The first 2 auditions of 2012...

I've just flicked through my 2012 New Year's Resolutions list, and of the 8 frantically typed, there are 7 that I'm hoping will get me some decent acting work this year. It's quite a good range, I have Number 6 Get an agent. Useful. Number 7 Get new headshots. Also useful. Number 5 is Learn a musical instrument. I have started this one, I've bought a ukulele! So far I've been too embarrassed to play it properly in the house as my parents will probably laugh at my attempts so I've been quietly strumming in a corner, with the only song nearly mastered being 'Forget You' by Cee Lo Green. The final resolution on my list is learn how to ride my unicycle. I have shared my list with a few people, all of whom have mocked the idea of me riding a unicycle. They seem to forget that no-one in Kettering is ever seen unicycling the pavements, it makes me unique, right? And once I've learned a few more songs, I could be a unicycling ukulele player! Ha! They won't be mocking when a casting comes up for one of those will they? Now, in the early hours of February 1st 2012,I have realised that yes, my resolutions may seem exciting and might make me a better person, but they didn't really help in either of the auditions I had in January. In the first week of the new year everything seemed dull. I was waiting to be paid for my role in 'George's Marvellous Medicine' (which went fabulously by the way, why didn't you come to see it?!?) and I'd been to the Job Centre twice to start claiming Jobseekers Allowance again. I know, glamorous, right?!?! So when I saw a job for entertainers at a theme park for the summer, I sent my application in straight away, no messing. What could be better than spending your day doing a kids show outdoors for 20 minutes, 4 times a day? The pay, that's what! The money was fantastic, I wanted it. The next day, I was walking back from town in the morning, after my first swim of 2012 (Resolution number 4, lose weight properly) when my phone rang, and within 2 minutes I had arranged a time for an audition. I was off to Legoland!! Yesss! Later in the day I was emailed a script to learn, along with information to take a speech suitable for a family audience, and to wear clothing suitable for a dance audition. Easy. I planned my journey as well as I could, booked my train ticket online and counted down the hours til I made my way to Windsor. Saturday rolled around. I had chosen the latest audition slot as I had an epic journey to make. It would take me 2.5 hours to get to Windsor, including dodging people in the centre of London and navigating my way through the tube network. But I had planned it, it was going to be fine. I got my train to London, no problem. I even managed to stay awake on that one! Next, London Underground. As evry pretentious actor does, I had my Equity diary in my bag so I could double check my tubular route. No, I wasn't getting it out to wave around and show that I was an actor, I just really panic that I'm going to screw up my travel, hence planning days in advance. Despite having my map in hand and knowing in my head which lines to take (steady...) I decided that I hadn't planned correctly and ran through corridors convinced I was wrong before changing my mind and going back to my original location, and nearly missing my connecting train. Knob. My next train took me from Paddington to Slough, a place I did not enjoy, and the final leg was Slough to Windsor. Much better. I arrived in Windsor 90 minutes before my audition time so I had time to use the ladies before making the journey to Legoland. What? It was a long trip! As pretty as Windsor was, the sensible Natty in my head decided that sightseeing could wait til after the audition. Well, nearly. As I made my way out of the shopping arcade, I tried my best to take a photo of Windsor Castle, trying not to look like a sad lonely tourist while navigating myself towards the nearest taxi rank. I couldn't see any bus stops so I hopped in a cab and made a mental note to memorise the route so that I could walk back.

It didn't take long to get to the park (although I was slightly concerned that the taxi driver was going in the opposite direction to all the Legoland signs, but what did I know??)and as I was still an hour early, I asked him to drop me at the main gate and I'd walk into the park. If you have ever been to Legoland you will know that this was a silly mistake. I walked down a small slope, past the new Lego hotel (still undergoing construction) and followed the path round through some trees, to be faced with a giant hill. You must remember that this is only a couple of weeks after Christmas so my fitness levels aren't at their peak. I huffed and puffed my way up that mountain as if my life depended on it! Blimey!

