by Bel | Aug 8, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, the actors centre, tilly blackwood
What’s been clear this week is that while drama school isn’t a panacea to all the insecurities of the profession, actors who haven’t gone accede that the work done there appears to be an indispensable infrastructure upon which to build a solid career.
In a Q and A for “The Cripple of Inishmaan”, Daniel Radcliffe mentioned: “Obviously, drama school isn’t the only option for acting training, but even when you’re one of the most famous actors in the world, lack of it can still make you feel like you’re playing catch up.”
In Time Out, Hayley Atwell spoke of how, despite going to the Guildhall School of Speech and Drama, she was uncertain of how she would fit into the industry: “I came out of drama school wondering whether I could really make a living out of being an actor.” While drama school doesn’t appear to have done Atwell any harm, it is worth noting that although the training there was indisputably helpful , she acknowledged: “It’s not until quite recently that I realised how unformed I was. I felt like a baby, I just wanted to please.”
Radcliffe also spoke of how he compensated not going to drama school with extensive work with acting coaches. Both are examples of how in some instances, the fact of whether or not you went to drama school, is irrelevant. Your personal development as an actor is down to you. Drama school cannot and does not teach you everything. If you feel technically deficient or artistically immature, it is down to you to seek someone such as Audition Doctor to give you a chance of survival in this profession.
Aside from the creative aspect of being an actor, Audition Doctor is getting more students who are earning a crust in the corporate sector. Chair of the Board of the Actors Centre, Paul Clayton, has just published a book entitled “So You Want To Be A Corporate Actor” and gives the example of how corporate acting training is something that should be taught at drama schools but isn’t. Jobs in the business sector can be lucrative and Clayton’s research showed that only 14% learned anything about the corporate sector at drama school, while 63% ended up finding useful work in the sector. Interviewing actors, he found that many felt inexperienced and unschooled when it came to this side of the profession.
This is what makes Audition Doctor unique as Tilly has had experience working both in the creative and business sphere. Whether you are an actor about to do a corporate job or someone working in business whose job involves public speaking, Audition Doctor will prove to be undoubtedly useful. You will soon realise that the more sessions you do with Audition Doctor, the less you feel like you’re playing catchup.
by Bel | Jul 31, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
Susan Elkin, The Stage’s Education and Training Editor, was asked so often whether drama school was a necessity that she wrote an article arguing why the widely-held misconception of “if you can act or sing, surely you can just stand up and do it” was palpably misguided.
“Debunking attitudes like that is probably one of the most important things I do as The Stage’s Education and Training Editor. After all, however great your footballing potential, you wouldn’t expect to walk in off the streets and immediately play for Manchester United. It takes years of training to achieve the right skills. And you never stop learning. Exactly the same principle applies to performing on stage or screen.”
She goes onto mention how young people often cite actors such as Sheridan Smith as examples of actresses who have been successful without training. However, as Elkin states: “Smith studied singing, dancing and acting part time for many years in her native Lincolnshire and trained extensively in her teens with National Youth Music Theatre. Untrained she clearly was not.”
There are indeed respected actors who haven’t gone to an established drama school. However, many started early and were trained on the job. This was often supplemented by sessions on set with acting coaches. Elkin invites her readers to “take the three leads in the Harry Potter films: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson. For nearly 10 years and seven films, starting when they were barely out of primary school, they were trained on set which included many systematic, carefully thought out classes to develop the necessary voice, movement and acting skills. And the same applied to the many other children involved. Those films were, effectively, their training provider.”
Attending a drama school is not the only form of training potential actors can receive. There are amdram productions, schemes such as the National Youth Theatre, joining a theatre company and also training privately with professionals established in the acting profession. Audition Doctor is one such example. Audition Doctor works with many students too young for drama school entry (minimum age is 18). This is an increasingly popular method of giving younger people access to focused quality training.
