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.
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