In the email that I had been sent, I was told to report to the security hut. For the life of me I couldn't find it, so I ended up walking into the park through the big exciting Lego gates and stumbled into the 'Annual Pass' office to ask for help. It turned out that I had walked past it on my epic journey. Brilliant. Thankfully it wasn't down the mountain again, and I found the 'mansion' (yes, it was really called that) where the auditions were taking place. I was the first to arrive from my group, and as I sat down to fill in another application, I had a sneaky peek at the other girls practising the dance for the audition. It didn't look too bad. I felt good. More girls arrived from my group and soon enough we were ushered in to another room where we were taught the 'Pirates of Skeleton Bay' dance by a woman dressed head to toe in pink velour. The dance was incredibly basic, and at least half of it was clapping to the beat. However, most of the girls in my group seemed to be having issues with it. Surely I had this in the bag! My show face was on, I had every move down, I was feeling fabulous! We all moved back to the waiting area and waited for our turn to go in. I was asked if I wanted to go in first as I was the first to arrive. I politely delcined and said that my train home was hous away yet, I had plenty of time to kill. Liar. I ALWAYS end up going first in auditions. This makes the pressure even more intense in my opinion. You're setting the standard for the whole thing, I just didn't want that pressure today thank you very much. I ended up going in third, they forced me to go in! On the whole I was genuinely 99% happy with what I did in the audition. I had to really concentrate on what the panel people were saying as I was getting slightly distracted by the fantastic Lego sculptures in the room! First was the pirate dance, nailed it. Show face was glued on, I put my all into it. Next stage, question time. I could barely answer their questions as I was so out of breath from dance exhaustion but I made it through without making myself sound like an idiot or a paedophile. Next came my speech, fabulous. And the final stage, the scene. I was an amazing pirate! Having heard people before me having to do at least one thing again in their audition, I was feeling chuffed that I only had to do each of mine once, and came out of the room bouncing up and down in sheer delight. Thankfully I was given a lift back to the main gate with another auditionee, and after about 30 minutes, we were joined by 2 other hopefuls and we all hopped on the bus back to Windsor, chatting about auditions, who we knew and did the whole "Ohmygodyou'reawesomehopeyoudowellhopeIseeyouagain" spiel that all actors do at auditions. I couldn't wait to say goodbye. I got back on my train and basked in the sunlight in my window seat feeling positive. Clearly from the title of this blog post you will have worked out that I didn't get the job. I recieved a rejection letter exactly one week later. I've never received a rejection letter before, I usually don't get contacted at all. So sadly I folded the letter up and put it back into the envelope along with all my plans and dreams for an exciting summer as Georgie the Pirate. Sigh. Please note, I have recently seen on the casting website where I found the job, that it has been given to a girl who played the part last year. What was the frickin' point of the auditions then?? Idiots. And so we come to audition number two. This was for a short film. It didn't really grab me as a "Hey, this job is really cool, apply!!!" sort of job, but I needed something to put in my Jobseekers book so I went for it. i received a phone call later that day asking me if I was free on the Saturday, as that was the potential audition date. Once I had confirmed my availability, I was told that they would be in touch within the next two days. I received an email on Friday night informing me of the location and time. I went home, checked my journey(!) and went to sleep. There was nothing to prepare in advance. I woke up on the Saturday morn, made my way to the train station, purchased my ticket (begrudgingly, as my Young Person's Railcard had expired a few days before) and began to make my way to the platform when I saw a friend who was going the same way as me. I waited for her to get her ticket (with her railcard...) and then we were on our jolly way. I was glad that she was there as chatting nonsense helped to get rid of my nerves that had been accumulating during the morning. I haven't done much film stuff so I was terrified. We parted ways at Leicester and got on our separate trains, and I headed for Melton Mowbray, home of Stilton Cheese. don't believe me? Here's the proof!!

I had Google mapped the route I would have to take to get to the location, and again I was early so I though I would walk it. With the map route firmly imprinted on my brain I started walking in what I thought was the right direction. Turned out, I was wrong! There was an hour to go, I had wasted half an hour going in the wrong direction! My trusty BlackBerry maps helped to get me back on course and I speedily arrived at the audition location. It wasn't what I was expecting. Firstly the road didn't seem the friendliest, and neither did the people walking along it. The location itself was a house. An overgrown, dilapidated house. I wasn't going in there alone! I knew I had the correct road as there were shops nearby that I had definitely seen on Google Street View. I was scared. And I needed the ladies. I had passed a public toilet on the way so I made me way back towards the town and paid 30p for the priveledge of doing what nature intended. It was only after my outrageously priced tinkle that I noticed a Wetherspoons direectly opposite. Idiot. I walked back to the audition house and decided that I would keep a safe distance from the house and watch to see if any other potential auditionees turned up and went in. I waited from 1.40 to 2pm (the time of the audition) and no-one turned up. At around 1.50pm, a girl who I can only describe as a chav was standing around by the house with a carrier bag in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I could see her staring at me for the whole ten minutes. There was no way I was going anywhere near her. With the thoughts of being murdered in some dodgy looking house running through my head I decided enough was enough and I was going home. A wasted journey, yes, and I paid to pee, but I live to blog another day. Here's to the next audition! Nxxx

Have Starlight Got Talent?

Hello blog readers! I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year. It’s 2012!

