The End of the Beginning

You’ll have noticed its been a little quiet around here.

Since my last update before the London showcase, I have left school, been through a brief but deep depression, picked myself up, and am now starting to formulate some sort of plan on what to do next. I did not get any professional approaches after either showcase, something that I was not prepared for. I didn’t expect a non-stop thrill-ride straight to the top, far from it (ok, part of me did, more on that in a minute), but I wasn’t prepared for…well, nothing, either. It was the most horrible feeling that I can remember. Ok, fine, getting a job straight out of school was unlikely at best. In retrospect, so was getting an agent.  I wasn’t psychologically prepared to get nothing at all though and went through ten days or so of absolute despair. Why was this? Why wasn’t I prepared for this?

I have spoken about the strange kismet that seems to have steered and guided me through all the perils and obstacles that have lain in my path since I started this journey. Everytime I was facing disaster something came along to save the day. So I suppose I expected this to continue, and it may well have continued, although not in the way that I wanted at the time.  The roles that I have been given, the compliments and praise that I have received, hell even my exam result – all of these factors combined gave me licence to dream. I think with hindsight I was complacent. The Brighton showcase went much better than London and it returned some self-respect, but I still felt lost and without a plan.

So what now? Well, temporarily, the usual channels are closed to me. I still do not have a job and therefore no money,  and so I have not been able to apply for anything through Casting Call Pro, and I have had to take myself off Spotlight altogether. I cannot join the Actors Centre, I cannot get to London. I have no way of finding out about auditions, and no agent is going to take me on without having seen me.

So I am going to make the mountain fucking well come to me.

I am writing a script, a short film idea that I have had for ages. My friends Julian and Franklyn are going to review the script for me, my buddy Simon is going to shoot it for me, then I will get it up on YouTube and send it to agents. I will make this work, I am determined, I am hungry and godammit I am not going to give up.

It’s not the end. It’s the end of the beginning.

London Showcase tomorrow



So. Here we are. Showtime, and all that.

I am feeling pretty good, on the whole, although I have to admit that I would certainly quite like a cigarette right now (I stopped six weeks ago). I haven’t felt nervous all day, just excited, happy, and composed; both of my scenes are in good shape, I know my lines, I know my cues, I am still finding new things in our five minute snippets of life; it’s all good. So, just for a while there, I didn’t think I was going to get nervous. Crazy idea I know.

Whichever way you look at it, tomorrow is a strange day. If you go into the showcase with the belief that it is the culmination of two years’ hard work, that it’s your only opportunity to get in front of an agent and that your future as an Actor depends on those few short minutes, I would imagine that you will a) blow it, and b) contemplate suicide immediately following a). Therefore, I have been maintaining an air of cool philosophy about the showcase for a few weeks now, happily proclaiming to my classmates at any given opportunity that it’s ‘the beginning, not the end…’, and I know that this is true. Most students don’t get an agent when they leave school, and there are plenty of ways to represent yourself in the meantime. So if I don’t get any interest from agents or casting directors tomorrow, it’s not the end of the world. Right?

Here in the calm before the storm, I am left wondering – is it my classmates that I have been trying to convince, or myself? Am I prepping myself for potential disappointment? Maybe.

Actually, fuck all that. I’m gonna kick ass!

Go to it, young man.

One week until London showcase

Or seven days, if you prefer. 168 hours. Whatever it is, it’s close.

I’m not feeling too bad about it either. One of the pieces that I will be performing is the scene that I have already performed in my exam, The Lightning Play, so I have every reason to feel confident about this one. Generally speaking I do not like to work at scenes too hard; I lose the spontaneity and sometimes the truth of things, and would prefer to leave something well alone if I am happy about it. Recently we have been working on this scene alot and I have to be honest, it really has improved since the exam and we are finding some great new things. There is a famous saying that movies are never finished, just abandoned. I think theatre is probably the same. You don’t get to show it when it’s completely ready, just when you run out of rehearsal time.

The other scene that I am working on is from Some Voices by Joe Penhall. I had to fight initially to have the scene slightly re-jigged as I didn’t think that my role had parity with the others. I know,  I know, that makes me sound like a whiny bitch, but it’s the showcase. Anyway, I am far less happy with where I am with this one, and we do not have any more rehearsals with our Director before the show (Franklyn McCabe – i’ve added a link to his blog, check it out).  It’s hard to know what to do with him (the character, not Frank), need to give this some more work.

The turnout for the showcase is pretty amazing. We’ve got agents, casting directors, actors co-op’s, and producers. Disappointingly though, despite alot of hard work, I have not had a single positive reply to my invites, and only two ‘thanks, but no thanks’, and one of these was from the RSC. Amaxing if they had come, not surprising that they are not, but very cool that such an illustrious institution should reply where many other lesser beings have not. Mad props, as the kids say.

Right. Better learn some lines then….

War Games

On hearing the news that MGM plan to desecrate reboot the mentally good 80′s classique War Games, I decided to watch the original  - and was somewhat surprised to see Leo McGarry and Mr Blonde in the first two mins.

That’s the late John Spencer and Michael Madsen to you. This amused me.

First audition

I had my first audition today.

It’s for a short film (actually, potentially two short films), being made by a couple of MA students at the Uni of Sussex, so it’s not going to make me famous, neither is it going to make me rich (it’s unpaid), but it was massively important none-the-less. If I get the gig not only is it a valuable film credit and clip for my showreel, but far more important than any of that, it answered a question that has been buzzing around in my head for a while now – can I stand in front of a complete stranger, in a strange place, with an unfamiliar script, and act, fearlessly, in front of them?

The answer, thankfully, is yes. She liked my audition and I am hopeful that I will get a role. So I feel like I have taken a big step today.

Hurrah!