Drama School 2012 Mission Log - Entry 2: RADA

RADA: Ok so I told myself I wouldn’t write the blog entry about this year’s RADA audition until a couple of days afterwards/when I hear if I have a recall or not…

But I’m really bored.

So here you go:

I woke up pretty early, wanting to get out of the house at a decent time and get to RADA in enough time to sit down and relax a bit (maybe looking through some notes and things) before the start of the audition. If it hadn’t been for three absurdly packed trains in a row passing through Earlsfield, none of which I managed to get on to, I would probably have been the first one there. As it was, I was still fairly early (which was more than can be said for my audition last year…) and used the time in hand to have a look through some of the things I’d brought with me, as well as going to the toilet for the first of what turned out to be three visits in total (I’m happy to report that the toilets all performed admirably and passed my stringent testing with flying colours).

Nine o’clock came, and Sally Power appeared to guide us up to the boardroom place where we had been taken last year. Having mentally prepared myself for her speech this year (see previous entry on the subject) I felt relatively calm and unfazed by it all this time around. I smiled smugly to myself as the majority of the other people with me managed to whip themselves up into a bit of a panic about everything when Ms Power left the room briefly, despite the fact that she seemed a lot friendlier this time around than I had remembered (though maybe that was just because this time I was ready for what she had to say).


Conversations like this were sprouting up all around me:

“When my mate’s sister’s friend auditioned here she got stopped after her first line and told that they’d heard enough and that she could leave!”

“They didn’t even let her get past her first line?!?”

“OH MY GODDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Etcetera.

I just ignored most of it, and listened to the one voice of reason who reassured everybody that the panels at RADA were really nice and friendly (which they were last year, and were this time around too), and tried to focus on my own preparation.

We all got taken over to the other building on Chenies Street (I still haven’t managed to see a single rehearsal room in the main building!) and we were told we would be auditioned in two groups (i.e. half of us would go to one panel, half to another) but one person at a time per panel. Pretty standard stuff, and thankfully, unlike last year, I wasn’t the first one up (I was second to bottom on one of the two lists). So we all waited around in a group in a room in the other building, having been led over there by a lovely Irish student of the school whose calming voice really helped with the nerves!

As we waited, the other auditionees slowly started talking more about their various exploits – I tried to ignore most of what they were saying and just focus on preparing myself. I found myself standing up periodically and doing the “Rubber Chicken” dance (if you don’t know, don’t ask…) as quietly as possible, to keep my energy up, and reading my various notes over and over to myself – so much so that I’m pretty sure the other people thought I was actually running lines or something (oh no I wasn’t, not this year, definitely not this year…). But despite my best efforts, I couldn’t be antisocial forever, and various, slightly hesitant, conversations soon got started. It transpired that one of the girls in our group, who was, like me, on a gap year, had just gained a place at Drama Centre for this coming September – one of only two people so far this year, apparently. She was really nice and friendly but I could see just from the way she looked why drama schools would want her – she had an attractive, but mature, look about her, despite her age, and spoke really confidently; I bet her speeches were brilliant.

“Some people, eh?” I thought to myself, as I shook my head wistfully…

Anyway, that was enough jealousy on my part – it wasn’t doing me any good, and it would be better to focus on my own speeches than anyone else’s. I did some more warming up and note-reading and thinking to myself about my characters, and then the Irish girl came in and told me to come through. I was pretty damn pleased it was her who took me through and not the guy who had been calling through the people in the other half of our group, because a few minutes previously he had poked his head round the door and said in a really deep, intimidating voice to one of the girls, “Come forth – to your DOOM!”. I am not joking.

But I went through, with the Irish girl, dropped my bag off just inside the door to the room as I had been told to do, and went to greet the panel. From the moment I stepped in they seemed really friendly and totally at odds with the incredibly formal feel that the actual school building seems to have. We chatted about my gap year, the plays I had seen recently, and then they asked me what speech I’d like to do first, before asking me to go to the back of the room and do my two speeches, which I’ll get to in a minute. 

The interview went well, I thought. I gave a good account of myself, taking care to point out that I was no longer at school (“Good heavens, no!”) and that I had done a lot since last auditioning there. The extensive interview preparation seemed to have worked, or at least it certainly felt that way; it was definitely a million miles better than my misfiring attempts at informed, coherent conversation were last year, anyway. So at least that was out of the way, then, and I could focus on the speeches. As I said earlier, they asked me to go right to the back of the room, and this did have a somewhat disconcerting effect when I started my Shakespeare, as the room seemed to echo around me like a swimming pool.  I think I could still hear my first speech when I started the second one.

Anyway, they both went pretty well, I thought. Probably on par with, if not better than at RWCMD, though as I have said before it’s near-impossible to judge. I breathed a sigh of relief to myself. “It’s over! It’s all done. I did the speeches well, I interviewed well. I can go home and eat a toastie and be happy now.”

BUT WAIT.

“Harry, would you mind if we saw your Proteus speech as well, please?”

…

…

WHAAAAAAAAT???????

I’ve never been asked to do my third speech, at any of my auditions, ever. What could this mean??? Sally Power did mention earlier on that they could ask to see it, and that it literally meant nothing at all, whatsoever, and that to read anything into it would be an almost criminal offence, but still…

I reasoned, later on, that at least being asked for my third speech meant one thing: I couldn’t have been apocalyptically bad in my other two speeches, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered asking for the third one, as it was bound to be no better than the first two – if you see what I mean.

Anyway. I took my time readying myself, as they said, and delivered a somewhat less polished speech than my first two, but nonetheless, I enjoyed it, which I think is the main thing for a Shakespeare speech a lot of the time, and I think it came across pretty decently overall.

