Central final recall

I had my very first final recall a few weeks ago, at the central school of speech and drama, something which I thoroughly enjoyed, and which completely changed the opinion I had of the school.When you visit a school for a preliminary audition, it's quite hard to gauge a proper opinion, as you are more often than not, there for a morning, a few hours and sometimes only a few minutes. My opinion of central has always been a little torn, as they provide very little information about their course online, and although the musical theatre and CDT courses seem to be a little more obvious in what the course holds, their BA acting course is a bit less well explained. Because of this, I had trouble in establishing how contemporary the school was, and whether it was the right training for me. I also used to be a bit skeptical of their system in entering every applicant for all of the acting courses even if you don't want to be considered. Now after going through the whole of the central process, it has turned out to be one of my favourite school (maybe because they're one of the only ones that gave me a final recall, but ahhhhh well).
As I have found with the couple of final recalls I have done, the day was a lot less high pressure than I was expecting. There is no doubt that central has a generally friendly atmosphere at all times, but at the finals there seemed to be a little more mutual respect between the panel and auditionees, and I felt pretty comfortable throughout the session. The structure of the final recall day is as follows, there is an opening warm up lead by one of the first year movement coaches, and first year vocal coach. This is  not assessed, and is a really good way of getting in the zone. After the initial warm up, their is an improvisation exercise, and from what I gather, this exercise has been the same for a few years. All of the girls sit in a line facing the boys (there are about 15-20 in a recall session) and everyone is given a bit of paper with a situation on it, which is the basis for a scene. All of the girls have the same thing written, and all of the boys have the same thing written. In our situation, all of the girls were called Amy, and she was late meeting her boyfriend outside the cinema. There were a few basic facts about their relationship, but ultimately it was Amy's intention to try and break up with Steve when she got to meet him. Steve on the other hand has the intention to propose to Amy on the same night. The exercise worked so that two people started in the middle and the scene played out, and when you wanted to take the place of your character, you just said stop. The idea of the exercise wasn't to go in with an idea of what you were going to say, but to feed off of the other person and react to them with your intentions in mind.

After this, the group was split in two. One half had to stay and work on monologues, and the rest left for a break. This lasted for about an hour and forty five minutes, and then the groups swapped. In your workshop, the hardest thing is actually keeping yourself totally focused. Each person is worked on individually and you are asked which classical speeches off of the setlist you have prepared. The panel decide which of the two monologues they would like to hear, and most of the time, you will do it once through to begin with. Then the panel work on developing your speech to bring out a little more of what they didn't think came out, and a bit more subtext. Quite a few people were also asked a lot to do with the play, when in the play the speech takes place, and what characters you are speaking to etc. Even though Central have a setlist, they very much expect you to have read the plays. The exercises developed sometimes involved other people, for example everyone walking around the space to make the character nervous. Others were things to bring out  little more truth in the characters emotional state. One guy who did the King Lear speech 'I heard myself proclaimed' was asked to be chased by all of us up sever flights of stairs in order to find the panic in the opening of the speech. Interestingly there were also a couple of people in my group who spoke fluent French, and in order for them to find the true feelings of the speech, they were asked to so their speeches in French. This meant that in order for an audience who were not fluent to understand, a definitive feeling had to be set through the intonation and tone of voice. Each person was worked on for about 10-15 minutes.

Once each group had finished their monologues, a final few people were taken through to the last round, which is an interview. People not asked to stay for an interview are no longer being considered for a place. Out of my final recall group of about 18, only 6 of us were taken through to the interview. This only lasts for about five minutes and is just a casual chat with one of the tutors to find out a bit about you. I was surprised to find that rather than asking me about theatre and my hobbies etc, the guy was more interested in my home life and personal issues. This seemed to be like a bit of a test on whether or not I could be open about some of the more personal things that have happened to me. I was completely open and talked to the guy about everything he asked and he seemed pretty pleased. He also seemed to analyse my behavior alot, saying how I hold my emotions very much on the surface, or that I had 'reactive skin'. I have no idea whether those were good things or not, but I tried to just be myself. The day lasted about 5 and a half hours, but If you are picked to be in the first monologue set then you will be done significantly earlier.

Overall I was pretty chuffed with the way my first final recall went, and I was filled with a lot of confidence going into my other finals. I am very happy to say that I am holding a place on central's reserve list for their BA acting course, and although I don't have a definitive place there, it is certainly reassuring to know I am good enough to be on the course.