Elkin is one well-schooled in the requirements of the profession, writing extensively on the ever- changing landscape of drama schools and the wider industry. As she so staunchly says: “No one…makes it in this competitive industry without training at all”, which is an indicator that it makes no sense to hang onto delusions that you will be the exception any longer. It is in your best interests to ensure that you have the tools to not just survive, but also achieve the ambitions you have for yourself as an actor. However pretentious it sounds, this does require a commitment to the art of acting. Like all forms of art, talent only reaches its full potential with the back-up of hard graft and practice. Audition Doctor is an ideal place to begin.
by Bel | Jul 12, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
Today, Lyn Gardner asked the question: “Would you do your job – the one you’ve been trained to do – for free?” She was referring to the unfair yet widespread practice of professional actors working for free on the London Fringe and other events such as Edinburgh. Having fought off three thousand other candidates to get into drama school, undergone rigorous vocational training, many come out the other end performing for free. One could argue that this is a “work experience” of sorts and the chance to continue to develop the skills that you were taught at drama school. It’s an opportunity to perform roles that you might not have been cast as at drama school and there is always the possibility that influential casting directors will attend, be floored by your performance and catapult you into the world of award-winning feature films.
However, the stiffness of the competition to work for absolutely nothing is both mad and maddening. A current profit-share production of Measure for Measure at the Union Theatre auditioned over 1,000 actors for 10 roles despite the lack of a salary if cast. Gardner cited the reason for this was “because whereas once a small number of drama schools produced a limited number of actors each year, now there are vast numbers of university courses producing graduates who are ready to go straight into the profession. Many, furthermore, are weighed down by student debt.”
There is a sense that the thousands of students coming out of drama-based university courses every year are industry fodder – there aren’t enough parts for everyone who has spent 3 concentrated years receiving focused conservatoire training at drama schools, let alone people who have “studied” acting at university. However, neither is a drama school training a guarantee of skilled artistry. Mark Rylance mentioned that when auditioning actors, “sometimes, people will have had bad training, and I’ll think: I’m going to have to unravel a lot here.”
Whether you are trying to get into drama school or just out of it, you have to be at the top of your game to get anywhere and Audition Doctor ensures that you are match-fit for any audition. Rylance compares auditioning actors to “rather like looking at football players. You have to build the team, the company.” Working for free may be far from ideal but it’s better to be active and build up a range of roles. Working with Audition Doctor means that you don’t feel like the craft that you have spent 3 years honing is put on the back burner and that you are continually stretching your acting chops so you are ready for any audition opportunity that comes your way.
by Bel | Jul 11, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, tilly blackwood
If only The Observer’s account of Mark Rylance’s method of auditioning was the norm for all drama school auditions. While they are rarely the “shouty, humiliating exercises, usually of no more than two minutes duration” that the journalist describes, at the initial stages at least, they don’t usually “last up to 30 minutes each”. Furthermore, although most audition panels would argue that, like Rylance, they “are designed to be encouraging rather than demoralising”, everyone will experience the latter at some point throughout the process.
Although Rylance is auditioning professional actors for his upcoming production of Much Ado About Nothing, his way of appraisal and observation of each actor is very similar to that of drama school auditions. There is the acting obviously, but also voice work and movement sessions that are also part and parcel of all drama school auditions.
“I try to move them one way or another depending on how much they’re coming out to me, or into themselves,” he says. “Often, their nerves and desire to get the job makes them overly expressive – not bad, but they express more than they need to – so I’ll give them some kind of an obstacle to stop them being so sure-footed. Then I’ll see how they take that note, and I’ll listen to their voice, try to tell whether or not it’s locked in a particular place, and I’ll look at their movement.”
Nerves will inevitably play a huge part in how you perform. If you have only ever done your speeches alone in your living room, auditions in which you have to stand in a vast echoey studio in front of fifteen other candidates as well as the panel, will come as a huge shock. Although all drama schools do send out “What To Expect On Your Audition Day” emails, they don’t specify certain aspects for whatever reason. With extensive experience in drama school auditions, Audition Doctor will be able to tell you what to expect at various stages of the process at specific schools. Some schools require you to perform in front of fellow auditionees, some will be ask that one of your speeches is done to camera. If you are remotely self-conscious or uneasy, there is less likelihood of you inhabiting your character and delivering the performance you want. As Andrew Scott says “an audience can smell authenticity”and you can guarantee that an audition panel will be comprised of human Bloodhounds.