When I finished, they briefly called me back over to sit down again, and asked me where else I was applying to. I mentioned LAMDA, Guildhall and GSA, but for some reason just didn’t mention RWCMD. I was incredibly aware at the time that I was LYING to the RADA teachers but oh well. I think I just subconsciously wanted to seem like a more attractive prospect for them and didn’t want them to know that I’d been rejected from anywhere this year, being the juvenile little shit that I am… Also that maybe if I named more places it could make them think I was just some drama school maniac who was booking up auditions left, right and centre, without much care for where exactly I was applying, which could be seen as panicky/immature… Or perhaps I’m just a pathological liar – I don’t know.

And that was that. I shook their hands, thanked them, and left feeling pretty positive about the whole thing, looking forward to my egg, chorizo and tomato toastie when I got home. Looking back on the morning now, I’m pleased with it overall, but I don’t really want to make any sort of predictions here, as we know how unrelated positive feelings and actual results can be.

So that was it, then. Another audition over, and no more first rounds scheduled until April now (unless GSA get off their lazy bums and get back to me soon, that is).

Anyway. An update will follow, in time…

(Oh, and the toastie was magnificent, thank you.)

Drama School 2012 Mission Log - Entry 1: RWCMD

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama: I knew I’d like the place before I even saw it. Just seeing the website was enough to confirm to me the sort of school that it was. In my mind, the less user-friendly and cleanly-designed the website is, the more stuck-up and snooty the drama school is. And the rule was working here, as the RWCMD website is excellent, and I loved the actual place from the moment I stepped into it, at about 2.15pm on Friday 17^th February. The receptionists were lovely. There was a public café (a drama school that was actually friendly to the general public? Surely not?!), some comfy sofas and a beautiful live rendition of a beautiful operetta by a beautiful group of girls in the beautiful lobby space for me to listen and relax to.

I was feeling good. A fair wad of cash thrown at audition preparation help from a lady who was absolutely brilliant at helping me get a grip on my new speeches certainly had increased my confidence no end. I knew my way around the speeches very well, knew how to act in the audition room, etc. etc. I had been on a two-week course at LAMDA the previous summer called Audition Technique specifically aimed at helping with these situations. This was it. This was my chance. Surely RWCMD would be far more likely to take me than any of the really ‘big name’ schools would be?

I was very early and busied myself by being my usual cheapskate, water-whore self and asked the café bloke if there was a water fountain to fill my water bottle from. He mistakenly assumed I was a student of the school (as if…) and pointed me through to the students’ cafeteria, where the beautiful, state-of-the-art cold water dispenser performed admirably and filled my bottle with 500ml of wonderfully pure filtered water. I returned to my seat with the mischievous glow of a teenage drug addict who has managed to smuggle some of his stash unnoticed through the front door and into his bedroom without his mum realising.

3pm came, and a lady arrived and announced that any of the acting auditionees should come and join her. There were five of us: two boys, three girls. We went to a second-floor rehearsal space with chairs in two lines to either side of a central space which was headed by a table – clearly for the auditioners to sit at. We were told that they would be arriving in about twenty minutes’ time and that we should warm up. And then the lady left.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Me: Erm… Would anybody object if I just got up and started running around or something?

Everyone Else: No no please go for it / Yeah me too / Yeah I need to warm up / Good idea

And so we warmed up, all of us, walking/jogging around the room, randomly slapping ourselves on our chests, arms and legs, chewing invisible toffees, endlessly extolling the uniqueness of New York and the numerous men there seemed to be everywhere, and loosening our spines repeatedly to the extent that I felt about four inches taller by the time I was done (if anybody doesn’t know the exercises that I’m referring to here you really should warm up with me more often…). The panel arrived, on schedule, and we all sat down. They gave us a little introductory talk, which was all very friendly and lovely – the two panellists (both female) cracking jokes with each other and generally doing a very good job of calming my nerves. I liked them a lot.

And then we started.

Everyone else was decent, if not incredible, but who the hell am I to judge? They were probably all brilliant. One girl certainly was – if she didn’t get a recall then there is something wrong with the universe. But this is about me, not them, and of course, being a “W” I was last. Typical. But I didn’t mind because, as you will see if you refer back to my earlier post on general drama school thoughts, I like going later in group auditions.

But I had a final sip of water, got up confidently, like I had been told, was very professional etc. etc. and I did my speeches, exactly the way I had practised them and had been told was “great” by several people, including the lady who was helping me with them. I think, out of a possible 10/10 performance, on my own personal level, I gave an 8.9/10, or something around there (that’s quite precise…). But you know, that’s pretty good, and to be honest with you, it’s impossible to give an absolutely perfect 10/10 every time, even for a professional. So I was pretty pleased. It went far better than last year’s “efforts” had gone, anyway…

I finished, wished the panel a good weekend, and left. And that was that. No interview. No extra speeches. No song. No sight reading. Just a fifteen-minute walk to the station and a train home.

My reflections to myself on my two-hour journey back from Cardiff went roughly as follows:

• I love the school – it’s nice looking, has a fantastic community feel about it, the people were lovely, and best of all it didn’t feel stuck up – it felt like somewhere I could belong to, as opposed to somewhere I was just visiting from the outside
• I did my speeches pretty much as well as I could reasonably expect myself to do them
• I would seriously consider going there over, say, Guildhall, if I was lucky enough to be offered both
• I like the fact that RWCMD only have an opening audition and one recall before making a decision – none of this four rounds rubbish like at RADA…
• If I didn’t get a recall, I would really be lost as to why I didn’t… I mean basically it comes down to this: either they think I performed well but am too young (seems a bit arbitrary to be the only reason), or they already have somebody/several people similar to me on the course (unlikely as I don’t think there have been many/any final recalls that have happened yet this year), or I just don’t suit them and may suit somewhere else better (seems counter-intuitive as I got the best vibe from there out of any of the schools by a long way), or the panel didn’t like me as a person (highly unlikely – they were very nice to me and wished me a good weekend back when I wished them one), or my speeches weren’t appropriate for me (surely this can’t be the case – they’re perfect for me really, everybody has told me so, they are the right age range, and very contrasting), or… I just wasn’t good enough.
• But there was no point idly speculating, so I would wait and see and, for the meantime, try and forget about it.

