by Bel | Jul 24, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
A couple of years ago, the Guardian published an article entitled “How to act: stage stars share their acting tips“. Along with “preparation, preparation, preparation”, the most common piece of advice was “listen”.
Actors often cite this ability as an absolute prerequisite when playing a scene. Dominic West recently mentioned: “People who I’ve most enjoyed working with are people who are open, who listen and who are flexible…if you go into a scene knowing how things are going to end up, chances are it’s not going to be a very interesting scene”.
People applying to drama school may understandably feel like this piece of advice is less applicable when performing their monologues in front of an audition panel. Sometimes drama schools provide an existing pupil to stand in place of the other character in your scene, but they will never react to your performance and are there more to help with eye line than anything else.
Furthermore, inevitably you will know how “things are going to end up” in your performance at an audition. Decisions based on the text will have been made and the panel will expect you to intelligently justify why you chose to present that particular interpretation.
Although there may be no other actor to listen or react to, the spirit of being open to suggestion is key to getting a recall. In a drama school audition, the listening applies to responding to the panel’s direction; hearing their notes and immediately adapting your performance to show that it isn’t set in stone and that you are able to play conflicting interpretations truthfully.
The panel aren’t looking for a polished performance, they are looking for students who are willing to fail in the pursuit of a better and more honest portrayal. The reason why drama schools graduates often have higher employment rates than those who haven’t been is because they have been allowed to experiment and fail intelligently.
James McAvoy said: “Drama schools are a great idea, I really do believe that. It’s three years where you’re in an environment where you are safe, your vulnerability is protected. No where in the professional world will you manage to get twenty gigs in three years playing all these different characters. You’re there to fail.”
This is why students return time and time again to Audition Doctor. The focus is not on creating a shiny, unchangeable performance, but the joy of unravelling a human being through trial and error.
When interviewed by BAFTA, Benedict Cumberbatch said: “You can never perfect what we do, I’ve never met anyone who goes “that’s perfection”….this goes for all art forms, the point is that perfection is unachievable. It’s that constant pursuit of the unobtainable which is kind of magic really and it’s that Beckett thing, fail again and fail better” which is essentially the unwritten ethos of Audition Doctor.
by Bel | Jul 17, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
In the Guardian last month, Sylvestra Le Touzel spoke of how many actresses felt shortchanged by Shakespeare. She spoke in light of her experience playing Lady Percy in Henry IV: “Inhabiting Shakespeare’s women can be frustrating, not because he lacked insight into the female condition but because he didn’t give us enough space in which to play. “Have you ever felt that one of your scenes is missing?” Elizabeth Bell once asked me as she adjusted Gertrude’s lipstick, rose from her chair and exited with resignation to meet Hamlet in her closet.”
The advice most frequently dispensed by Audition Doctor to drama school applicants is the imperative of finding the best speech for you. The speech is the medium through which you will be judged first and foremost. For women, the range of speeches to choose from is narrower, however, the way a speech is interpreted has no limitation.
Le Touzel went onto comment on how “Many years later, while working on one of [Lady Percy’s] speeches with a drama student, we came to a section where the pentameter has an unexpected rhythm. I’d skipped over it 20 years before, but working on it again we found the underlying beat of a drum woven into the sentence structure. You can work on a speech for years and still find new insights.”
This week, Carrie Cracknell gave an insight into the National Theatre’s rehearsal process of Medea which incorporates dance into the production. Choreographer Lucy Guerin mentioned: “Actors need a lot of background on what they’re expressing and why. Carrie does these sessions called intentions, where everyone sits down and goes through the play line by line to figure out each character’s place.”
Audition Doctor sessions are not at all dissimilar; sessions are spent discussing motive and unpicking the text line by line. Such commitment to detail roots the performance in truth. Consequently, when questioned by panels as to why a particular decision was made, Audition Doctor students are always clear about the psychology behind every choice.
However, the thing that marks Audition Doctor’s students out is their awareness of how many different ways a character can be played. Redirection during recalls is common and due to the experimental nature of Audition Doctor sessions, students find that they are able to play many, and often opposite, intentions truthfully.
Cracknell said: “I do think we live in a culture of liking to know where we’re being led,” she says. “I would much rather be drawn into a work, and asked lots of difficult questions, than be taken on a well-worn story where I know what the outcome will be.”
