holy mother of a long post

i have emailed G a detailed account of the audition, so detailed that it was infact over 2000 words. it's after the jump, i'm sure there are other's who would care to read it, if they're bored enough.


by the way, i've been on an australian film kick. i saw little fish tuesday night, and then wolf creek today. and i gotta say, the latest batch of aussie film makers make me proud to be an aspiring member of the industry. i won't say too much about little fish coz, well, cate blanchette, hugo weaving, sam neil, martin henderson, lisa mccune in a movie that treats asians just like any other member of australian society whereby their "asianness" is not touch on at all? need i say more?



but wolf creek today. now people who know me would know that i don't scare easy. i laugh at most horror flicks actually, and it's usually the shock tactics that gets me a little jumpy (exhibit A: the exorcism of Emily Rose). but man, i was truely terrified during wolf creek. it was the first movie where the entire theatre (albeit a quite, pretty empty one) gave one huge collective sigh once the credits started rolling. seriously it was a very loud exhale from EVERYONE. greate build up of suspence. it got to the point where i was glad one of the protagonists got killed because it meant no more drawn out torture for her or for me. good good stuff.


email to G:

ALL the details? ok here goes, the blow by blow. i haven't been able
to go through this with anyone so it would be ridiculously detailed, i
would highlight the major events but i don't know how to in gmail and
i suck at html. i'll try and do paragraphs =P

so...the audition was on tuesday (smack in the middle of exam week) at
the ballet centre. i walked up all scared and i see this group of
people sitting there talking about all their past acting experience.
so incredibly intimidating. This one girl (absolutely beautiful,
looked like a young audrey hepburn) was telling everyone how she's
been living in south africa for the past six years and how she a
"commercial actress", as in she does ALL the commercials for south
africa and international and how horrible it was to see her own face
plastered around everywhere. yeah she was real pretty, but i wanted to
smack her head in. Oh and it was real fun hearing about all these
other people who's auditioning for the third year running, and
outlining the process they went through to prepare for it since they
were 10. so here i was standing there in the room feeling so out of
place and completely out of my depth, but then again i'm cocky,
acting's supposed to be a natural talent right?

eventually there were about 30 odd people who showed up, and we were
herded into one of the studios. there were four judges, two were
tutors at NIDA, one was a first year student and the other was an old
grad. then one of the tutors, Kevin, gave us a speech on how difficult
the audition process would be, and even if we did get in how difficult
life at nida would be, and that if we ever wanted to be employed we'd
better quit now because most actors don't work.

so after that delightful news we did some warm ups and vocal exercises
and got split into two groups, half stayed in the studio with one of
the tutors and the first year student and the other half went to a
studio next door with the other tutor and the grad. the tutor's do
most of the judging, the other two are just there if you need someone
to perform to in the scene.

how it was supposed to work was we all do one of our monologues first,
then after the whole group's finished we switch rooms and do our
second monologue with different judges. then they make their decision
and only 8 people would actually get to do their third. so we had to
make our shakespeare one of the first two. and lucky me i got to go
second. i sat through the first girl's performance and kept telling
myself "look, she's not moving much, her body's stiff, she's losing my
interest, i must be better than her", the judge stopped her half way
and made some suggestions and wham it was my turn.

oh by the way i did beatrice from much ado. i wailed, i cried, i
poured my poor little heart out and i went all the way through without
her stopping me. then she suggested that Ivan the first year come up
with me and i do it all again but to him this time. so, i directed all
my wailing and crying to him (who by the way was completely
non-responsive. i hit him and nothing, i pushed him and nothing. he
was as wooden as that harry potter kid in the first film) she then
stopped me halfway and told me that beatrice was a smart woman, start
again. i was stuck in the "huh?" mode and i wasn't sure what the hell
she meant so i cried a little less, and yelled at the poor boy rather
than the wailing. she said, yes good. and i had to go sit down. a
couple of others did beatrice too, cept they were a lot calmer, in
fact they were right on boring. how anybody could stand up and say "O
God that i were a man!" dispassionately is beyond me. so i was feeling
pretty good about myself, thinking, ok that was a tad much but at
least i got her attention.

so the second monologue. Mrs Erlynne from Lady Windermere's Fan. Yes a
forty year old woman. but i figured, she keeps pretending she's
29-30, i'm 20, so our age gap is actually about the same just that i'm
going the other way. Kevin didn't ask too much to begin with so i just
did my thing. then he asked me why i picked it. Now, i blabber a lot
when i'm nervous, and while i wasn't nervous during the monologue, i
was about answering that question. i said something about having to
pick something by Oscar Wilde and he asked me "didn't you know about
the wonderful proposal scene?", my mind was thinking "which goddamn
play had a wonderful proposal scene?" so i said "well i wanted
something mature and withheld and held-back and muted and
well...mature"

pathetic eh? generally people stop me when i'm blabbering but he
didn't so i had to keep going. and so i felt awful. The rest of my
group improved vastly this time round too. And he had a special
affinity with shakespeare. stopped people a lot to get the rhythm
right. talked a lot about how the main thing is to tell their story,
and it's all in the language. people don't go to see acting, so as an
actor you do all your homework, then you forget it. don't fidget,
don't move around too much, stand still and let the language tell its
story. he was really great actually. but anyway, then the judges all
got together to make their cut.