Flash-forward to Tuesday 21^st February. I open my email. New email from RWCMD. After much procrastination, I open it.

“After careful consideration based solely on your performance at the audition, we are not able to offer you a place on the programme for entry in September.”

That stings. That really does sting, actually.

Has nothing changed from last year? Last year, when I basically cobbled my auditions together as I went through them, practically ignoring the Shakespeare and giving little thought to so many other aspects of the process? Since then I’ve done a two-month internship, I’ve travelled to France, I’ve been earning money on my own, I’ve got new speeches, I’ve got older, I’ve done a two-week course at LAMDA, I’ve played a colonel, a sociopath, a nervous young Ayckbourn character and a schizophrenic twenty-year-old, I’m been in the National Theatre Connections competition and I’m now doing it again this year, I’ve been in a short films, I’ve spent lots of money on help with my speeches which, as far as I could tell, really did work wonders for them, I’ve got a place on the National Youth Film Academy Easter Course, I’ve seen lots of plays and practised loads for my interviews… for nothing?

AAAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!

No. I mustn’t think like that. I am a human, not a grizzly bear. I’ve got to take what I can from it and move forward.

Where does that leave me? According to the Sherlock Holmes-esque deductions I made on my train journey home, the most likely reasons I was rejected are as follows: either they think I don’t suit the school, or that I was too young, or that I simply wasn’t good enough – or a combination of any/all of the three.

I can’t grow older any faster than I am (should it really make such a huge difference whether I’m 19 or 20 come October, anyway?). I felt I performed my speeches very well, and I think I suited the school. But I am biased. So, having spent the last six months of my life leading up to these auditions when most of my friends were actually going somewhere with their lives at university, I am not going to just bow out now and accept that this will be the case everywhere. As the rejection email informed me, “You should not consider us in isolation to be accurate arbiters of your talent or potential. Each drama school will be looking for something different and have their own preferences. Many of the students we have not accepted go on to gain places at other drama schools.” I will try my damned hardest to make sure that this is the case for me. After all, if all the schools were looking for the same thing then they would probably all produce exactly the same types of actors (which they don’t). I may not be able to grow older any faster but I will keep on working on my monologues (which I will refuse to be told do not suit me and are not good audition monologues, because they definitely are), and I will do my absolute best to show the other schools why I would suit them as a potential student. LAMDA will be my best shot for this particular goal due to the course I did there over the summer hopefully holding some sway with those auditioning me (especially if I get somebody at the audition who recognises me, which could happen, I suppose), but for the time being, the gilded gates of RADA are beckoning to me once more.

27^th February.

62-64 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6ED.

9am.

Bring it.

My 2010/2011 "Auditions": A Potted History - Part 6: Drama Centre

Drama Centre: Talk about saving the craziest for last. Drama Centre. The rumours that you hear about the place are mind-boggling. Even the facts they actually tell you on their website are pretty scary.

The place has twelve-hour working days (plus some weekends).

Words like “intensive” and “methodological” are bandied about as if they were the key words in an advert for a children’s adventure camp.

Phrases like “break you down and build you up again” seem to pop up with alarming frequency when referring to Drama Centre.

All in all, it sounds like the drama equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.

Nevertheless, it has produced incredible results (see Colin Firth, John Simm, Helen McCrory, Tom Hardy etc. etc.) and so it was with nervousness that I approached the school, unsure of what to expect.

I waited in the lobby for a while until a current student came and escorted a group of us up into the main building area. It seemed pretty shabby for a top drama school but then the student informed us that they would be moving to a new campus in King’s Cross in 2012, which was all nice and shiny. We were split up and told to join with various groups of other people whose audition times were evidently earlier on in the day than mine was. The groups were separated by weird wall/barrier things so it was like sitting in our own little compartment. My group seemed to consist of people who were all older than me (again?!?), one of whom annoyed me so much that I still remember him vividly a year later. He was 21 years old (he informed us all), was a bit chubby (he conveniently forgot to inform us all – although he hardly needed to…) and considerably camper than me, and he delighted in telling everybody, nice and loudly, about the recalls he had been getting, the acting he had been doing here, there and everywhere, what his monologues were about, and so on. Worst of all, the girls all seemed to love him!! What the f&%@?!?!?

Anyway. My audition time came and went. A student came and told us they were running a little bit behind schedule. More time passed. Another student came and said the same thing. Then, eventually, about an hour after it was supposed to be, I was finally called up.

Here I was, at Drama Centre. My last hope of going to drama school in the autumn. I was not going to waste it. I was going to do as well as I could possibly do – I had to. I had been busy with school work in the last couple of weeks, but I had carved out time to work on my speeches again. Would it be enough?

I entered the room, did the usual thing, and started.

My modern went very, very well. The best I could remember doing it, really. One of the ladies on the panel actually said, “Very good”, or words to that effect, when I finished it. But now the Shakespeare. How would it go? The answer, again, was that it was the best I could remember doing it. The problem was, though, that I hadn’t had enough time to find another Shakespeare speech after my Central audition (the weeks before Central had been spent learning and rehearsing one of the speeches from their list as opposed to actually focusing on my own), and as such, “the best that I could remember doing” my Shakespeare speech was average, at best – it just wasn’t a fantastic speech to start with, and I also struggled to connect to it. The best I could do with it was really not enough: nowhere near as good as my modern was, anyway.