Audition Doctor sessions are characterised by the refusal to go down the well-trodden path of the easiest option. Drama schools are looking for those who are prepared to be bold and ask difficult questions. It’s what Audition Doctor prepares each of her students to be.
by Bel | Jul 10, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
This week on BBC Radio 4 Today, Paul Roseby, Head of NYT, reiterated his stance on drama school training. He refuted the belief that you could teach someone to act and deplored many drama school graduates as being “over moulded and over trained”. He asserted that “the best way is to learn in front of an audience and garner that instinct”.
“I hear it a lot – people that have from drama schools have a certain label attached to them, a certain mould…When you’re auditioning for a cornflake commercial, nobody says ‘What degree do you have and where have you trained?’ It’s about you in the room, in the moment. So whatever you have done beforehand is your deal and nobody else’s. All you have to do is sell.”
Roseby’s views, alongside Christopher Eccleston’s recent recounting of how despite being well cast at his Central School of Speech and Drama School final year show case, he didn’t get an agent for 3 years, may understandably cause possible students to think twice before applying to drama school.
While there is evidently truth in Roseby’s comments, schemes such as his NYT Rep Company which “offer free, practical, industry-based training over eight months to 12 talented members” are rare and competition is even more fierce than that experienced at drama school auditions.
Furthermore, the fact that NYT offers such a programme shows their acknowledgement of the importance of training and their ethos of “learning by doing it, not theorising” is that of the leading conservatoires. Additionally, in response to suggestions and changes in the industry, drama schools have made concerted efforts to tailor courses to better equip graduates for the realities of the profession. Sessions on how to form your own theatre company and advice on budgeting are already available in many schools.
If you aren’t one of the few who get onto schemes such as NYT, access to professional direction and advice can be hard to come by. Audition Doctor is one of the few places where both are given. However, Tilly still unfailingly repeats her belief to all her students that drama school training is essential.
Drama schools give you access to working actors, mentors, guidance and contacts. Audition Doctor’s success rate is high. However, the places that are gained as a result of the sessions are borne of a mutual commitment to both experimentation and graft. Although Roseby believes that one cannot learn how to act, of Audition Doctor’s students who do get into drama school, it is most frequently those who have worked the hardest.
by Bel | Jul 3, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
In her Q&A for the Guardian this week, Kathleen Turner cited Romancing the Stone as her favourite film because “I really like how Joan Wilder changes. Change is what attracts me to a character.”
At drama school auditions, candidates are often questioned on their character’s “emotional arc”. ie. The inner journey or change that the character experiences throughout the speech. The panel aren’t just looking for a change within the speech itself, but also the ability to experiment with a variety of emotional journeys. Versatility and being open to changing the interpretation you entered the audition room with is, in some ways, more important than the performance itself. It demonstrates the knowledge that the text is a catalyst for diverse portrayals and infinite possibilities.
Theatre, with what Kathleen Turner deems its “all consuming eight shows a week” and likens to “being an Olymplic athlete in training”, is where actors can truly explore their range. The live nature of theatre means that no two shows can be exactly the same and why many actors realise they can only be true craftsmen if they are able to act on stage.
Richard Armitage, in this week’s Telegraph spoke of his return to the stage in The Crucible after 13 years of concentrating on film and television as significant: “It’s interesting coming back now and getting into a rehearsal room and going: ‘This is why I did it. I’d forgotten.’ I’m having a really amazing epiphany doing this, and I think I’ll be a different actor when I come out of it.”
This is why drama school panels and Audition Doctor consistently urge candidates to go and see as much theatre as possible. Not only do you often see actors going beyond what you previously thought possible, but you also have to understand what it is that excites you as a member of the audience.
Kathleen Turner claimed: “I definitely go to the theatre more than film, because as much as I enjoy some films, there’s nothing like the participation that you feel sitting in an audience at a live performance. It’s absolutely magic. You sit closer to a complete stranger than you would in your own homeland; if the play is compelling as the actors good, you start to breathe together. You hold your breath together. You laugh together. You can come become something greater than just yourself.”
Audition Doctor sessions are about creating an arresting yet truthful character that makes the audition panel sit up and notice that you are capable of change, and that you are able to honestly be something other than yourself.
by Bel | Jun 26, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting
In the Guardian’s “Before and After the Show” series, various actors recounted their experiences on stage. Both Lisa Dwan and Stephen Mangan spoke of the “nerve-racking and thrilling” feeling of being “hit by a truck” by the end. Mangan went onto describe the difficulties of “getting yourself into exactly the same mental state every night after six months of doing the same show eight times a week. You come to the theatre with whatever anxieties or triumphs the day has brought, and there are times when you really don’t want to be there.”
