| Ben Morris |
| Audition Diary |
| My name is Ben Morris, I�m 17 and I�ve been training in Dance and Drama at ITW since January �03. I decided that I�d go for a professional career in musical theatre when I was 13 and since then I�ve performed in 16 musical productions and I�ve been accepted and won scholarships to many of the best Musical Theatre Colleges in Europe, situated in London. When I was trying to figure out how to get into a professional career, I think I would have really benefited from something like this, so Gillian asked me to keep this Audition Diary so you guys could benefit from it. Well, here�s how I went about it. |
| Summer 2003 I realised that since I was starting 6th year in September, I needed to begin gathering information on colleges and stuff. I�ve family living in London currently training in dance and performance, so I asked them get me some information and suggest the best colleges for me. My cousin told me that I should think seriously about getting more dance classes because you need to be a capable dancer for the college auditions. I went through all the programmes from the big shows I had seen like �Les Mis�, �Miss Saigon�, �Phantom� etc. Then I jotted down the most common training colleges mentioned by the performers; �Mountview�, �Artsed�, �London Studio Centre�, �Laine� and so on. I had heard of �Mounview� before and it kept coming up in the credits. |
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| September 2003 I received the college prospectuses from my Cousin. I read through them and to be honest I felt so intimidated and nervous because they were full of pictures of dancers doing amazing things, and people who all had that real famous look about them. And I was such a basic Dancer, singing and acting being my stronger points! But my cousin told me not to be put off. The colleges will only put those pictures in to make it look impressive, they don�t expect you to be able to dance like that when applying so don�t freak out!! I�m sure you will appreciate that in a photo, someone doing the splits in the air looks a lot more impressive than someone standing with their mouth open ( Singing!). I read that for all of the auditions I needed to prepare 2 contrasting monologues, one classical (pre-1900) one modern (after 1950), and 2 contrasting songs from Musicals, so I began looking for pieces that would show me best. I had been taking singing lessons for the past 2 years and this year I started in the Royal Irish Academy of Music. I also looked for some more dance classes to get my dancing up to scratch for the auditions. I found a Jazz dance class at the YMCA on Aungier St. on a Thursday evening. It is best to do Jazz, as the dance auditions are usually Jazz related. So I began going there as well as my Sunday class at ITW. |
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