The Audition
This shall be a brief(ish) post...
I was in the car yesterday on my way to the city and "Apologise" by One Republic came on the radio. It's a song that comes with many memories. The first one is the fact that when I still owned an iPod, this song was the top song on my Top 25 most played songs playlist. With a whopping number of plays of 372 times. Yes, I was obsessed. It is a crazy good song after all, the words, the music, the angelic voice of Ryan Tedder. There is even a video of me singing it a Capella with two friends, back when I was still a University student in 2008, on YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TJSgDyuG7s -see?).
In spite of all this, yesterday, a more chronologically progressed memory popped into my mind. It's 2009 and I am about to graduate from University and I was itching to move on to my Musical Theatre training. I have just applied to a dozen of Drama Schools in London and I have just heard back from a few of those asking to see me for an audition. One of them was Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in the heart of London. Knowing that a few names were part of their alumni including THE Judy Garland and the quite controversial Russell Brand, you can imagine my excitement. I had to nail this.
Every Drama school's audition process is different but most schools due to their vast amount of applicants they receive every year, they decide to offer very limited audition time to each candidate, having the confidence that within 5 mins of a monologue, 2 mins of a choreography and 16 bars of any Musical Theatre song will help them make their final decision. And it's true, sometimes, this tiny window of a shot each applicant receives, shall be enough to sift the goodies from the baddies judged by industry 'experts'. Show-business usually works this way anyway, everyone's time is money and if you have what it truly takes, you may as well be able to show it within 180 seconds.
Italia Conti has a bit of a different approach. Their belief is that every candidate deserves a thorough examination in order to see if this is their ideal place of training. So they dedicate weeks to auditioning every applicant in the following areas: A monologue, a solo dancing piece, an entire solo song followed by three classes of dance and acting classes. This way the judges get to see how each performer works with another, how they cope within a classroom, how well they take direction etc.
I see both different audition approaches' point, but let's be honest, Italia Conti's thoroughness is definitely helping a little more, both judges and performers. If you screw up your dance, you get a chance to redeem yourself within the class that follows. Everybody messes up, especially when under pressure. And come to think of it, all applicants are ages 16-23 max. Tinies.
So as I am at home thinking and preparing for my dance solo on the day, I decide to go with 'Apologise' for my song and create a dance with it, since my background training was ballet and contemporary dance. It was perfect. I had it all prepared and on my iPod. I just needed to make sure they have a lead that I could connect to my iPod so I wouldn't have to burn a CD for the day. Kids, a CD is a round disk we use to burn songs onto and pop them into a thing called a stereo and listen to our favourite songs. Just FYI.
I gave the school a ring and they said that they surely have an iPod lead I could use on the day. Phew, all ready.
So I show up and I am ready to go, having practiced my dance again and again, since out of the "Triple Threat"* package, dance was my weakest. I walk in the room and I ask for the iPod lead. They look at me, I look over at the stereo, no lead. "Oh sorry there is no lead in this room, do you have a CD with your song?". "Um, no I called to ask if it's okay to use my iPod and they said it's okay". There was only one lead on the floor and it was being used by another class. After what seemed the longest and most awkward pause, in order to figure out what to do, the director of the course says "look, we only care about your dancing abilities and your moves here, not so much about the music, would you be comfortable doing it without music then?". I stood there and put on my uber confident suit and said "Sure thing". And then straight after that, without even thinking about it again, I blurted out "Actually, it's a slow song and dance, I can try to sing along while dancing". WHAT. So here I am singing "I'm holding on your rope got me 10 feet off the ground..." and doing my little twirl and slow walk along the room...Needless to say the courage and multitasking skill I portrayed despite my 'technical difficulty' on the day, secured me a place in the school. Well, that and my big talent and dancing technique of course LOL LOL LOL. And the rest is history...
Lesson to be learnt. Don't let minor hinders stand in your way of your dream. You want something, go get it. Technology will always be letting us down. It's up to us to carry on and do well.
Huh. Maybe this wasn't a brief-ish post after all.
*Triple Threat: an all rounder performer who is able to act, sing and dance exceptionally.
BYE