But my modern had been excellent – I was very happy with it. I sat down to the interview with them, which I think, again, went well, although on reflection (in comparison with how ready I feel now, as I am writing this) I really was under-prepared. Nonetheless, it was still the best interview I had had, and I left the audition room feeling pleased. Whatever the result, I really had done as well as I could have done with the amount of preparation that I did (not that that preparation was particularly strenuous, but at least I did the best I could with what I had, if you see what I mean).

I sat back down in our little booth thing and waited. We had been told that the results for each group would be posted on a piece of paper on the notice board on the wall in each of the cubicles (I really don’t know what to call them), and as everybody had by now auditioned, and we were told the panel were making up their minds about us and that the results would be posted soon, there was a lot of tension around. As a result of this, whenever anybody remotely important-looking appeared clutching any paper-based item there was a great intake of breath followed by excited whisperings, until the person in question corrected everybody’s mistake and told us that what he was holding was, in fact, just a pack of Kleenex or an origami frog or something.

But, eventually, it happened: the papers were posted, and immediately everyone darted over to look at their respective sheet to see if their name appeared on it. Out of our group of ten or so, four had been recalled.

Not me.

I remember walking out of the building and back to the Tube station in a bit of a haze. I was disappointed – incredibly disappointed – but also weirdly relieved that it was all over for another year. These auditions are the most stressful situations I can ever remember having to put myself through, and as such it was nice to think that it was now out of my hands.

I knew I could do better – much better – than I had done. I knew I could do Shakespeare well, even if I hadn’t this year, and that I could find an even better modern speech (I felt I had come as far as I could with my current one), and that I could work and work and do so many other things that could help me.

And so it came to pass that I closed this particular chapter of my life and focused on my A-Levels for the time being, which I did. Once they were done, however, I started everything again. I have prepared myself to approach the auditions completely differently this year. I am determined to prepare as thoroughly as I can and do as well as I can possibly do.

How will it go?

Your guess is as good as mine. 

My 2010/2011 "Auditions": A Potted History - Part 5: Central

Central: New year. New me. I could do this. I was there early, and went and sat in the nice theatre space after you go through the main entrance, where we were told to wait for instructions. The auditorium gradually filled up. Then filled up some more. Then some more. There were about 200 of us by the time everyone arrived. It looked to me, right there and then, to be a hell of a lot of people for only twenty places.

And then I realised… There were about FOURTEEN more of these first round auditions being held on other days…

SOOOOO

MANY

PEOPLE!!!

If I felt I wouldn’t stand a chance of being one of twenty successful candidates out of the group I was in now, what chance did I have competing against 3000 others??

But I couldn’t think like that now. We got taken through what I recall seemed to be some kind of child’s playground or something, then round a corner through what felt like a greenhouse(??) and then into a big hall, where I found a space and sat down.

A nice lady came and chatted to us and then we all had a massive group warm-up, which was really great for calming my insane nerves. We were told we would be split into groups of ten or so, and would complete a tour, a monologue session and a workshop, in any order. Our group had the tour first, which I guess was a good way to calm down a bit, and then the monologues, and then the workshop.

I got a really good feeling from Central, actually. I liked the style of the place, I liked the massive community feel about it, and the people there seemed genuinely nice.

We went into the audition room, which again felt nice. We all sat on the chairs either side of a main performance space (I think this was a big reason why I liked the place – I much prefer having group auditions to individual ones). Having never seen a drama school audition speech from somebody I hadn’t met before, it was nice for me to see that, somewhat surprisingly, the other people weren’t drama gods/goddesses as I had imagined, but rather of a varied range of ability, of which I felt I fitted quite comfortably into at least the middle, or even a little higher, perhaps.

The one annoying thing about Central is their incredibly stupid list of classical speeches that for some absurd reason you have to pick from for your audition. I have absolutely no idea why they feel the need to do this, and it seems counter-intuitive to me, to offer parts that people might not be suitable for playing, but there you go.

I was last, as always. I did my modern first, which I had had some help with since the RADA audition. It got a good reaction from people, who laughed and were nicely quiet in the right moments. I think the panel liked it too. It’s a shame that the classical was a bit of a last minute botch-job by me, because I think with more care I might have done better, but it’s a bit late for that now. It could have gone worse, I suppose. It certainly wasn’t the worst that I saw of the people in my group, that’s for sure.

After the monologues, we had the workshop. I love these things – they kind of feel like bread and butter to me now after having done so many similar sorts of things for so many years. There was lots of running, hopping, fooling around, being told to “become a slice of bread" or "the colour yellow” and various things like that. I think I’m good at these sorts of things, but would it pay off after my underwhelming Shakespeare speech earlier? We would be told after lunch.

I felt a bit ill really so didn’t eat much for lunch and I didn’t exactly have the best hour of my life, killing time before we could return to the school, but I was told at one point by somebody in my group that I looked like Ben Stiller, which I found mildly amusing and took as a compliment, so I guess that was something. We returned and sat down in our groups in the hall that we had done our warm-up in earlier on. They basically read out a list of names for each group of the people who would be staying on that afternoon for the recall audition. My group came and went. My name was not on the list. Out of the ten of us, three had been given recalls, one of which I definitely thought hadn’t been that great in her audition, but then perhaps my judgement of these things isn’t the best.

And that was that, again. 2011 was starting off in pretty much the same way 2010 ended. I was a bit disappointed, because I thought I had done well all day apart from the Shakespeare, which was a bit under-par, but then I reasoned, you have got to bring the whole package – you can’t under-perform in one area and expect the others to make up for it.