Apologies for being quiet, I’ve been a bit busy! But here, just for you is what I’ve been up to. Starting with an audition with the always amazing Starlight Dance!

*I had to sign a contract as part of this audition so some names have been changed to avoid me getting killed!

 

So, on Sunday 11^th December 2011, a coach full of dancers made their way to Birmingham’s NEC for an audition for a British talent show not shown on the BBC created by someone whose surname rhymes with ‘towel’ and is presented by those two blokes who used to be PJ and Duncan in Byker Grove!

 

It felt like a hideously early start, we had to arrive at the dance studio at 8am for last minute rehearsals before we boarded the bus at 9.30 to head to Birmingham. I had to leave the house at 7.15 to pick up Crotty (hey Crotty, you got a mention!) in plenty of time so that she could go and get herself a McDonalds breakfast! Nice healthy start before a day of dancing! I was dragged along to the golden arches, and as we approached the counter, a couple of men started talking to us. It was clear that they were still enjoying the effects of their previous nights activities! But we had a lovely chat whilst Georgie got her greasy snacks, and we headed back to the studio ready for action.

 

Everyone seemed rather perky upon arrival. I wasn’t! I was feeling the effects of rehearsals and had quite fancied staying in bed all day, but I soon got caught up in the excitement and was running around like a loon with the rest of them! We got cracking on with rehearsing in front of the mirrors and it was looking great, so that meant one thing, it was time to board the fun bus!

 

I ended up sitting by myself on the bus, no-one wanted to be my seat buddy, but that was fine, I got to stretch out and be lazy, and didn’t have to share my snacks with anyone! I always think that journeys are going to take far longer than they do, so I had packed enough food for a month. But we were at the NEC in about an hour and a half, and that had included a service station stop.

 

Happily fed and slightly nervous, we arrived at our destination. As a natural born worrier, I was slightly concerned that I couldn’t see many other vehicles in the car park and that we had got the wrong date. But we parked up, and made our way down to the building. As soon as I had stepped off the coach, the biggest wave of nerves washed over me and I felt sick. It took me right back to the day of my university London showcase when I was so nervous that I was crying! I get a slight nervousness when I do a show but things like this were completely different. This was our shot to show people what we could do and potentially end up on national television! I had the big moment at the end of the routine to pop a balloon at a certain point to end the whole thing and I had worked myself up into thinking that either I’d miss the balloon, it wouldn’t pop, or some other tragedy relating to the moment would happen, and I was terrified! I didn’t want to ruin it for my friends, the pressure was immense!

 

We walked down to the entrance and suddenly my nervousness was replaced by excitement as big banners and signs were everywhere with the shows logo on it. This was it. We were actually auditioning to be on the television. It was real! Everyone excitedly got their cameras out and were snapping themselves in front of the sign outside, then we all had a big group shot with our Starlight banner before we went inside.

 

Our big group made our way to the door where we were confronted by a man who gave us strict instructions that all of our mobile phones had to be turned completely off, and that photography inside the building was strictly forbidden. Suddenly everything seemed very serious. After we had all fumbled around in our bags and turned off our devices we were allowed inside. There was a large queue forming leading up to registration desks. I don’t know where these people had parked, maybe they had all walked! We gazed down the corridor and there were people as far as you could see. As we were such a large group, we were told to move to the side of the walkway and wait there. We didn’t know it then but we should have made ourselves very comfortable there, we’d be there for a while. The time now was 11.15. We had been told that our audition was at 1pm. That gave us plenty of time to get dressed, put our face paint on and relax before we had to go anywhere.

 

We sat around for a while as Jacc went to confirm our attendance and hand over the contracts to our souls. We were called over a few at a time to take over our identification to prove we were actual humans and who we said we were, and then it was back to waiting in our spot in the corridor. As we sat, we watched people walking past in various costumes and carrying props and played guessing games as to what their talent might have been. We saw quite a few dance troupes but none looking like they had something like our routine. They seemed to be the usual style of people that are seen on the programme, street dancing, body popping, or just gyrating wearing extremely little. We got changed and put our face paint on , and in turn, became the ones that everyone else were looking at.

 

It was now around 12, an hour to our scheduled audition. I had bought a can of the energy drink Relentless, and thought that now would be the best time to drink it as it would have an hour to kick in and I’d be buzzing by the time we went in. I pretty much necked it in one and sat and waited for the effect to take hold. Not long after this, we were told we would be doing some filming. We were moved down to the ‘holding area’ and put on the dance floor, which was barely big enough to hold all of our group. We were told to rehearse on the floor, or watch other people rehearsing, clap along or just generally look as if we were having the time of our lives. Easy enough. We started dancing, I watched a few other people, done. And then we had to do it again. And again. And again. And again and again and again. After about 15 minutes they had decided that they had enough of that, so we were told to go back to our spot in the corridor.