What Audition Doctor ensures is that your nerves are used to your advantage. Each speech is analysed with a fine tooth-comb and Tilly ensures that every intention behind every beat is absolutely understood. As Mark Rylance mentioned: “With Shakespeare, the audience has so many fears and anxieties, so many preconceptions; you have to draw them into the present, to give them an experience rather than a lecture. It should be like a great tennis match: who’s going to win?”
The Shakespeare speech is often the one that scares candidates and what Audition Doctor does so brilliantly is making it “present”, alive, genuine, and almost unbelievably, fun. Rylance cites directors such as Ian Rickson and Tim Caroll who “make their productions to last, and not so brittle that they’ll break. They encourage actors to surprise each other, to keep it fresh, to bring the sense of discovery and fun from the rehearsal room into the performance. You have to move into chaos.”
This is what Audition Doctor encourages students to do during lessons – to be flexible and bold in their choices and to embrace the uncertainty of the process- because often the most radical and exciting performances come out of it.
by Bel | Jun 20, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
When approaching a part, most actors will say that their definitive starting point is the play itself. As Honeysuckle Weeks stated in an article on Ideastap: “A lot of getting into character is about the rhythm of the speech. Look at the grammar and the syntax of how this person speaks. Also, how other characters react. I learned a lot about my character quite late on in the play; don’t make assumptions about a character until you’ve read all the way through.”
In my experience, many drama school applicants have studied English either to A Level or even degree level. While this is an inevitably natural and often successful route into the Industry, it’s worth remembering that drama schools aren’t looking for candidates who approach the creation of a character in a scholarly manner. As one member of a drama school audition panel put it: “Education in this country focuses on here (pointing to his head), acting focuses on here (pointing at his gut).” While noting diphthongs, caesuras and soft endings are useful in an English essay, as Weeks noted: “I certainly think [studying English at Oxford] was helpful, although I learnt more about Shakespeare from performing the plays. Academia is not what theatre is about; it’s about performance, rhythm and sound.”
Recently, Anne-Marie Duff credits getting to grips with the character of Nina in O’Neill’s Strange Interlude at the National as “rising above literalness and “get the smell of it, breathe it in, see if you can exhale it – that is all you can do”.
This is what sessions at Audition Doctor give you the opportunity to do. Initially sessions are about understanding exactly what you are saying; Shakespeare speeches are dissected and discussed. This is generally done prior to line learning because Tilly always stresses that not understanding a line means that you, as an actor, will undoubtedly fail to communicate a line with the intention and conviction required to make any character truthful.
This week, Andrew Scott spoke about how the ease of line learning was often connected to how well you understand the text. “Line learning I always think is about wanting to say the lines. There are lines where you go “God, I know that, that’s really weird, that’s really easy to learn that and there are always lines where you can never remember the line. I always think that’s because you don’t like saying the line. Maybe because you don’t understand it or there’s something that you’re not connecting with.”
However, Audition Doctor sessions are so much more than just getting to grips with the meaning of a play. In her preparation for Strange Interlude, Duff stressed that “The real challenge is to become more yourself as an actor, visiting every corner.” Audition Doctor allows you to realise that your limitations are in no way circumscribed and that exploration and experimentation are key to creating what Duff described as “a panorama of character.” She describes trying to find “the extraordinary colours that [she is] trying to find every day in rehearsal” which is precisely what Audition Doctor is all about.
by Bel | Jun 13, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
Financial constraints aside, it’s astonishing how many people who want to become actors neither want to train nor go to the theatre, which you would presume are prerequisites to becoming a serious professional. Whether it’s down to arrogance or a misplaced belief that it’s better to “get out there” as soon as possible, it is not giving yourself the opportunity to develop your craft as an artist.
Drama school is where you have the time to probe deeper into your mental landscape and explore the recesses of your psyche which is the starting point for any character you play.
Last week Simon Callow mentioned how drama school was the place where he experienced his own Eureka moment: “I was almost a total write-off at drama school in my first year. I was struggling against a terrible internal block, which refused to allow me any sort of free expression: everything I did was controlled to the last degree. I seemed hell-bent on impressing some invisible admirer. But I knew my work was rubbish — knew, not least, because my teachers, with varying degrees of tact, told me so, over and over again. It took [a] liberating experience to unlock me from the prison. The… shock was administered by the great acting teacher Doreen Cannon, who goaded me to combustion point during an “extreme emotion” exercise. It was the first time, I suspect, ever in my life till that point, that I had dared to give in to an emotion.”