The mental and physical exertion that actors routinely experience night after night is argument enough for proper training. The series itself debunks the myth that many wrongly assume to be true – that acting is easy. It’s a myth that sometimes drama school students themselves believe.
Theatre producer Richard Jordon related depressingly that “Even among drama school students, when you ask people what they’d like to do after graduation, some answer that they want to be famous. It’s a big problem in the industry that reality shows make it seem as if being an actor is easy, and that you don’t need the training. But if you’re going to survive, then being properly trained is crucial, not just in acting technique but also in the techniques of getting a job, building a career and surviving in the longer term. Lots of young actors are no longer in the profession just six months or a year after leaving training. They may be very good actors, but they haven’t got the skills to survive the harsh realities.”
Drama schools not only have the professional teachers to nurture each student’s craft, but also the practical tools to ensure their training doesn’t go to waste. In an industry where 80% of practitioners earn less than £10,000 a year, it would be foolhardy to ignore the incomparable resources and guidance that drama schools offer their students.
In the same series, Juliet Stevenson mentioned: “It’s a weird thing, acting: it’s like playing tennis, or the piano. One day you can’t get a note right, and the next the piece just seems to play itself. The audience won’t necessarily know the difference, but I do.”
For drama school auditions, you normally only get one chance to get the note right. The level of scrutiny that every candidate is under by professionals at a drama school audition is high. This means that a lot of the time, they will know the difference.
A recall rests on the necessity of getting to the same mental place every time you are in front of an audition panel. Audition Doctor ensures that nerves are harnessed in a profitable way. Students at Audition Doctor routinely get places at drama school because the work done during the sessions mean that auditions are never lost opportunities. Most of the time, the graft and exploration that each student undergoes at Audition Doctor mean that students eventually find that the pieces just seem to play themselves.
by Bel | Jun 19, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions
Michael Billington wrote of how “we are now in an era when the gap between film and theatre, thanks to sophisticated technology, is constantly narrowing.” Filming live theatre has established a new hybrid medium. “The result is to democratise theatre. It’s not just that the performance can be seen worldwide. The key point is that everyone now has the best seat in the house.” The live aspect coupled with the advantage of close ups has meant an end to seating with restricted views. Consequently, every audience member is “the most privileged theatrical spectator”.
Billington professed: “While I remain an evangelist for live theatre, I think it’s time we stopped pretending that it offers an unreproducible event. A theatre performance can now be disseminated worldwide with astonishing fidelity. This represents…a revolution which knocks on the head the old argument that theatre is an elitist medium aimed at the privileged few.”
The emergence of this new form, as evidenced by the popularity of National Theatre Live and Digital Theatre, has rendered courses specialising only in one medium a risky investment. As discussed in last week’s blog, the importance of choosing the right drama school is paramount. Many make the mistake of dismissing Shakespeare as an irrelevance when considering the kind of training they wish to embark on. This is a precarious line of thought when King Lear is being screened in cinemas globally this month, thus disproving the perception that Shakespeare is strictly confined to the stage and of interest to only a particular type of audience.
In the same week, Sarah Crompton wrote of how Kevin Spacey’s performance in Clarence Darrow “makes a pressing case for the power of the monologue”. She laments how the monologue – “one of the most enticing and flexible forms” – has unfortunately become synonymous with “terrible fringe venues” and “actors who crave attention…with their solo shows” in Edinburgh.
The reason why the success rate of Audition Doctor’s students is so high is because their performances neither become attention-seeking nor introverted. The choices that students make in the sessions also mean that the auditions themselves become a place of experimentation. Far from falling into the trap of embodying the cliché of introspective self-indulgence, Audition Doctor’s students perform their monologues “seeming simultaneously to look at you and through you… It places everyone in intimacy with the performer, letting them eavesdrop on his private thoughts”.
by Bel | Jun 12, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
There has recently been talk of how to address the disproportionately large number of freshly trained actors entering the industry every year. Equity President Malcolm Sinclair asserted: “Compared to when I started there are so many more drama schools and university courses,” Mr Sinclair said. “There are far more young actors coming out and it feels like there is less work around. There are too many actors and too few jobs.” The Stage reported that a Casting Call Pro survey found that over three quarters of actors earn less than £5,000 a year from the trade they trained for.
