Life’s a funny old thing isn’t it? It never goes the way you planned. I never intended to become an actor, and now I can’t imagine doing anything else. There once was a time when I wanted to become Miss Castka, Geography teacher. It turned out I was rubbish at geography...
Last week was also a funny one. I began the week as usual, going off to a few cleaning jobs, and reciting monologues in my head while I had my hand down some old dear’s toilet. While all this was happening, my BlackBerry was almost constantly vibrating in my pocket with a steady stream of emails offering me auditions. I couldn’t contain my excitement! After the previous week’s disappointment over the cancelled play, I had gone into actor overdrive, applying for everything, and now suddenly everyone was after a piece of me!
And so on Wednesday, I made my way to London for audition number one of the week. This was for a naughty adult pantomime and sounded extremely fun. My audition was at 10.10am so I had to get the 8.16am train from Kettering, ugh. My mum dropped me off at the train station at the ungodly hour of 8, and I purchased my ticket and hopped on the train with all of the London commuters. I hadn’t thought about ticket prices before I went and was horrified that despite having a young persons railcard which gets me a third off my fare, my ticket was still over £60. I thought this audition better be worth it!! As I was so sleep deprived I caught a few winks on the train and woke up just as we were pulling into St Pancras. I gathered up all my bits, hopped on the tube and found the location. As usual I appeared to be the first person there, not even any people who were on the panel were there! I stood around for a bit until someone arrived and we were let in. The audition itself went better than I thought. I was insanely tired, and a few friends from home had been ill and had passed their colds onto me so I wasn’t feeling great. My monologue went quite well, I was stopped and asked to do something slightly different with it, which I did. And surprisingly my song was quite good considering I was in there so early. I hoped as the first person in that I had set a good standard for the day!
I had decided the day before the audition that I would try and make a day of it in London and now I was glad of my decision, after spending that much on a ticket! I bought myself a ticket to see the matinee showing of Blood Brothers at the Phoenix Theatre. I felt that it was shocking that I had got to the tender age of 26 without seeing it so off I went. However, I had four and a half hours to kill before the show started, so I took in some culture at the National Gallery, and walked along the many streets of London playing the ‘How many theatres can Natalie spot along her way’ game. (See photos for evidence!) I also had a little visit to M&M world, but managed to resist sticking my head under the many hip-height to ceiling tubes of chocolatey delights! And then came the show. As with any musical I see, I cried as soon as it starts, wishing that it was me on the stage, but I was absolutely sobbing on the large Australian lady next to me by the end. No-one had told me quite how traumatic it was going to be! But it was fantastic, and I found myself a new goal, to play the part of Linda! I think I’d be good as her!
The next day was Thursday, and I had not one audition, but two! The first one took me to Bedford, at The Place Theatre. This was for George’s Marvellous Medicine. I applied for this job after receiving an email saying “There is a job that matched your skillset” OK I thought, I’ll read on... “Mrs Kranky” Thanks! But off I went, and yet again I was the first to arrive before anyone else. The front door to The Place is shared by an organisation that helps Polish people settle in the country so after a brief encounter with a Polish woman who was trying to communicate with me, I got in the door and waited. After a few minutes the lady in charge, Cally, arrived. I spent a few minutes chatting to her about the play and what I had done before, and she was talking to me as if she’d given me the job already before I’d even done any acting for her! But I took that as a good sign! As the rest of the auditionees arrived, it became clear that I was the only female that was going to show up. Surely I had this one in the bag! When everyone had arrived, we were taken upstairs and did a couple of drama games before acting out some of the script. Everyone was lovely and very talented and it went really well. We were then given a cuddly toy and had to manipulate it like it was a puppet, as the show was going to involve puppetry. That was fine too. Although I got the feeling that Cally had assumed from my CV that I was a master at puppeteering! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done shows with puppets before but I’m not amazing at it... Oh well! I’d cross that bridge if it came to it.
I walked back into Bedford with one of the other auditionees, Ivan. We chatted about our experiences of working in Theatre-In-Education and then went our separate ways. He was lovely! I didn’t fancy spending much money, and I was hungry, so I went into Wetherspoons and had a steak before I had to catch my train to London for audition number two.
This was to be at the London Film School. I had never been there before and had no idea where it was. I hopped off the tube and clutching my notebook with directions in it, was at the location in under a minute. I was an hour early. Typical. Walking down the street to the film school I found Pineapple Dance Studios, and thought for a split second about going in to see if Louis Spence was in there so I could slap him round the face, the annoying prick! I thought better of it, I was here to try and get work after all.
The time was nearly upon me to go in so I rang the doorbell and found the room where I was supposed to go. I sat down at a table with a girl who was also auditioning, and had a nice chat with her before it was time to audition. The film they were casting for was called ’Emily and Mark’ and in the email offering the audition they said we would be improvising with other actors. We had all assumed that would mean improvising with boys, but we were wrong, we were just a bunch of girls auditioning as friends. Improvisation is not my strong point so I was pretty terrified, and the man directing the film was an acting teacher from New York. I didn’t want him thinking that I was an absolute failure of an actor because I can’t improvise! But I did it (twice!) and we were out of the room in less than half an hour, and I made it back to Kettering in time to fit in half an hour of tap rehearsal! Now that’s dedication. Overall I thought I’d had a good day, but only time would tell what would happen...
And that time would be Friday! I was back to cleaning when I received an email from the man in charge of Wednesday’s panto audition... I was offered a recall! I was so excited yet again! I jumped around the house like a mad woman trying not to scream as the occupant of the house was there! I had never been called back before so this was huge! I had been feeling really tired until I got the email, but I was certainly perky now! And then about 90 minutes later, when I was in a different house, my phone rang... and I was offered the part of Mrs Kranky in George’s Marvellous Medicine! I liked Friday! Friday was good!
And now we are on this week... at the time of writing, I have been to my London recall today, I have an audition very close to home on Friday, and one in Birmingham on Saturday. Three very different productions... Let’s see what happens!
Nxxx
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