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…