As Susan Elkin wrote in The Stage: “It simply wouldn’t be tolerated in other professions… Nobody embarks on medical training, an accountancy degree or business management training in the knowledge that she or he is highly unlikely ever to be able to make a living from it. It simply isn’t how training and work operates in a sensible world.” She advocated institutions becoming even more selective than they already are: ” “I think colleges should be contracting not expanding”. It goes without saying that those who train at accredited drama schools have a far higher chance of successfully making a living as an actor than those who attend newer university drama courses.It’s important to assert that it isn’t the nature of training that is under attack, but the proliferation of newer establishments that purport to offer professional training without accreditation. The importance of picking the right drama school is paramount to ensure durability in the profession and to avoid “effectively being conned by a numbers game”.
When interviewed by Ideastap, Adrian Lester emphasised the importance of training: “Always always always work on your weaknesses. When I left school I didn’t really have a great understanding of Shakespeare and I knew I wanted to be the kind of actor that could handle that. So, I made a conscious effort to work on my weakness which was Shakespeare and the eloquence of emotion that it provided. A few years ago, I turned around and looked at my career so far and realised that I had been regarded as a modern Shakespearean actor.”
With words like “finite”, “saturated” and “competition” routinely used to describe the nature of the industry, vocational training at top drama schools is more important than ever. Audition Doctor’s high success rate is why so many are beginning their training with Tilly.
Lester went onto comment on how “work can get stale if you are doing a long run”. The protracted length between auditions means that students often lose momentum. Audition Doctor sessions dotted regularly between each audition mean that many students have found that their auditions have improved exponentially and consequently, so have their recalls.Lester counselled: “The best way to keep things fresh is to understand why your character is saying what he’s saying. Not just what words you have to say, that’s important but it’s not as important as why they’re saying it. If you understand why…then you can use the words that you speak to try and achieve your objective in slightly different ways every night. No one knows what’s going to happen to them at any given moment, yet actors will say “Well this happens in scene 12 so in scene 10 I have to prepare for it. No you don’t. What happens in scene 12 should be as much of a surprise to you as the audience. Maybe then you’ll surprise yourself.”
Audition Doctor sessions ensure that students go into every audition prepared – not just in terms of understanding the text and their character, but equally in terms of being prepared for the possibility of spontaneous discovery.
by Bel | Jun 5, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
When asked about some of his earliest auditions, Simon Russell Beale described them as “terrible. I knew nothing…[and] did odd things like I did a speech of Cardinal Wolesey from Henry VIII…it was odd to have a man of 22 playing a man of 60.They were odd and I made bad mistakes and I talked too much.
The reason why Audition Doctor continues to be in such demand is because the sessions are not merely about performing monologues themselves, but also about avoiding making the bad presentational mistakes that Russell Beale mentions.
Kevin Spacey recently commented on the need for actors to shift their perspective of the audition from something to be conquered to “an opportunity to introduce [themselves] to a group of people. It may not pay off today …but if you have enough confidence and you walk in trusting the material and trusting yourself and not spending time trusting the things that you can’t trust like “Are they going to like me?”, “Are they going to think I’m talented?”, “Do they think I’m handsome?” but controlling the things that you can. [Such as], I’m going to meet you on this day and be the person I am rather than the nervous crazy person who wants the job so badly.”
Trusting the material is something that many auditionees find difficult – especially when it’s Shakespeare. What Audition Doctor sessions do is simple – they demystify the language.As Spacey says: “It’s not difficult. Take the thing that makes Shakespeare scary – the language – but it’s not so difficult. When you approach the plays from a perspective of how people deal with each other, people dig that. It’s just like family. I’ve watched kids of 14 – 15 getting really excited about how relevant the plays can be to their own lives. Don’t put him on a big pedestal – he’s just a playwright – attack him with an excitement about what his plays are about. Don’t dust him off like an antique.”
Audition Doctor sessions focus on the language because the words are the fundamental tools with which to build your character. Spacey opines: “Being an actor is not unlike being a detective, we are given a set of clues; some of them are real, some of them are what other characters say about us, some of them are factual, some of them are red herrings and we have to determine how we play this role based on the clues that we are given, so I spend a lot of time on language.”
Spacey ends his interview with saying “I avoid any judgements about the people I play. It’s my job just to play them.” One of the difficult things about approaching a character is confusing the act of making bold artistic decisions with making unreasonable personal judgements on the character. Audition Doctor ensures that you never do this, but approach both characters and auditions with honesty and confidence.
by Bel | May 29, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
The reason why Audition Doctor has proved so popular is because it is known for helping students achieve that most difficult yet necessary thing – saying your lines as if for the first time. Everyone who auditions for drama school knows how cadences in the voice that initially added colour and variety become stale and choices that were once bold and interesting start to appear mechanical.
