| My focus for this year has been drama school auditions, most of which involve doing two monolgues (usually one shakespeare, one modern) and occasionally some singing. A full list of accredited schools can be found at www.drama.ac.uk. Below is a review of what schools I've applied to and what result I've gained so far: School My result Birmingham School of Acting (formely BSSD) Unconditional offer. * Bristol Old Vic Unsuccessful. Central School of Speech and Drama Unconditional offer. Guildhall School of Music & Drama Unsuccessful. LAMDA Final recall (due late April '04). Mountview Unconditional offer. * RADA Recalled 20th Jan '04. Unsuccessful. Rose Bruford Final recall (28th Feb). * Webber Douglas Final recall (8th March). * Welsh College of Music & Drama Final recall (7th Feb). * * Denotes an offer of a place or recall which was declined. As you can probably make out from the table above, getting a positive result from one school is no guarantee of similar success at another. Each school is looking for something different whilst also striving to cast a balanced ensemble (ie. not too many people who look the same, as they would be directly competing with each other for similar roles and they need a variety for productions). In my own case, results have even varied with the same schools. During my final year at university, I auditioned for RADA and LAMDA. Whilst with the former I managed to scrape through all three rounds and get a place on their reserve list, LAMDA rejected me outright. This year, LAMDA have recalled me but I only made it to the second round of RADA despite having definitely improved - frustrating! Of course, facts like these usually fail to provide much solace if you find a rejection letter on your doormat, but you have to hold on to the fact that there is a certain level of arbitrariness in the whole process. All of the schools have an average minimum of 800 applicants for around 30 places, going up to nearer 2-3000 for the more established institutes such as RADA, LAMDA and Central. Also, remember that for those schools that operate through UCAS, your personal statement is actually crucially important - Central cut down the number of applicants from 5000 to 3000 simply by looking at them, and the same applies to Rose Bruford, Welsh College and (I think) the Drama Centre. |
| Drama School |
| Drama School Productions Shows by drama students by all the schools are staged throughout the year, and usually very cheaply priced or free. To checkout what shows are coming up from which schools, follow this link to the spotlight calendar. |
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| The Tempest, Warwick Arts Centre Studio, 2001 |
| Need help? Really unsure about what speeches to pick? Just want to make sure that your Hamlet piece is actually as good as you think it is? Then why not contact a professional audition coach. |