But on a more practical level, drama schools are still the first places that agents go to look for new talent. Ultimately, drama school is the vital starting point to your career; it sends a clear signal to other members of the Industry that your talent and potential has not only been validated but pushed further. Additionally, in an article in the Guardian on “the secretive world of casting directors”, respected casting agents such as Andy Pryor and Stephen Crockett said: “Agents pop up like weeds, frankly. There are only around 50 agencies [that I take] seriously. Essentially, from a casting point of view, you’re going to go with somebody you trust.”
If you want to be put up for great parts, you have to be with a credible agency which will have most probably taken you on based on your third-year showcase at drama school. As one actor asserted: “Casting directors are the gatekeepers. If they don’t know who you are, it can feel impossible to get a decent part.” To underestimate the potency of concentrated focus under the best professionals who understand what the Industry desires is to show yourself to be at best ignorant and at worst conceited.
Despite the paucity of parts and opportunities that are frequently being commented on as a result of funding cuts, there are more applicants to drama school than ever. Some drama schools have had to add further audition stages to make the process even more selective than it already is. Audition Doctor sessions are a guarantee that you do not waste anyone’s time – either yours or the audition panel’s. They see thousands of people and Audition Doctor sessions have proven time and time again that you are actually watched as opposed to merely seen. The idea that you can just learn a speech the night before and do it the next day is laughable. It’s true that they don’t want to see that you’ve been coached to say lines in a certain way but Audition Doctor is in no way, shape or form about that. Lessons are a true delving into what makes you tick as well as the character. Drama schools are looking for someone who is open to exploration and Audition Doctor is absolutely all about that.
by Bel | Jun 6, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
It’s surprising how often drama school applicants commiserate with each other when they find out that other people are doing the same Shakespeare speeches as them at an audition. The chances of any new material from a man who has been dead for nearly 400 years is slim, so the likelihood of someone doing the same speech as you is statistically quite high. Securing a place isn’t based on the originality of your choice of speeches but your originality of thought and approach.
When interviewed in Fourth Wall magazine, Oliver Ford Davis talked of how there was no fixed way of performing Shakespeare and gave advice that would stand any drama school applicant in excellent stead: “One of the difficult things is we approach it with preconceptions and labels…I think with the big Shakespeare parts, don’t try and fit into a mould, don’t say, ‘This is how Cleopatra should be, how Rosalind should be.’ The audience don’t come to see Shakespeare’s Rosalind, they come to see your Rosalind. You might as well go for broke and say ‘I’ve got to find as much of Rosalind as I can in me and then I will do my Rosalind, and it will be like nobody else’s. Don’t be frightened of it. It’s a magnificent, magnificent thing to drive, to gain control of but you must bring yourself to it. I think Shakespeare, because he was an actor and because he knew his acting company so well, he actually leaves quite a lot of it to you, sort of saying, ‘I haven’t proscribed how this character should be played.’”
Another common plaintive cry is “I just wish I knew what they were looking for.” In recalls, the audition panel don’t just want to see how you take direction but also how receptive you are to your fellow actors. The improvisation exercises and other games that are played aren’t just what one panel flippantly called “a bit of fun for you all”, but an opportunity for them to scrutinise whether you are capable of doing what Alison Steadman advised all actors this week – “ To look and listen. As an actor, all we are doing is pretending to be other people. Look and listen: always listen. Listen, listen, listen all the time.”
At Audition Doctor, there is thankfully never any opportunity to play someone else’s interpretation of a Shakespeare character as Tilly is meticulous in questioning every single choice you make in your speech. Sessions at Audition Doctor will often entail making sure that your intentions behind every thought is clear by “listening” to the text, which ensures that your performance is truthful. The focus that Audition Doctor places on how your character is trying to affect the person he/she is talking to is invaluable. If you are unsure as to how you are trying to affect a fictional character, the real human beings sitting on the panel will undoubtedly also be left unconvinced.
by Bel | May 16, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
While Adrian Lester has been getting rave reviews in Othello at the National, it seems that someone else in the public eye is also looking to tackle one of the greatest roles in British theatrical history. Mike Tyson has announced that he is temporarily foregoing his main preoccupations of boxing, raping and cannibalism to try his hand at Othello – or in his words “that black guy”. He articulately predicts that the experience will be simply “awesome”.