Speaking of playing Hamlet in the Independent, Rory Kinnear said how he felt that because the audience knew the play so well, the result was that “a lot of the time Hamlet [seemed] to be playing catch-up with what everybody else already [knew]”. He spoke of hearing people murmuring Hamlet’s lines along with him. However, he also expressed the satisfaction of people commenting: “it was only after a while that they realised that I was doing such-and-such a speech. I suppose it can be surprising to discover these well- known words in the context of the narrative of a play, rather than as verbal set pieces. I suspect that secretly we might believe such great – and famous – outpourings of eloquence and wisdom should be heralded by a pause in the action and a suitable fanfare.”
Theatrical pauses and fanfare are precisely what drama schools are looking to avoid. Audition Doctor sessions offer the space to organically find your own truthful portrayal of oft-performed texts. The result is genuine storytelling which eschews performing your monologue as “a verbal set piece”. Although independent work is an unavoidable requisite, students have found that progress is much quicker with Audition Doctor booster sessions throughout the audition season.
Kinnear acknowledged that if he were to go back “I’m sure that for each role I would want to give a very different performance now. But however I did them, I would still want to focus on those moments when the characters become something they weren’t before. I would want to try to hold on to who they were, with all the weight of their histories, and yet follow them in the successive moments of becoming who they are, as they are faced with those big questions.”
Even Kinnear admits that tackling all this alone and “doing soliloquies to a wall [was]…isolating” and expressed relief when he finally performed it in front of an audience. Audition Doctor is like drama school in that it’s where students receive both professional feedback and direction.
Rarely do candidates get recalls for every single drama school they apply for and it is easy to get disheartened. Audition Doctor sessions mean you avoid the mid-audition slump and continue to achieve noticeable advancements in your development as an actor throughout the audition process.
by Bel | May 22, 2014 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
In a webchat for the Guardian, the first question that Fiona Shaw was asked was whether she recommended going to drama school. Her response was: “Yes, I advise training, you can turn from a stooped library smelling tweed-skirt wearing philosophy undergraduate into the hawkish swan that I was at 21.”
It’s reassuring to know that despite rather depressing articles such as The Stage’s “Surely we are training too many students?”, successful actors still support the idea of professional training. The argument against being saddled with substantial debt is routinely employed as justification for eschewing drama school. However, the industry is responding to rising tuition fees with alternatives such as the NYT Rep Company and Cygnet.
Susan Elkin of The Stage wrote: “Cygnet really does seem to be providing fine, informed, very professional and successful training. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and I had an excellent taste last week. Cygnet isn’t Bristol Old Vic or LAMDA and it isn’t trying to be. There is room for a range and I’m all for students having as much choice as possible. There is a lot to be said, for example, for training at over £2,000 per year less than the big schools charge.”
Drama school is the place where risk and the possibility of failure are accepted and even encouraged. It’s where Shaw learned to “think on the line – which means don’t analyse but allow what you’re saying to completely be of you and from you.”
The three years spent focusing on aspects such as movement and voice are also invaluable. On the webchat, someone wrote to Shaw: “I saw you alongside Alan Rickman in ‘John Gabriel Borkman’ in the Abbey in Dublin. I was sitting at the very back row and at one point I literally felt your voice hit me with its power. I couldn’t believe it.” and asked what technique she used to achieve this.
Shaw responded: “If you are concentrated, and your imagination is fully engaged with what you are saying, it is remarkable how quiet you can be, but how you know not only the listener’s ear can hear it, but ideally their mind too. I’ve always been interested in the mutual hypnotism of acting. If the actor’s heart is racing due to a thought, engaged members of the audience’s hearts also race.”
Although this is inevitably achieved through years of experience, the process of communicating and attempting some form of communion with the audience is an essential part of drama school training.
When applying for drama schools, performing monologues is the litmus test for assessing potential. The reason why so many students attend Audition Doctor is because the sessions arm you against the overly introspective effect that monologues can sometimes have.
As Shaw says: “The audience in a monologue are, she says, her fellow characters and fellow performers: “Even if I can’t see them I can hear them, I can sense them, and every moment is being played with rather than for them. It would be dreadful if I just stood there and went blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t feel like that at all. I love talking to them and them back to me. We’re making the play together. Usually there’s a huge dialogue going on.”
Audition Doctor is about truthful communication and the portrayal of genuine emotion. This why so many students find they sail past the monologue stage of auditions and onto group workshops – because they have proven that even when performing alone, they are doing it for an audience and not for themselves.
