Week 38

 Monday 4th November 2024 

Monday marked the start of audition week, spending this morning discussing characters and their objectives with our tutor. It's really nice to not just hear more on the Disney character breakdowns, but to hear what it is that our tutors will be looking for in the auditions. This gives us a chance to apply these small notes and last minute improvements to our auditions- giving us the best chance to make the most out of our audition. After we'd discussed the auditions for Tuesday we then got some free time to apply our focus onto our audition pieces  and rehearse over some of our ideas with each other- testing a few things and communicating with each other what worked and what didn't. 

The second half of our session was spent in a progression session, working on some last minute things for our drama school applications and our personal statements. We also had the option to have a quick half an hour session with our collage singing tutor tom, on acting through song. Just going through the basics and having a quick discussion on what's the best way to approach acting through song etc. I hen stayed back a little bit longer with some of the other acting students, just going over our audition pieces and getting as much rehearsal time before tomorrow. 

Tuesday 5th November 2024 

Tuesday was our first official audition day- doing the acting section using a piece of dialogue from the Pinocchio script based on the character we’re auditioning for. I decided for my audition that i would bring in socks to mimic the puppets he talks to throughout the scene- along with drawing a fake moustache on my face. I used these small things as a way to envision  myself in the character more clearly, along with making the differentiation between me and the character clearer in the audition. I feel my acting audition went well, and I'm happy with how I performed. I do think I could of learned my audition dialogue better, as in the audition I didn't feel as confident with it, and did end up swapping a few lines about. I then had a call back later on in the day with some of the actors going for Pinocchio- getting paired up and given a scene between Pinocchio and Stromboli to go over. We were given some time before to work on this instead of just cold reading, which was really helpful because it allowed me to understand the relationship between Stromboli and Pinocchio in more detail and rehearse the physicality of that to create a more interesting imagine.

Wednesday 6th November 2024

We started Wednesday off with a Disney workshop run by our dance tutor- this worked shop was a chance for us to learn more about Disney characters and their characteristics, but also acted as the second section of the audition process for Pinocchio. Within this work shop we also got to learn more about what its like working for Disney and have an open conversation about our tutors first hand experience with that. I think I did okay in this section of the audition, particularly with the character acting section of it- although I did initially feel quite self conscious when trying to embody a random Disney character, as I'm not really very familiar when it comes to specific Disney characters. I did really enjoy this part of the audition process  and gained a better understand on how important body is when it comes to well known Disney characters and making them recognisable to a younger audience so familiar with them. 

War Horse:

Thursday 7th November 2024

Vocal warm ups before auditions:

Today was our vocal auditions for Pinocchio- ending our week of auditions. I approached my vocal audition from the same perspective as my acting audition- portraying Stromboli in a very masculine way, and going into the audition singing it in the lower octave. I struggled to find the notes when singing the song like this, and was told to come back and take it up the octave- working with our singing tutor who demonstrated the notes for me. I then re- sang a section of the song in the octave higher for the audition. Personally I feel I could have done a lot better in my singing audition, and I admit that I could have prepared a little bit more before the audition day itself . I was struggling a little bit with the backing track before hand as well, which ended up leading into the audition as well. If I was to do my singing audition again I would ask for the starting note, and discuss before hand if i should sing it up the octave or down octave- due to the fact that the song was written for a male tenor, and how I would then apply my voice to the song.