“My career as an actor has blossomed,” he said. “I never considered myself a comedian or actor, even though I was in movies and shows helping out friends … a lot of my friends are actors and directors and they say: ‘Mike, we need you to concentrate and take it seriously.’ They say my skills are horrible, but I have the natural timings for it. I am working on my skills.”
Mike’s friends are right. Even though you have all the natural timing in the world, skills need to be sharpened and developed if you want to be taken seriously as an actor. Appearing in Passion Play, Zoe Wanamaker says that returning to the West End is “nerve-racking”; the hardest part is the challenge of trying to attain perfection for six nights a week and two matinees. “You want people to love you and think you’re marvellous and that kind of stuff.”
But the audience can only think you’re marvellous if they trust in your artistic abilities and if you, as an actor, are confident in your proficiency. Drama school is where you acquire the technique which will allow you to begin to master the craft. Although some actors who haven’t been to drama school say that not going has given them the gift of childish amateurism, the verbal, physical and emotional dexterity that actors practice seemingly effortlessly onstage is, in reality, the result of in-depth professional training. Audition Doctor sessions are invaluable in that they give you concentrated blocks of time to focus just on you. Whether you have problems with accessing a particular emotion or are unsure of the emotional journey of the character, Audition Doctor allows you to tackle your own specific queries.
Aside from helping people with public speaking and drama school applicants, Audition Doctor also works with professional actors for auditions. Carey Mulligan spoke about her “crazy” audition for The Great Gatsby in The Telegraph – “It was in a loft somewhere in New York and usually auditions are just a camera, you and the casting director, or whatever. This was at least three cameras, one 3-D camera, one guy walking around with a camera and Baz had a hand-held one. Then there were were two photographers taking pictures of the whole process.”
Auditions can be nerve-wracking and unpredictable which is why coming to Audition Doctor will ensure that you enter the audition space feeling as calm and clear-headed as you can possibly be in the circumstances. As a result, you will not squander your audition no matter how many cameras and eyes are focused on you.
by Bel | May 8, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
Watching Christoph Waltz, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman, Nicholas Cage, Peter Starsgaard and Stanley Tucci debate over whether acting can be defined as art was a lesson in not only how differently actors themselves view their profession, but also how directors and producers perceive an actor’s job and their place in the creative process.
As Firth casually swills his wine, he says: “It’s an evaluation that people put on it, I mean, I’ve seen acting that is definitely not art.” The others – bar Cage who looks like he’s just sucked a lemon wedge – laugh knowingly. Morgan asserts that an actor is more craftsman than artist because an actor is dependent on a writer. Though an actor uses his body, voice and imagination as his instruments, ultimately he is an interpreter of words.
Here, Cage adopts a tone that betrays just a hint of a dissatisfied whine:
Cage: “Isn’t there a music within you that compels you to speak the words in a certain way?”
Freeman: “Absolutely”
Cage: (pleading):“Could that not be art?”
Freeman: “No.”
By this point everyone else is visibly relaxing into the debate and the standard “There is no right or wrong” consensus is hauled out to diffuse any trace of awkward disagreement. Cage, however, with all the false equanimity that he can muster, announces sulkily: “I’m not trying to be right or wrong, I’m just trying to learn something.” Anyone who has seen the infamous youtube video “Nicholas Cage Losing His Shit” will tense at this point but he seems to be in control of himself on this occasion and calmly uses Hilary Hahn playing Bach as an example of true artistry. (He does unfortunately go onto negate this point later by saying: “I’m not going to denigrate acting…your whole instrument is your mind and your body, we’re not hiding behind guitars here” but ah well.)
Lyn Gardner moved the debate on further by asserting that far from being an artist, let alone an interpreter, actors were increasingly viewed as being merely part of the set – “The increasing trend – one borrowed from the US – in which the “cast” and “creatives” are listed separately in theatre programmes, suggests a rise in the idea that actors play no role in the creative process. They are simply puppets.”
