GSA Final recall

I finished this year's auditions where I started, at GSA, the final recall audition. I think I waffled on a shit load about the vibes at GSA and how I really liked it first time, so I wont go on too much, but just as a quick note, I loved GSA just as much second time round. There seems to be a really nice community atmosphere there which you don't get very much at drama school.

The structure of the final recall day is pretty simple. You go in at the allotted time you are given, so get there a little before hand. In the group there are about 12-15ish people, and the first section of the day, is a simple warm up. Before I get into the ins and outs of the day, its is mega important to say, never fear going to GSA (bars). Before we started the warm up, we were waiting for a load of people to go to the toilet and stuff, and we had a five minute gap of the head of acting say how awkward the silence was, and consequently try and make a load of shit jokes which he then laughed at how bad they were. It is honestly the most friendly laid back school I've been to. Anyway, the warm up mainly consisted of walking around the space and getting to grips with your body and concentration, and doing a lot of vocal exercises to warm up our voices. There was a quick bit of engaging with your character and getting into the mindset, and then after about 15/20 minutes, we stopped, and everyone was asked to sit in two rows on the floor facing each-other, and this marked the beginning of hearing our classical speeches. GSA only ask you to prepare two monologues (one contemporary, one classical) just the same as their first round. The audition worked exactly as it did in the first round too, as we were asked to one by one get up and do our classical speech without announcing it or establishing any sort of order and keep going until everyone was finished. For more details on that you can take a look at my first round GSA post. Once this section was finished, everyone was given a half an hour break before the next bit.

The next section of the day was where we did a bit of physical workshopping. Nothing too strenuous, just a bit of walk around the space stuff and some concentration games. The main one was the pretty standard game of 'stop, go' where you're told to stop and go and hop and clap (or something similar) except the words mean the opposite action. I was surprised to find that after forcing this game upon the kids at the drama group I direct hundreds of times and consequently laughing at how shit they are at it, I was absolute pants at this game. After this we got into the zone of our second character, however instead of actually performing our contemporary in the usual way, we played an improvisation game. This was probably the most challenging bit of the day, because this was our only chance to showcase our second piece and to show a contrast to our classical, yet it required a bit of imagination. Basically, everyone stood in a circle, and two people were in the centre at all times, whom of which had to have a conversation as their contemporary character, yet they could ONLY use the text from their contemporary speech. When you thought it was the right time to jump in you could. Sometimes the tone of the other person's speech could completely change the tone of your own and you would have to adapt to that, and generally it was a way to see if you could think on your feet and break your monologue out of it's original patterns. Again after this section, everyone was given a little break.

The final section was for selective interviews, where the panel asked a few people to stay behind for a little while to possibly see some more monologue work, or maybe just for a chat. This was not a final elimination thing at all, just if the panel wasn't necessarily sure about someone. The student looking after our group assured us this, as he said that in his final recall, no one was asked to stay for an interview, and a lot of them got in. I was asked to stay, and basically they gave an order of who they wanted to see, and we all waited outside the audition room until our turn.

I can honestly say I have never made more of a twat of myself in an interview than I did at GSA. The panel, just wanted to see me for a chat, and ALL they had to ask me was 'why do you want to come to GSA' and I was off. I quite literally waffled for about ten minutes about how I loved the vibes at the school, that I liked the practitioners that they study, and what a contrast they are, how I love ensemble which is one of their key focuses and how I run a lot of ensemble workshops myself... ramble  ramble ramble....and I quite literally stopped breathing. I stopped talking and went 'sorry I think I have stopped breathing, I have just rambled for ten minutes straight without taking a breath' and they all just burst out laughing. As if that wasn't enough I then went on to tell them that I thought I was a bit delirious, because I got up at quarter to four' and they basically looked at each-other, smiled and said 'I think we've heard enough from you eve'. So in my mind I was like fuck, that's that eve, great one. So I got up probably quicker than they were expecting and started to leave, and one of the ladies on the panel started laughing again and said 'oooh she's off again'.............. I  could think of nothing better to do than to CURTSY and said 'thank you for having me' which made them laugh even more, and then I left.

I'm fucking ecstatic to say that clearly GSA love insane people, because I have received a place on their BA Acting course for this year, thus concluding every drama school audition I will ever have to do, not to mention these long ass posts explaining them that not a huge amount of people read.