My next audition experience is going to be about… Artsed! Now, Artsed is probably considered the best school for Musical Theatre in the UK. It’s based in Chiswick and I really, really love the place with all my heart.
The audition day began at 11am. My 2 friends who are in my year at school were also there, it was nice to have people you knew who you could talk to but at the same time both of them are guys so there was no sense of competition. The day started with us being given our numbers and being split into 2 groups. I was in the group with mainly girls so I wasn’t in the same one as my 2 friends. My group did dance first. The warmup was mainly made up of your standard ISTD syllabus warmups and various jumping exercises, but even throughout the warmup they were constantly stressing how you MUST always have your weight forward, your arms in front of you (in second position) and your arms in a ‘ballet first’ and not a ‘jazz first.’ The entire time I was making sure I maintained these corrections they gave us because even though it was only the warmup, they would have already started checking who could pick up corrections the fastest. One thing I liked about the warmup was that they made everyone do this jumping sequence made up of tuck jumps and frog jumps, because most of the time only the boys are made to do these (like at Mountview) and it was a nice change. After all the warming up and technique exercises, we went straight onto the routine. It was to ‘My Shot’ from ‘Hamilton’ which was really fun to do. The routine itself was taught quite fast, and even thought the steps were simple the dance was quite fast as well. The style of it was jazz, however there were some street dance influences in the choreography. They also kept telling us to act aggressive which we had to show in the ‘improv’ section just before we started the actual dance. Before we did it in smaller groups the 2 women taking the audition told us to not be so polite and ended up doing this exercise with us where we literally went round the room shouting at and pushing around all the other girls. I thought it was actually quite fun (especially as I am naturally quite an aggressive person to start with). When we actually did the dance in small groups I was really in the zone. In the improv bit I didn’t technically dance as such but I just walked around the room acting all aggressive, throwing my fist into my other hand and punching the air. The dance went well apart from the fact that I went slightly out of time at the start, and my legs looked tragic in the mirror during the box jump, but those aren’t really the things they care about. They can teach you how to do those things properly, they just want to see potential and see that you have qualities that they can’t actually train you to do, such as performing and acting. We ended the dance call with a cool down and then headed back down stairs to the foyer where we all had first met. The next day I had heard that a girl in the other group (the one with my 2 other friends) had been told to demonstrate a single pirouette with her arms in a ‘ballet first’ and had fallen out of it. She then demanded that she show them that she could do them with her arms in ‘jazz first’ and she fell out of it again, on both sides! The women on the panel then said to her, “see, that’s why we don’t do them like that…” So just a tip for you all, DON’T DO THAT!
Next my group were going to do the singing call. At Artsed, the singing is done all one to one so it’s just you and the panel which I think is much nicer than singing in front of all your competition. I was near the end (as usual) as my surname starts with a T, but when my time came I was actually ok and not too nervous. This was probably because we only had to sing our legit song and I knew that would be a breeze, and it was! I sung my one minute cut, they said “thank you,” and I was done! Then we had to wait quite a while before we were taken back into the same room we did the singing in where we were told who got a recall and who didn’t. In total they recalled 10 people out of about 30 people, 5 boys and 5 girls. I was so relieved when they called my name! I think this was when all the nerves in my body disappeared.
After that there was virtually no break. We were given a timetable for the part of the audition they called the ‘Carousel.’ In the recall I had physio first, my interview second and then my monologues and contemporary song, but first we all went up stairs to do an acting workshop (it was basically just a warmup) that consisted of a lot of walking around the room. To be fair, everything was going really smoothly and just how I wanted it to go. The physio was all good and I didn’t have to take off all my clothes this time. My interview with Chris Hocking was a-okay and he was really friendly. Other than the fact that I couldn’t remember the person who directed ‘Heathers’ on the Westend, all the other questions I could answer fine, (it was just all the basic questions like “where else are you applying for?” and “three words to describe you?”) especially as I had researched everything I needed to know for it (this included the director, choreographer and the writers of the latest musical I saw, mine being ‘Heathers’ with Carrie Hope Fletcher). My monologues were a breeze as well. I had been told previously that even if you do the most amazing performance they will most likely always workshop it and try out new things, however with mine they just let me do my thing, watched them all the way through and said they had seen all they had needed to see and I was out of there!
But, unfortunately this is where it all went down hill… the singing recall. I went in there really calm and confident (which I think is why I handled the whole situation well) and I told them what my song was, ‘Calm’ from ‘Ordinary Days.’ Now, I have generally had a bad relationship with contemporary songs, in the sense that I couldn’t actually find one that suited my voice well enough, contrasted with my legit song and was suitable for an audition, which I found out in Artsed one that this particular song was not. As soon as I said what the song was, the 2 guys sat in the room who I had sung to before just looked at each other and asked if I had anything else. My heart dropped, but you know, I worked through it. Thing is, I had my entire rep folder with me (which by the way is a great idea) and it had loads of different songs in it. The down side was that I didn’t really know any of them (not a good idea) because I hadn’t gone over them in months. I explained that to them and they were totally understanding of the whole situation as to be fair it was no ones fault. They let me sing parts of 2 other songs that they picked out, ‘I Don’t Know What I’d Do Without You’ from ‘A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder,’ and ‘The Story Goes On’ from ‘Baby.’ I messed the timings and the lyrics up on both of them, but I still tried to perform and act through song as much as possible. They workshopped them a bit and asked me to sing some scales. After they let me go, I bumped into Chris Hocking on my way out, he asked me how it went and I simply replied a disappointed “okay…” I hoped he’d notice that I wasn’t happy. After I went home and overthought the entire day (also not a good idea).
Overall, apart from the singing recall the whole audition was a success because the following day at noon I received an email from the administrations team that I had been offered a singing recall to redo my contemporary song in March! I literally cried I was so relieved… I mean I thought they were going to say no. Anyway, the main lesson I took away from this audition was definitely that if you’re going to take a folder full of songs to an audition… KNOW THEM! It sounds so obvious but it’s just something you don’t consider. Everyone assumes that the song that you’ve prepared is the one that they’ll want to hear, but in some cases like mine that doesn’t happen. This might be because of a reason similar to mine or it could because of something totally different. It’s completely out of your control so just stay calm!
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