And as I hopped on the Tube at Swiss Cottage, I looked back on the day, and then at all my other auditions. I had improved as I went along – I was certain. My modern speech was strong. My Shakespeare was less so. But I had so far failed to improve on my “100% failure rate” since Bristol, and after five auditions, that wasn’t a good statistic to have.

Would there be enough time to improve before Drama Centre? I had a couple of weeks to work on it, but now other problems were threatening to interfere with my preparations… 

A-Level-shaped problems… 

My 2010/2011 "Auditions": A Potted History - Part 4: RADA

RADA: This is it. The big one. The one we’ve all been waiting for. If you know where that quote is from, I salute you.

But really. RADA. Holy moly. The school that even the most un-drama-initiated of acquaintances have some vague knowledge of. And there it was, standing proudly in the middle of Gower Street. I didn’t get much of a view of the place, however, as I had foolishly left very little time to get there and as such ended up running all the way from Goodge Street Station… I was pretty much the last to arrive of the ten or so people waiting in the reception room. I distinctly remember everyone seeming a lot older than me. “But what is age,” I thought to myself, “but an arbitrary marker of the passage of time?” Actually I didn’t really think that, I thought to myself, “Everyone’s much older than me – shit!”, but oh well…

We were taken upstairs, past the bust of Sir Laurence Olivier (who looked me sternly in the eye as if he knew I really shouldn’t be dirtying his floorboards with my unworthy feet), guided by the infamous Sally Power to whom all RADA’s correspondence seems to have to be addressed to, and she lived up to her name by sitting us all down at this great big boardroom desk (I’m sure she must be a set supervisor for “The Apprentice”, or something…) and delivering the scariest speech I’ve ever heard. I genuinely felt like a criminal being condemned to a life sentence by a courtroom judge. She told us about the four rounds of the audition process at the school, and basically nailed home the message that getting in to drama school is difficult, getting into RADA is ten times harder still, and actually trying to earn a living from being an actor afterwards is like trying to survive the Somme with a water pistol.

So, with that morale-boosting start to events over with, I waited for a few minutes before I, along with a couple of others, was called over by a current student who we followed out of the main building and down the road to RADA’s “other” building. Once past the reception, the rooms all seemed to have this slightly odd, open feel to them – they reminded me a bit of Japan; I really felt like I was in the set of “You Only Live Twice” – that was the sort of thing that I’m talking about… I waited in the corridor while the first girl went in, and then it was my turn. I was feeling quite good. A new modern speech, a new(-ish) classical speech…

I entered the room, did the usual formalities, and delivered my speeches. As I have said before, I got the feeling last year that my auditions all got better as I went along (although plainly not quite “better” enough), and this was no exception – although, as always, the classical was definitely my weak point. I sat down and had a chat with them. Unlike the tremendously intimidating Sally Power, these two (one male, one female) seemed remarkably amiable and easy to talk to. And the interview went much better than any previous one too (although I suppose, again, that’s not really saying much).

But I left RADA feeling pretty good about myself – a nice, pre-Christmas audition, and my recall letter arriving in the post a couple of days after Christmas would be a lovely late present for me.

Except it didn’t.

In fact, I actually got the RADA rejection letter and the LAMDA rejection letter on exactly the same day as one another. Possibly the worst morning’s post I’ve ever received. But oh well, 2011 would be a new year, with new possibilities… Right? RIGHT?

Only time (and Central School of Speech and Drama) would tell.

My 2010/2011 "Auditions": A Potted History - Part 3: LAMDA

LAMDA: Barons Court. Or is it Baron’s Court? Why is it Earl’s Court and not Baron’s Court? Is it the court of one baron in particular, or is it a court of several barons, cohabitating? To my mind at least, the earl had one court and the baron had another, and so the places should both have apostrophes in their names. I mean if there was one court with just one earl in it, and another just down the road with tonnes of barons kicking around, surely there would have been an uprising at some point, with the various barons and their assorted henchmen deciding to take on the one, unsupported earl in a battle? Or were they at different time periods, and as such never actually made contact with one another? Or was there just a lazy transcriber who sometimes just couldn’t be arsed to write apostrophes?

Perhaps we’ll never know. Or at least, I definitely won’t, because I’m far too lazy to Google it, and it’s more fun imagining a fight between the barons and the earl anyway. But either way, there I was, at Barons Court, with, oddly enough, my fellow drama school auditionee friend, who happened to be auditioning on exactly the same day as me. The school was very easy to find, being just round the corner from the station, which in turn was easy to get to, being a simple trip on the District Line from my house (actually, travelling on the District Line is never simple, but that’s another topic entirely).

Now, I had actually been on a tour of LAMDA previously, so I already was somewhat familiar with the building itself (something that I couldn’t say for any of the other schools). I think that this familiarity, along with its fantastic accessibility for me, contributed to the fact that I wanted to go there for my summer course in 2011 so much, as opposed to any of the other London-based drama schools, despite the fact that my audition was a pretty rubbish experience overall. The auditions at LAMDA are a curious thing indeed. Like many other schools, you audition on your own as opposed to in groups, but, somewhat unsettlingly, you have to stay behind a line that feels miles away from the audition panel. They say it’s so that they can see your “whole body” as opposed to a closer view that doesn’t give them a proper perspective on how you act with your entire self. I don’t know or care particularly, but it was a little bit weird being so far away. It didn’t help, either, that the student helping with the auditions did their best job to freak me out about ten seconds before I entered the room by giving me the instructions “not to shake the auditioners’ hands or make eye contact” (or something like that anyway) upon entering the room, not to mention that I ended up being put in the room right next to the busy main road outside the school, and the sound of the traffic basically ended up drowning out my speeches… The auditioners seemed a little intimidating, and didn’t seem really to want to speak to me very much, but I get the feeling that LAMDA have this fairly cold audition process so as not to raise auditionees’ hopes too much, which I guess I can hardly complain about – my hopes certainly weren’t too high after this audition.

