Drama School 2012 Mission Log - Entry 5: LAMDA

LAMDA: I’m struggling to think of a clever way to start this entry, so I’ll cut to the chase.

I think my audition at LAMDA was very good. Sort of.

As I walked out of Baron’s Court Station and down Talgarth Road I couldn’t help but feel a warm smile slowly spreading across my face as memories of my two weeks spent there the summer before came back to me. I don’t really know if this is what people mean when they say that a place “feels right” for them… With me and LAMDA, there are two possibilities: 1) the place always felt right to me, which is why I did my summer course there and became more comfortable with the surroundings, meaning that I now enjoy time spent there even more, or 2) I only like it because I spent two weeks there in the summer, and the connection I feel with it is only down to familiarity and nothing more meaningful than that. Thinking back now, I can’t really tell which of the two it was.

Though to be honest, does it really matter either way? The point is that I felt comfortable walking into the building, more comfortable than I did at any of the other schools by a long stretch (and no I’m not just ignoring RWCMD because they rejected me). As if that wasn’t enough to get me pumped up about the audition, that morning I had been fortunate enough to take part in a Q&A session with the actor Gethin Anthony who happened to have gone to LAMDA, so that served to focus my mind even more on the task ahead of me.

So I went into the building (managing to do a good impression of a gorilla by violently rattling the door several times as I tried to open it, before realising I had to push a button to get it to release) and was met by a lady who ticked me off on a piece of paper she had in front of her. We made small talk for a bit (I tried to seem nice and amiable and probably failed), before being taken to the common room area by a student, accompanied by three other auditionees who all looked about my age. The student left us alone for a bit and the usual audition chat took place about our speeches and where we had travelled from and so on (not instigated by me, I might add – I’m not really a fan of using my audition prep time to discuss my Tube journey…). When he returned, the student told me that I was actually in the time slot after that of the other three auditionees, and that I should wait around in the common room for a while until it was my time, which would be in about half an hour. Thankfully, the other people that were supposed to be in the same time slot as me didn’t turn up until just before the audition time, so I used the time to jump up and down and run around in the empty space of the common room, go over the start of my speeches and just generally warm up. (I also used quite a large chunk of the time to go to the toilet, but I didn’t think you needed to know that. But now I’ve said it anyway… I guess I could delete what I just wrote. But then I’d feel like I wasn’t giving an accurate portrayal of my day, which I guess is the whole point of this… Oh screw it, I’ll leave it in…)

When my time arrived, I walked with the student back to the main entrance area when another student, this time a girl, came and showed me to just outside the room I would be auditioning in. Of course, it happened to be the one bloody room that I only went into once during my whole two weeks there in the summer. Typical…

Anyway, I sat outside there for a bit, trying to make sure I stayed focused, before the girl told me that the panel were ready to see me now, and that I could either go straight in, or take a couple of minutes to prepare myself.

I took a couple of minutes to prepare myself.

When I decided that I was ready, the student told me that when I went into the room the panel would say hello to me and ask me what my two speeches were, before letting me perform the speeches in whatever order I wanted to, and then that would be it.

Now, I remember this aspect of LAMDA’s audition process being the absolute most intimidating thing ever last year, the fact that the panel barely spoke a word to me seeming really unhelpful in terms of relaxing my nerves etc. But having had a sort of “inside view” of the auditions (even to the small extent that I did), I now found the fact that they whistled through each audition a completely understandable necessity. I took comfort in knowing that I was well-acquainted with the sort of thing that the panel wanted to see in those few minutes, and that I had prepared well for giving my best in that short time allotted to me.

I took a very deep breath.

This was it. This was massive. This was my favourite place. This was where I did my course in the summer. This was where I felt like I had the best chance out of anywhere. I had to give it my best shot.

And so I started.

And it was good. I think it was, anyway. In fact, I felt that it went really well, overall. It was probably the best I can remember actually acting in an audition, now I think about it.

So I said thank you and left the room feeling like I had just won the lottery. There was a pretty insane grin on my face, anyway…

Actually, I think the student waiting for me outside was a bit freaked out by it.

But hopefully she wasn’t. She took me through to the main foyer area where I sat again for a while, looking at the various photos on the wall of past LAMDA productions and trying to make out the names of the people pictured in them. I was actually feeling really, really happy. I was back in my favourite school. I had just done what I felt was a very good audition, for me. I knew how to act in interviews by now. The hard bit was surely over, right?

Well.

To be honest with you, I think that this feeling of happiness was the problem. I’m not suggesting that I was unhappy to feel so comfortable in the school, and to have enjoyed my time there as much as I did. On the contrary, I think it helped me focus my pre-audition nerves and use them to my advantage (though only time will tell). The problem was that, whereas before my audition I felt comfortable in my surroundings while still feeling nervous, now I just felt comfortable in my surroundings without any nerves at all. It was a bizarre feeling, considering the situation.

I genuinely felt like I was just relaxing in my living room. And as you can probably imagine, this really wasn’t the best mental state to be in just before an important interview.

I mean, sure, I think I was pleasant enough to talk to, which is good I guess. But the problem was a lack of focus on my part. I think I just assumed that, like at RADA, I would be asked a few probing questions to which I could give my carefully prepared answers to, and feel satisfied. But those questions never came. They asked me about some factual things, like where else I was auditioning and so on, and then asked me what I was doing at the moment. I gave a brief outline of what I had been doing, omitting a few details, and left it at that really, expecting to then hear something a bit more challenging, perhaps along the lines of, “Who is your favourite actor?” or “Why do you want to come to LAMDA?” or something. But it didn’t happen.

That was it.

I left the room in a little bit of a haze, slightly confused as to how my interview could have passed in such a fashion. I think a big factor in my surprise was the fact that the previous year’s interview had included a question about the last piece of theatre I had been to see, which at least had offered something for me to get my teeth in to. But this year, I got nothing of the sort.

And I’ve spent the two weeks since the audition absolutely kicking myself, really.

At the time, I thought that I was being warmed up into the tricky questions – which would be my chance to get them interested – by being asked about what I was doing at the moment. But now I look back on it, that question was my chance to get them interested. And I just didn’t take it. I could have mentioned so many different things that would have been exciting and that showed my enthusiasm and dedication and passion and desire and drive...

But I missed my chance. Based on that interview, I may well have seemed like the most boring person in the world, compared to other people who took that chance and made themselves stand out. My failure to give them what they wanted to hear, which I know I could have done, might well just be the difference between getting a recall and not getting one. And now I’m kicking myself.

So I left LAMDA feeling a bizarre combination of ridiculously pleased and incredibly pissed off. It’s now been almost two weeks since the audition, so I’m expecting the result in the post any time now.

And I love the school so much, and it would really make me so genuinely thrilled to get a recall there, but right now, I honestly don’t know what that result is going to be.

So cross your fingers and your toes for me, please – I’m going to need it…