera and we’ll just improvise with these characters and we’ll play around with that?”

That led to a 60-minute comedy show and, eventually, an ongoing web series called Swiping Right, which has just started airing its second season on YouTube. “Season Two is even a contender for our actor awards over here, which is a really big deal,” Maull says. “It wasn’t just what I was able to apply in the audition room, but it just gave me so much permission and freedom and confidence to step into filmmaking as well.”

Hope, who is winding down a successful career in business and took Apps and Gibbes’ class because she is looking to do some acting in her retirement, didn’t just find some success getting a role or two here or there. She also found that it helped her in her world.

“It’s that thinking outside the box they teach,” she explains. “When I step back and I say, ‘What if that’s not what we’re looking for? What’s a different way to portray this so I stand out so I’m memorable? How else could this be perceived?’ I find myself being more creative in my approach to problem-solving and strategic planning, as well.”

The class itself is six weeks, and Apps personally reviews the work of everyone taking it. By the end, the actors should better understand what parts of their personality and their character they can bring out to the various characters they wish to play.

“That’s really what we teach,” Apps says. “When we’re looking at 40, 50-plus people, my first pass on that is to get it down to 10 or a dozen. Therefore I’ve got to say no to 80% of the people on that tape. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do, say no. Therefore, you’ve got to do something that stands out. You’ve got to do something that has an identity. What you’re delivering is, who is this character if you play the role? Our goal is to help you get to that point.”

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