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.