I did the speeches, and they went ok (I was steadily improving with each audition, I felt). I had kept my modern monologue but I had finally abandoned ship with the Shakespeare and gone for something a little more appropriate in terms of age and life experience. Looking back on it now, it was still pretty rubbish, and to be honest, my modern was looking a little ropey by this point too (it would be changed before my RADA audition). But I think it was a better overall performance than either of the two previous auditions, and at the time, at least, I didn’t feel too bad about how it went at all, although the lack of response from the audition panel dampened much of the (misguided) hope I may have had.

The interview was a bit disconcerting. Two fairly attractive (female) members of the administrative team sat me down on a sofa in a small room and said they just wanted to have an informal chat and “find out a little more about me”. Having had no formal interview preparation whatsoever, I think I took the sentiment a little bit too much to heart, and ended up sounding, I think, fairly casual about things and lacking in real motivation and desire; I remember at one point talking about an Edinburgh Fringe show as “something I’d seen at the theatre recently” (bearing in mind this was November…). Anyway, to sum up, for my £44 I got myself a nice little chat and a second look round the school. But no recall. At least I wasn’t alone – my friend didn’t get one either…

My 2010/2011 "Auditions": A Potted History - Part 2: Bristol Old Vic

Bristol Old Vic: Ah, Bristol. What a lovely city. My cousins live there – it’s always fun when I get to visit. Nice hills, clean air, great views.

Shame about the drama school…

Maybe it’s because I got rejected when I thought I did well and I’m bitter about it, but I think it’s more than that. I was told the place felt very homely, that everybody was lovely there and that it was just like one big family. And it sort of was. But I think that was the problem with it, really… It has probably the worst applicant-to-place ratio for its 3-year course out of all the drama schools in the country, or at least it can’t be far off, as it only takes twelve people on its course. It sucks you in and raises your hopes by being really nice to you and then lets you down with a jolt. What’s more, the people there seemed to have been brainwashed into conforming to the “lovely family” idea that permeates the place, but in such a way that it sort of felt like a front, put on because they had been made to do so, rather than doing it out of any genuine sentiment. I’m sounding pretty bitter here, but my abiding memories really are of the receptionist having a slightly overly-wide smile, and the auditioners complimenting me on what I did only to then reject me. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

My audition went decently, I think. This was November 2010 and I had reworked my Shakespeare speech (thank God), though for some absurd reason I clung to the notion that I should keep the same speech as opposed to finding and learning a different one, purely because I was a fan of the speech itself, even though when performed by me it must have seemed a bit strange, as it was completely inappropriate for somebody of my age. But I did it, and better than at Guildhall (I think), and the modern speech went fairly well again I think, relatively speaking. But then I got to the bit I had feared for months: the song. Singing. SINGING?!? The mere mention of the word sends shivers down my spine, bouncing off my coccyx and juddering back upwards into my brain until they melt it into a gloopy mush. I am a confident person, in terms of performing, I think. I’m fairly comfortable playing embarrassing or ridiculous parts on-stage. But singing is hard for me. I think the difference between acting and singing for me, in terms of my self-confidence, is that acting can be a bit different every time you do it – you may deliver a line one way one night, then do it completely differently another night, and either way could work fine. But with singing, there is only one option. Yes, I know there are various ways of singing a song, but in terms of the actual musical notes, you have got to hit them, without fail. Now that, I find tricky. Maybe that’s another reason why I didn’t like it very much – they’re really keen on their musical theatre at Bristol…

But anyway, my song actually, somewhat surprisingly, came out all right, in the sense that I didn’t majorly screw up the actual notes. They even said to me, “Well done for acting the song”, which was nice to hear. As if my confidence hadn’t been boosted enough, they then gave me an excerpt of ‘A Christmas Carol’ to read to them. HALLELUJAH!!! My prayers had been answered! READING!!! I LOVE READING!!! I was that guy in English lessons who always read word-perfectly, with proper characterisation in the dialogue and everything. My reading was great! I was sure I had been great! I left the room, and, being the nosy little shit I am, I even stood round the corner out of sight for a few seconds to hear if they made any comments to each other about me, and they did! And they said I was good! I practically bounded down the stairs like a slinky on illegal steroids. In fact I think I bounded all the way back to London. Guildhall had been a blip, of course. A taster, dipping my feet in the water, if you like. Even though I wasn’t a massive fan of the place on my first visit, I was still sure to get a recall at Bristol, they even told me I was good!

But alas, no. A few days later, an email. A rejection. My relentless optimism had once again let me down, and my selective memory had joined in on the act, choosing to omit some rather questionable details of my actual performance and focusing rather more than was necessary on a quick comment by one of the auditioners and my Stephen Fry-esque delivery of “A Christmas Carol”. And here I found myself, in mid-November, with one-third of all my auditions already under my belt, all of which had resulted in total failure. I had a 100% failure rate. Pure, unadultered, anti-success. That’s worse than my catch rate as a fielder in cricket matches, and believe me: I’m terrible at cricket. But then again, two auditions were hardly enough to base statistics around, especially as they were my first two. I mean, surely I’d do better at LAMDA, wouldn’t I? We’re practically neighbours, after all...

