Guildhall hold their auditions in their student union bar, and although the actual school just down the road is absolutely gorgeous, there are weird vibes at the audition which I have felt two years in a row. The room you are asked to wait in is a pretty dark and dingy underground space with no windows, a bar, pool tables, and big leather sofas. It has literally no reflection on the school, but i can't help but feel like the whole place is a little scary mary. None the less, the audition at Guildhall is pretty standard, and pretty good for your money.
Once everyone has arrived, you are hoarded into a little side room with a big table and chairs. There are usually about 12-20 people auditioning on any one day, and the beginning is just a chat to reassure everyone, to fill in speeches forms, and also to be given a number label. After about 15 minutes, you are taken into another room just off from the bar where a beginning physical workshop takes place. Guildhall assure you this isn't assessed, but judging from the type of exercises you are asked to do, I find it hard to believe their isn't a tiny bit of perusing going on. Rather than just warming up, there are actual games, like two people have to run around, and without any signal, they have to stop at the same time and deliver the first line of their speech to each other. Or walking around the space and everyone stopping at once, various team games etc. I think they must at least like to see how confident you are in your body and how you can work within a group. I dunno if its true or what, but I find it weird that they call it a workshop, rather than a warm up, if its not assessed. Also, I did a similar workshop last year, and i'm almost sure they didn't say it wasn't assessed then, but I cant be positive. Either way, as always with an audition, I just tried to throw myself into everything as you only can do. A lot of the exercise seemed to be about truthfulness, and finding a way to arrive at your line, rather than knowing where you're going with it. This is a big philosophy at Guildhall, as is ensemble work, and the workshop seemed to echo that perfectly. Trying to adhere to both of these things in the morning workshop is the best way to tackle it. It's also important to say that this workshop was lead by two reaaally nice guys, both of which were older graduates of Guildhall.
The workshop lasted about half an hour, and then we were taken back into the room to be told a running order for the afternoon. The person who is first goes in about five minutes after the workshop has ended, but if you are nearing the end of the list, you have a couple of hours to wait in which you are free to go out for a bit. Each person has an individual audition for about ten minutes. For this you are asked to prepare three speeches: a classical, modern, and other of your choice, and a short unaccompanied song.
When I entered the room ready for my audition, I was asked which speech wanted to do first, this is a given at Guildhall, so make sure you do the one you really want them to see. I got through my whole speech (Paulina 'The Winters tale') without being interrupted. Also, they are pretty big on eye contact, and if you have a speech directed at a person, they will ask you to use a student, who will give you expressions to play off. I remember being totally thrown off by this last year as I had my speech set a certain way, so when the student reacted in a way that I hadn't envisaged my character would, I had to break the tone of the piece which didn't really flow. This year however, I was totally prepared, and its a good thing to go in with a piece which isn't worked into the ground, so that you are free to do it in different ways. Then I was told which speech they wanted me to do next, and luckily they chose my favourite contemporary. This time I was stopped a little more. Once again I was asked to use eye contact, and seeing as this piece is directed at the audience i used the panel to look at too. The piece I was doing (Jess from 'Love and Money'), is quite a conflicted speech about life, and whether or not there is a higher power. It has very natural speech patterns, and quite often she cuts herself off or tries to find the right word for what she means. Because of this I was doing a lot of acting in between the lines and the panel asked me to tone that right down and just let the words come to me without 'trying too hard'. They asked me to just direct it at the student again and to just say it to him and let him affect me. I was stopped a couple of times, but I did what I thought they were asking of me and then they said it was enough. I wasn't asked for my song, or any more speeches, and to finish there was a five minute interview about me and what I was up to, blah blah, and that was it.
Once everyone has been auditioned, you all gather back in the room with the table and the panel come out to say who has been successful and they would like to see for a recall. This takes place something like the following week, and in my experience, only about 1-5 people out of each group ever get recalled, and sometimes none. Both years at Guildhall I have been rejected straight up. THEIR LOSS I GUESS.
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