 

A while later they were ready to film us again. We were all herded down to the far end of the corridor and everyone was lined up and organised into a big crowd ready for some ‘whooping’ shots, rather like you see the crowds shouting on Towels’s other singing reality show. Thankfully we didn’t have to shout “Birmingham’s got the z factor”, we just had to grin insanely and scream and cheer and whoop continuously for another 10 minutes while they pointed various different cameras at us. I think it was about 2pm that this was happening and I was hungry and bored. I hope to the lord that they didn’t get me on camera as I gave up cheering about half way through and stood at the back with my face telling exactly how I felt!

 

After the whooping section, they moved their cameras before we had to do a walking shot! We all had to move in convoy down the corridor towards the cameras with our arms in the air, smiling and cheering again. This took forever too, we were one of the first groups to be lined up so we were right at the back and had to wait for everyone else to move before we could set off. I still had my bored face on all the way down the corridor until I saw the cameras and I suddenly got caught up in the madness of it all and started going mental. I think I might have even given a camera a cheeky wink! I don’t know what took over me!!

 

About half an hour after that, people were starting to get moved around and we were officially upgraded to a proper holding area. I got a bit excited then, we were in the holding area waiting to be called into our audition! Eeeee! While we were in the holding area we were told to rehearse again. The dance floor had a mirror on one side with lights surrounding it and a camera on a bar on the floor so it could get us from a different angle. Everyone took turns to rehearse in front of the mirror camera but we didn’t do much rehearsing as we were all getting a bit bored by now and we seemed to have hogged the dance floor for quite a while and had lots of camera time already.

 

We sat down and I found myself sat next to a group of people with musical instruments who turned out to be a family band who started singing a few songs to keep people entertained. I really enjoyed them, I hope they got through! I was also impressed by a couple of men who were doing acrobatic tricks in a comedy style in bizarre costumes. I’d like them to get through too!

 

After an eternity in the holding room, we were called to move along to another area. This turned out to be another hidden holding area with more cameras in it that was rammed full of people too. We were in for an even longer wait. There were so many people there that we couldn’t all sit together so the room had small groups of clowns everywhere! I was missing the familiarity of my phone at this point but there were staff everywhere so I couldn’t sneak it out. Filming time rolled around again but this time all we were instructed to do was sit where we were and sit in absolute silence for 3 minutes. I have no idea what they’ll be doing with that but I was so bored by that point that I put my ipod on and blocked everything out. If any of me gets on television I’m sure it’ll only be shots of me asleep or looking daggers at people because I’m kranky!

 

People were disappearing from this room in small groups to go into their auditions so I was pleased to know that this was the final holding area. When we were finally called up to go out, I got nervous again but I shouldn’t have bothered, we still had about another 45 minutes to wait before we could go in.

But before I knew it, we were queuing up outside the door and my nerves were back. We were finally going in. It was 6.30pm. As soon as we walked through the door, my nerves just disappeared. I was here to get myself on television with my friends. I meant business. After a small chat with the lady (producer?), we took our places and the music began. I felt worried immediately, the music was just so quiet! I was terrified that we would get out of time. It was just like the time we auditioned for channel 5’s failure of a show, ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, the music was barely audible then too!

 

We got half way through the routine and I relaxed, we were all in time and things were going well. Then we neared the end of the routine and everyone fell to the floor revealing me and Isobel, and my big balloon-popping moment and I stopped breathing. The music was so quiet and then everyone else started groaning on the floor, as part of the routine, but I couldn’t hear the music at all anymore. Was I going to miss my cue? Could I ruin it for everyone because of the music? I took a deep breath and hoped for the best. I’d heard the song so many times before that I sang it in my head and prayed that I was in the right place, and then it happened. I popped the balloon and everyone stopped. I had done it, bang on time! Such relief!!

 

Everyone stood up and waited for any kind of response, we got a thank you and that was it. Done. Audition over. It all happened so quickly that it was a bit of an anticlimax. We grabbed our bags from the final holding room and got back on the bus. The journey home seemed to fly by and I was back at home and in bed ready to get back to rehearsals the next morning before I knew it.

 

It had been a very long day, but one that I won’t forget in a hurry, and I’m so glad that I spent it with such wonderful friends. And did we make it through to the judges? We don’t know yet. We should find out in the next few weeks. But even if we didn’t get through, I still might get my grumpy face on tv and I’ll be chuffed with that!

Nxxx