However, at the National Theatre Platform this week, Peter Brook insisted that actors were far from being just moving props: “An actor is not an object, or a robot. An actor is evolving as an artist, and separately as a human being, both through his obligation and his political convictions. It is part of the actor’s job to feel and sense, without analysing, the world that they’re living in.”
Ultimately, it isn’t either or – it’s both. This is why acting is deceptively difficult and despite the proliferation of reality television giving the false impression that “anyone can do it”, being both craftsman and artist requires endless inquiry, exploration and training; this is what Audition Doctor offers.
Whichever drama school you apply for or whichever acting job you want, you have to have the technique to back up your “art” or “interpretation” or whatever it is you choose to call what you bring to a performance. Audition Doctor gives you the space and time to enter what Peter Brook calls the third stage of acting which is the “rarest level of all – incarnation. That is when the great role actually enters every fibre of the flesh; it only happens once in a generation.”
Alternatively, if you feel like you would like to back up your Audition Doctor sessions with reading up on the subject of acting, Wikipedia cites that “In February 2011, Cage claimed to have created a new method of acting he calls “Nouveau Shamanic”. He claims to have used the acting style throughout his career and one day plans to write a book about the method.” Undoubtedly something to pre-order on Amazon.
by Bel | Apr 17, 2013 | acting classes, acting classes london, audition classes, audition doctor, auditions, classes for acting, tilly blackwood
Acting on stage requires a startling amount of both physical and mental exertion. To be a stage actor is to run a nightly marathon. As Ian McKellen attests: “I’m increasingly feeling that theatre is a young person’s game, it takes a lot of energy and concentration – two, three hours on stage – and that’s physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting.” Or maybe it’s because there is something oddly primal about an actor standing on stage and the audience are subconsciously reminded of the age-old history of entertainment, from Music hall right back to Elizabethan England and beyond. There were no green screens or special effects to beguile the viewer then; it was the words you uttered and how you spoke them that captivated. Only when you have stood on stage can you truly call yourself an entertainer – the actor’s fundamental job description.
There have been a string of interviews this week with actors acknowledging theatre’s utmost importance in the development of the actor. On the Andrew Marr Show, Patricia Hodge said: “Theatre is the real learning ground and you bring that to the screen”, while Lesley Manville in the Guardian spoke of the stage being “the ultimate test; I like watching established screen actors on stage to see if they can really do it.”
It isn’t just the simple fact of treading the boards that lends gravitas to the actor; acting in a Shakespeare play appears to be the ultimate test. It is only when an actor has cut their teeth on the Bard that they truly cut the mustard. Lenny Henry’s Othello in 2011 was the defining moment when he proved that he could entertain as a different kind of performer.
Othello is at the National again with two actors who have stellar film and TV careers – Rory Kinnear and Adrian Lester. However, in an interview for the Guardian, they spoke of how acting for theatre requires hard graft and how it continuously exercises the performer’s acting muscles – both literally and metaphorically – which can grow weak if not used.
“I get antsy if a year goes by without doing a play,” says Kinnear, who emphasises the sheer physical effort of stage acting. “I don’t go to the gym, so this is my way of trying to live longer.”
“If you’re doing nothing but film,” says Lester, “part of you gets soft – your speed of thinking, the amount you have to learn, your physicality, your voice, your diaphragm. When I step back on stage I have to re-engage all those muscles, especially with Shakespeare. You have to make the audience believe this is a real person speaking, not someone standing there reciting poetry. It’s quite an ask.”
The Guardian journalist questioned the actors whether they could offer anything new to a play that has been seen recently and countless times. Lester replied: “People’s preconceptions are based on generalities, our job is to be very specific, and in that specificity to make it real, to make it live again.”
This is what Audition Doctor excels at – making a character live. Drama schools and casting directors aren’t interested in “performances”, they want to see you transform into a wholly believable other being.
Shakespeare forms the basis of many acting courses and to “not do Shakespeare” puts you at a huge disadvantage if you want to go to drama school. Audition Doctor sessions give you the space to unlock the language where Tilly ensures that it becomes a springboard instead of a barrier in your acting. Audition Doctor gives you the gift of making you realise that Ian McKellen was right: “The verse is about giving instructions to the actor as to how to say the part and if you know how to say it then you’ll probably know how to feel it.”