we got back into the room, all 30 of us. and i sat near the door ready
to go. Kevin then gave another speech, this time about acting in
general. Basically that we, as aspiring actors wanting to work in
Australia, should be watching australian television no matter how
crap, and watching australian movies and know what's going on. and
most importantly going to see plays and a lot of them. a lot of them
would be crap but there's no other way. they can't teach us to act or
be inspired. and we have to have the knowledge, we have to go to
opening nights at the malthouse and "bump" into people, we have to
mingle. For example, we should know that Tony Ayres who directed
"Walking On Water" is looking to cast a new movie with an all chinese
cast. Then he pointed at me. he said "you should know this and get a
good agent to track down that part, it's difficult for him right now
to find chinese-australians and there, i just gave you a job, in fact
i'm having dinner with him on friday i might pass on your number"

i can honestly say at that moment my heart skipped a beat. then he
told us that only six of us would be staying for the third monologue,
but i was all buoyed up that i didn't really care if i got to stay or
not. cept then he called out my name amongst the five others and oh,
that feeling.... there was this other guy sitting next to me,
Sacchrine who was also staying and we just stared at each other
totally bewildered. we were still sitting on the floor and everyone
else stood up and filed around us patting our backs and our eyes
stayed locked, it was happiness exactly, or relief, i know i was
worried coz my third piece was absolute shit and i could tell he was
pretty much thinking the same thing.

we had a lunch break then. but nobody ate anything, mainly because it
was the ballet school canteen and there really wasn't much besides
what looked like bird feed. i got to know the other five a little
better. two of them had been this far in the process before. one of
them, a kid who was still 18, was at St Martin's all year practicing,
the other girl had an audition for VCA on thursday and waiting for a
call back for WAAPA so wasn't too fussed. and then we got to
workshopping! yay!

*prelude* i did Cavale from Cowboy Mouth, a play i had never heard of,
nor read. i just got the sense that i could play up the innocence in
this one which was the contrast i needed so i picked it. and again i
did it the whole way through and they didn't stop me. and at the end
Kevin asked "why did you pick this particular piece?", i panicked
again, and mumbled something about "innocence, not really innocence
but a wonderment that could be portrayed in an innocent way". i could
shoot myself. but oh then it gets worse, because i gave such a shit
answer i was still shaky, then he asked me "why theatre?" and get
this. this is actually what i said:

"because to me, acting, running through emotions over and over,
jumping from one to another is so...alive. that's what life is,
through what we feel and not anything else, so really, acting is
...a...validation of life to me..."

a part of me floated up and looked down at myself and thought "WHAT A
WANKER! SHUT UP YOU STUPID WOMAN!"

i think by then Kevin was losing interest in me, so he asked me to do
beatrice again (which is why i made the cut in the first place i
think). so i did it, the wailing and all. he stopped me at the first
"KILL CLAUDIO!". then he stopped me at every phrase, he even got up to
demonstrate what he wanted. i think he loved beatrice too much to see
me butcher it. bascially what he wanted was calculated rage. but he
kept on cracking stupid chinese jokes like "i want to see the chinese
dragon mistress" and "be like the girls from Hero". it was great
though, the more he was yelling instructions at me the more i got in
to it and it was so fun. he stopped me whenever he saw something he
didn't like (now you're just seducing him! don't, you're angry! ...is
that how you are normally?) and reassured in all the right places
(you're a greate emotional actor and i love that about you, but now
learn to contain it, shakespeare never wrote "and then she weeps"
Beatrice is a strong woman. Don't CRY). in the end we all got a call
back and he pulled me aside and asked if i minded if he really did
pass on my contact details to Tony Ayres. like he needed to ask, i
mean why are we auditioning?

ok. i'm spent. i wanted to tell you about how the others did as well
but maybe another time. oh i've now read cowboy mouth and realised i
was WAY off. they took away my windermere and gave me Patty from
Little Murders (a dreadful play that's NOT IN ANY LIBRARIES OR
BOOKSTORES, someone checked it out of the ERC and i can't find it
anywhere). and i'm still struggling with having a non-crying beatrice.
oh ho i'm not even going to bother to spell check this. just make do
will you? oh wait, it's the end, so you must already have. lol

the second audition is Monday 21st. there will be about 10 people,
around 30 would make it to the second round then we go on a short
list. 5-6 gets picked and fly up to Sydney to audition with the rest
of Australia. they accept 20-25 students each year. *sigh* a long way
to go. and i need to run my monologues over with someone other than my
mother who basically wants me to keep my movements beautiful and
graceful, bleh.

anyway. i'm off to watch "Walking on Water"
nite ~.^
Alice

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