Italia Conti.
No, I still speak English. Italia Conti is a name. A pretty well known name for the wider London crowd and for a specific artistic crowd of Britain. Aka, my drama school. Full name, Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. Founded by Ms Conti in 1910, with a line of successful, household names for alumni such as Judy Garland, Noel Coward, Peter Duncan, Naomi Campbell, Kelly Brook, Russel Brand, Martine McCutcheon, Sadie Frost, Pixie Lott, Leslie Phillips and of course moi. Har har har. Oh yeah it's a pretty good school. And I attended it in 2010. 100 years after it was found. Hashtag coincidence?
Now, you must be wondering if Drama Schools are anything like in the movies. Pretty much. Same amount of drama, all of the loudness, all of the strenuous, hard work, same competitive spirit, same amount of bitchiness, love stories, heartbreaks, panic attacks, stories where you fall flat on your face and then rise to the occasion. And if you're wondering which of the above had happened to me, make that all of the above, minus maybe the love story. Sorry, nothing saucy here.
BUT, when it comes to the competitive spirit, tick. Let's start with that. Number one. There's two types of competitive people. What I call, the good and the bad. The good, they learn to be competitive with themselves. They understand that at the end of the day we are all different, despite similarities, and we all have something different to bring to the table. So they make sure they beat their own version of themselves every day, and make the best out of who they are. Wise and noble ae. But I learnt first hand that this is and will always be and should be my type of competitive spirit. Of course we all have our bad competitive side, where we want to beat others by badmouthing, using strategies and schemes but what I've learnt, is that this competitive spirit, is short-term.
What happens a lot at Drama Schools is favouritism. Or at least it happened in mine. Every minor showcase we were working on, suddenly more or less the same people would get the solos or the front line, or the best parts. Without auditioning. Nope. Teacher walked in, picked out 7-10 names, and say ''you get a solo, you get centre stage, you get this part", and that would be it. True story. And maybe, maybe, apologies for my slight bitchiness side here, but maybe, they weren't all that amazing or right for those parts, solos etc. Maybe, but hey, one woman's opinion. What did I do? Kept my head down, kept working on my skills and how to make them better. Lesson number two. Badmouthing, showing envy or getting bitchy is a vast waste of energy which leads to having no energy left for yourself and how you can become better. Trust me on this one.
The end of the year, marked the major end of year show at London's Wimbledon theatre where we could invite not only family and friends but also agents and people from the industry. My year was assigned to a young teacher who used to give us singing lessons throughout the year, in order to create our performance. She was gonna be our director and vocal coach. The day we had our first meeting about our performance, she walked in and basically said "I don't care about favouritism, I don't believe in crap like that, either you are worth it or not and either you are right for the parts or not, you are all auditioning, you are all getting an equal chance to show me what you have". Finally some justice? Long story short, our performance was from the musical 'In The Heights', a Broadway show that had won a Tony Award that year for Best New Musical. Such a funky, fresh show with lots of energy and strong vocals. We all auditioned, I got the part. Ha. Hashtag, eyebrow flare. But that's not why I am telling this story. Besides, story is not over.
That was just the beginning. We had a couple of long months of rehearsals but over those two months, suddenly without realising I was starting to get some hate from some fellow chicks. Out of nowhere someone would put words in my mouth and rumours would start and I was getting attacked for saying something mean about someone when I really hadn't. Being bullied at Primary School, I kinda made sure I was never gonna end up being bitchy about anyone so believe me I was an innocent little shit getting attacked. Lol. And it never dawned on me then, that it was just because of the main part. I had the main part. Mmmm. Energy, wasted.
Anyway, no idea where these chicks are today and what they are up to, I learnt that those relationships were pretty fleeting for me. Hashtag sorry not sorry.
Be the big person. Grow every day, grow your best version of YOU every day. Haters gon'hate no matter what, where and when.
Next week, more drama, awesome teachers and my first panic attack.
Tootles.
Watch performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odEVoeiJHac
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