My 2010/2011 "Auditions": A Potted History - Part 1: Guildhall

So, on to the auditions; I’m writing this now from the position of having done my first preliminary audition of five this year (at RWCMD) a few days ago. I’ll talk about that another time, but first I’d like to comment on my experiences last year (2010/2011). So here they are; I’ll post them in chronological order over the next few days. Last year was pretty catastrophic on the whole but I think it might do me good to get it out of my system…

Guildhall: There I was, newly turned 17 only a few months previously, making my way to Sundial Court (whatever that is) in October 2010. Full of optimism, having been reassured by almost every remotely drama-oriented and/or –interested person that I knew that I would “do brilliantly”, that I’d “sail through the auditions” and that they’d “love me”, I don’t think I quite knew what I was letting myself in for. I’d heard the numbers of course (one place at drama school for every one hundred auditionees, two or three thousand people going for each of the top schools’ twenty-or-so places, etc. etc.) but, in my mind at least, I was prepared to do my usual acting thing and, of course, stun the audition panel into submission with my evident other-worldly talents.

That didn’t happen. This did: I found my way into the basement area for the auditions after a great deal of difficulty (do they not want people to find the place? Maybe they’re hoping that half the people don’t turn up – that way they can keep the money and get an early lunch) and, after a little talk and a warm up session, which was helpful (if a little odd – I did get the sense that, even though they said they weren’t judging us at this stage, they definitely were…) we went back to the room where we had arrived and we were all given a number. I was number nine. Joy. Two hours of nervous fidgeting, trips to the toilet, and slightly hushed warming-up and rehearsal outside the room later, it was my turn. I went into the room and did my speeches. Or at least I tried to.

My modern piece, which I chose to do first, went all right, I felt at the time. It was a good piece, I think – a good mix of comedy and drama. But my Shakespeare was an all-round catastrophe. Where do I start? I chose the wrong piece (a character about thirty years older than me), there was no variety throughout the piece, I couldn’t really relate to the situation and so ended up just “pretending” and “fake acting”, and it just really had no weight about it whatsoever. They stopped me halfway through and re-directed me (the only place to do this, incidentally) to do the speech to the student they had there with them. And so I did. It was still just as bad. They stopped me again and gave me more direction. It had little effect. I think my Shakespeare was the biggest problem with all my auditions last year actually – having never actually done a proper Shakespeare play before I don’t think I gave it anything like the level of attention it deserved. But anyway, I finished the speeches and sat down to have a chat with them. Again, I think I was over-confident and just assumed that saying I’d done drama for ages would be enough to convince them that I was the perfect candidate, but I think at least my interview was slightly better than my speeches, because I’m pretty good at talking out of my arse about stuff…

My good academic record actually seemed to count against me in the interview, because I think it just confirmed to them that I was cut out for university far more than drama school. But, though I do think I’m actually OK at interviews in general, it evidently wasn’t enough after my absurdly bad performance a few minutes previously, because another hour or so later they came back into the room and told us that out of the eleven who had auditioned, two would be getting recalls (no prizes for guessing that neither of them were me). And that was that. Crushing disappointment (soon to become a recurring feeling), but at least there were eight others in the same boat, and, crucially, my youth in and of itself didn’t seem to be the problem, because I was without doubt the youngest of those rejected, and a girl who got a recall seemed to be around my age. So it was back to the drawing board before Bristol…

Some opening insights (or irrelevant inanities, depending on your view of things)

I’d like to start by offering some thoughts on the whole drama school audition process in general. I hope this doesn’t seem like a rant, but the whole thing is so filled with bullshit (excuse my French) that it’s extremely easy to feel incredibly overwhelmed by it all. I must stress, by the way, that I don’t actually hate the drama schools, as it might seem at times that I do, because if I did I certainly wouldn’t be auditioning for them! (Or perhaps I’m crazy. Or a masochist. Or both.) There’s no doubt that some of the best actors in the world have come out of these very schools that I am talking about, so they’re definitely doing something right, and my brief experiences of spending any time at the schools (apart from some of the auditions themselves, which have the potential to be pretty horrible), such as the two-week summer course at LAMDA I did last August, have been unreservedly positive experiences, and a lot of them do seem like forward-thinking and exciting places to learn. But anyway, here you go (remember, I never said this would be concise…):

• There are lots of people who audition. WE KNOW! STOP TELLING US! IT DOESN’T HELP! I’M TALKING TO YOU, RADA! *Ahem* Sorry about that, but I hate it when the schools (RADA being the worst offender here) think that it’s somehow part of their public service to inform us at every opportunity of just how slim the chances of getting into drama school actually are. It’s fine to put the information out there, and in fact it stops people raising their hopes, but when it’s 9am and my stomach’s got eels in it and I’ve just had the most stressful Tube journey of my entire life, trying desperately to run through speeches and ideas and interview answers, and now just want to sit in silence and prepare myself, what I don’t want is somebody doing their best to completely put me out of my comfort zone before I’ve even entered the audition room (in RADA’s case, before I’m even in the right bloody building…). But a lot of the schools do this, so my plan this year is just to stop listening at those moments and try and focus on my own thing rather than what they seem to want us to hear, because of all the things they could be telling us to help us before an audition, that really isn’t one of them.
• Contradiction. That word pretty much sums up the entire process. One school tells you one thing, another tells you something else. One person “in the know” says one thing, another one says something else. Some examples:

“Look the panel in the eye when delivering your speeches, and try to connect with them.”

“Don’t look the panel in the eye, on pain of death.”

“Working with somebody who knows what they’re doing can really help get the best out of you for your speeches.”

“Don’t get somebody to direct your speeches for you, at all, ever.”

“Prepare incredibly thoroughly for the interview, so that you know exactly what to say for any question they might throw at you – they want to see someone who really knows exactly who they are, what their position is, and what they want.”

“Try not to look like you’re got pre-learnt answers in the interview – they want a real person, not a robot.”

“Treat Shakespearean verse like it was any other speech.”

“Don’t breathe in the middle of a line of verse – ever.”

“Shakespearean characters are real people, with real emotions, just like in any modern play, and should be played as such.”

