Talking About Recent Auditions

As everyone who reads my blog know, I'm an upcoming actor. Currently in a gap year before going to a drama school in September 2007, I've been going along to 'The Grove Theatre Group' in Derry and have appeared in 'Ghost Bus Tours' (will talk about that soon on the blog) and the upcoming pantomime 'Beauty and the Beast' as one of the henchmen.

I don't have much to say in the Panto because my performance is mostly physical comedy and I'm really enjoying this part and how its all coming together and it's about one month until the show starts.

But the point of this blog entry is to talk about two of the most recent auditions i've been on which I've got different successes from each of these plus as no pictures were taking, I thought I would draw the scene for you.

Spring Town Camp

This audition was held on a Tuesday and became the start of my twice weekly visits to Derry (stop calling the town Londonderry after this point because the only people who called the town by this name were people who don't live there) and actually met up with my new friends just minutes after I got off the bus. Pretty nice we all meet up because it allows me to get to know them a lot better.

After getting dinner, we went over to The Forum and found out we arrived a bit early. We all have to fill out a form with basic information (i.e. Name, Address, E-mail etc…) and also state previous drama experience with I've had a lot and my friends were impressed by this as I haven't told them much about what I've done by this point.

Most of the people who came to audition was around are age, some people were older and others were people we haven't seen since Summer School back in July. We waited about after our audition just chatting and hanging out with friends, as my group were the first people to be called to audition.

The audition room was a lot like the picture I've drawn, the two people who wrote the script made jokes that this isn't like The X Factor (Well I'm done Pop Idol 2 which is similar but nothing like this audition). As this production is in co-produce with The Grove Theatre Group, we all would have a good chance in getting parts whatever happens. After a nice chat we all read parts of the script and taking turns to read different parts

On that Thursday we found out who got what part and I ended up with being the play's "Understudy" while likely playing a minor non-speaking part in the play.

Calamity Jane

Now auditioning for a musical is a whole different ball game. Kind of have to admit I failed this one for one reason… No Piano Music. I only heard of this audition about one month before hand from my new good friend Gemma and didn't know much about what to do. I had a monologue learnt but didn't know if I had to learn it off by heart on read of a page, so I choose the latter and kind of not felt great with that.

Then we no Piano music, I had to sing without a backing track and if the above picture can speak, you might not like what you hear.

Now I learnt some lessons like getting there early to be nice and friendly to the people running the auditions, which will help in the future if I do an audition with them again but the main lesson I learnt is to remember piano music.

So this has been the auditions I've done so far and hopefully there will be more success in the near future.

BRIAN

[Originally Posted on my Myspace Blog - 13th February 2006]