“Shakespearean language is heightened, the characters and situations are extreme, and therefore they require a somewhat heightened level of performance.”

“Apply early – the schools fill up places as they go throughout the audition process.”

“Prepare more thoroughly and apply later on, so you perform to your best ability.”

“The schools have quotas of boys and girls that they have to fill up, as well as having to select a wide range of types of performers, with different physicalities, heights, voices and performance styles, in order to assemble a diverse ‘cast’ for agents to choose from.”

“The schools select only on individual talent, and nothing else.”

“The song is an integral part of the process, and can make or break your audition.”

“It doesn’t matter if you can’t sing brilliantly; they just want to make sure you’re capable of singing something or other, even if it’s not pitch perfect.”

“Try and be extra-friendly to the students helping with the process – they really play a part in choosing potential students and will tell the panel about the auditionees.”

“Don’t try and suck up to the students that are helping – they can see through that from a mile away.”

“Schools regularly take on plenty of 18 year old students.”

“Schools only take on 18 year olds with exceptional talent and normally look for people who are at least a couple of years older.”

“If your speech is engaging enough, it doesn’t matter if it runs over two minutes.”

“They will definitely stop you the moment two minutes is up, even if you’re in mid-flow.”

“Audition for several different schools – each school is different and what one school, and audition panel, might like or want could be completely different to another school or panel.”

“Don’t make it sound like you’ve auditioned for every school under the sun – they want people who are specifically targeting particular schools that they feel a connection with.”

“Take as long as you need to get into character, and do whatever you need in order to do so, even if that means jogging on the spot for ten seconds before you start, or whatever it may be.”

“Don’t take an age to ‘find the character’ and don’t start doing stupid things in the audition room – actors should be able to get into character without taking a really long time over it, and doing silly things to try and help just puts the auditioners off.”

So yes, that’s quite a list of contradictions, and that’s just some of them. How frustrating is that, to have such conflicting advice from two sources that both claim to know what they’re talking about! My answer to it all is just to do what feels right for you, but it’s hardly comforting to know you might be pissing the auditioners off without even realising it…

• There are a load of different types of people auditioning, and sometimes you meet nice people, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes people are very quiet and insular and don’t want to speak to anybody much, and sometimes people seem incredibly chatty without seeming to care much about preparing themselves for their actual speeches. Sometimes people find a good balance between the two, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes people turn up and seem to experience a vast pleasure in explaining to everyone in the room in a loud voice about how they got recalls here and there, final rounds there and just got off the set of television programme or feature film X, Y and Z, and yes, darling, look me up on IMDB. I don’t like those people. On the whole, however, I’d say that probably the majority of people you meet are perfectly nice enough and easy to talk to, if you wish to.

• Some people seem to like the group auditions (e.g. Central, RWCMD), and some seem to hate them. Personally, I’m a big fan of them. I think perhaps it helps me in particular because my surname is at the bottom of the alphabet (I’m a “W”). Now normally I hate this, as it means I’m almost always last in everything (and in fact if I do ever become a professional actor I will need to change my surname as there is already an actor with the exact same name as me in Equity, and I will certainly be choosing one much nearer to the top of the alphabet than my current name…), but in these group auditions I find, oddly enough, that it helps me calm down a bit before it’s my turn. I think it’s because it gives me a chance to watch everyone else’s speeches first, which helps to shatter those preconceptions that everyone else is a million times more brilliant than you and that your speeches absolutely pale into insignificance when placed alongside even the weakest moments from anybody else’s, which is something I feel when I do the individual auditions. When I’m sitting there in the “waiting room” at, say, LAMDA or Drama Centre I find I can’t help myself looking at everyone else and making judgements about what they are like, what sort of speeches they will be doing and how much the panel will like them compared to me. In the group auditions, I can see them for myself and it helps give me a sense of perspective on it all and stops me worrying so much, as I’ve already seen everyone else have to go through the ordeal before me, and I’ve realised that, even if some of them might be better than me, they’re not at the standard of professional actors, and that’s why they’re here, auditioning for a drama school – because, just like me, they’re not perfect and they want to be helped to become better.

Hello there - I don't believe we've met before...

What is this exactly? It’s my blog. Who am I? For the purpose of this blog, I am your average drama school auditionee. I have decided to give the blog the hilarious title of “Actor W” for two reasons: 1) because my surname begins with a W – I won’t say what it is exactly because I’d prefer not to disclose that sort of information here but it’s safe to say my friends have no hesitation in frequently referring to me by it alone, and 2) because my research is extremely thorough, and as such I know about the great “Actor X” blog on IdeasTap and have decided to rip it off because I couldn’t think of a better name myself but thought that it wouldn’t matter because I could pass it off as being witty…

I don’t think my life is actually interesting enough to be worth writing a normal blog about, so instead I’m writing a blog about something that I happen to be doing, which might be relevant and/or interesting to other people. But I think it might be useful to people reading to at least know a little about me, so that you can see the context from which I’m approaching the auditions.

Me:

• Born July 1993
• Done lots of school and youth theatre productions and classes since about the age of eleven
• National Youth Theatre member since 2010
• Auditioned last year (2010-2011) for six schools, got no recalls
• Currently on a gap year (but definitely not a “gap yah”…) in which I have been trying to do lots of acting (which has gone well) and earn lots of money (which has gone slightly less well)

So that’s pretty much all there is to know about me that is actually relevant to this process. Now I know that getting no recalls from anywhere last year is pretty crap going, to be honest, but I do believe (hopefully not mistakenly) that I was woefully under-prepared last year in comparison to this time round, even if I didn’t see that at the time, and that I do have the ability to do at least a little bit better than that this year (though it’s hardly as if I could do any worse…). But that’s for me to do and you to find out, I guess.