An art, not a science

To the Olde Rose and Crown in Walthamstow (pictured) yesterday to audition for agent Diane Marshall. Nice lady; pleasant, professional conversation. She enjoyed the monologue I gave her (Azdak from The Caucasian Chalk Circle, berating the local policeman who has come to question him about his poaching, and putting the wind up the fugitive who is hiding in his hut). But, I learnt this morning, she didn't want me. She had seen 22 people, the email said, and only wanted 10; I hadn't made the cut.

Of course I'm disappointed, but not immoderately so. I would have been surprised if my first audition with an agent actually got me onto their books. And I can imagine that most of the 21 others she saw had more experience and were therefore easier to promote.

What bothers me, however, is the lack of feedback. Was the deciding factor my lack of experience? Did my monologue reveal me to be an incompetent, unbelievable performer? Was it the fact that I did not express a strong preference for either stage or screen work? Was it my age? Am I not marketable? What exactly was / were my weak point(s)?

I wouldn't expect answers (and I haven't asked her the questions). Acting and casting are arts, not sciences. Any comment someone might make about my abilities is going to be subject and influenced by many factors I have no control over. So I simply have to accept that my first audition for an agent didn't work out and maybe my second, third and fourth auditions - should I get them - not work out either. Time to move on. What's for dinner?

Cutting It

Up at 8 this morning to check my email, shave (a longer process than usual, because for the last ten days I'd let what's left of the hair on my skull grow and removing it took a good half hour - it also made me look 15 years younger), shower and head out to Cut Glass Productions in Kentish Town for a voiceover class. (Before you copy the image, make sure you acknowledge it's theirs...)

I had a good feeling about this course from the moment I booked it, if only because the price, at £38 for three hours, was a bargain. It was a bonus to find that only three of us were taking the class (we were told that there might be as many as 10, which would have considerably reduced our airtime but still been good value). The icing on the cake was Phil, our coach, who provided a wide range of scripts and encouraged each of us to stretch our voices. I ended up reading five scripts, to which were added the music and FX that gave my voice the final touch of professionalism.

First up was the strong Scottish accent to advertise - surprise, surprise - Scotland. It was the same script that I'd read at the dreaded (spit, spit, curse) London Academy last month, but this time I was able to give it a much richer sound. I was so good that when I heard myself give the phone number of the Scottish Tourist Board, I almost picked up the phone to book two weeks' holiday at my mother's Edinburgh bed and breakfast...

Next was a deliberately gobbledy-gook insurance advert which I presented in a bureaucrat's voice. That also went down well, and although I could spot several weak spots and mistakes, these could easily be eradicated in a second recording and I was, as YouthSpeak has it, Well Pleased With What I Done. Third was hard-sell for a Scottish pop band. That was a mistake - my voice was too old for the product - but it made me think that there were some hard sell commercials that I could do. Fourth was the weakest performance - a soft-spoken trailer for Magic Radio; not only was my voice lost behind the music, but it was weak and did not carry the seductive tones I was aiming for. Last came a narrative for a documentary about the candiru in the Amazon -  a fish that I had thought was legendary, but which apparently really does swim up your urethra and eat away at the inside of your genitalia. My fellow-students claimed they were sitting cross-legged and nervous as I described the torture in detail...

We didn't get copies of our recordings - for the sensible reason that they were rushed and did not convey either our or Phil's full talents. But I did walk away in a much more optimistic mood than after the London Academy fiasco, where £300 and two days had done nothing more than convince me that my voice was reedy and I had no talent as a voiceover artiste. The only problem that I still face is the "bubble" that I sometimes sense in my lungs, which can rob my voice of some of its roundness. It comes and goes unpredictably and today, annoyingly, it came. Nevertheless I still gave good voice. (As for the other two students, one had considerably more talent than me and will soon, I am sure, be in high demand; the other tended to be too theatrical but had definite reassuring tones when she toned down her performance.)

Next on my agenda, therefore, is a professional voicereel. I've seen them advertised at under £300, so I'm not keen to pay CGP's £360 (less deduction for the course already taken). I may end up back there, but I'll first spend time researching the studios available and listening to their samples to see what best combines cost and quality. But wherever I end up, I'm truly grateful to Phil for restoring the confidence that I had lost.

Back to Basics

I've been back in London for over a week and am still feeling the effects of my trekking in Morocco. It was very enjoyable and I'm pleased to say that despite my age, I was one of the most energetic in the group, even arriving back first at the end of the 20 mile mountain trek (from 1,900 metres to 2,400 and back down) that completed our three day marathon.

But while my energy levels were high in Morocco, they have plummeted since my return. A stomach virus that bothered me all last Sunday, as Ricardo and I first flew to London via Madrid and then suffered the Piccadilly line home, has disappeared, but left me with an unaccustomed lethargy that still lingers, while a bruised toe, although getting better, continues to bother me. These symptoms, combined with a week's worth of emails regarding acting, my bookselling business and general catch-up with friends old and new, have prevented me from updating this blog until now.

But enough mea culpa. There has been good news, bad news and expected news on the acting front. The expected news is that I have received no follow-up to the twenty or so parts that I applied for in the week before my departure and in the week since my return. It's the usual problem - I don't get called to auditions because I don't have experience, and I can't get experience till I get called to audition. (Even when I am called to an audition - as I have been twice - I don't get the part.) But it's early days and I still have another nine months to make good on my promise to myself to get paid work within a year.

On the other hand, I did have, before I left, a promised audition with UK Actors Ltd some time in the first week of October. Off I went to Morocco, with two monologues well under my belt (Azdak in The Caucasian Chalk Circle and an early Shylock), and the text of a third (Berenger in Rhinoceros), to learn at odd moments on the trek. I arrived back prepared for action, but to find no confirmation of the audition and no reply to my email asking for an update. UK Actors claims 40 clients on Casting Call but it does not have a website and I am beginning to wonder how professional they are. I will call them on Monday and report back.

The good news is that Diane Marshall of the eponymous agency has called me in for an audition on Wednesday, so the Rhinoceros may be put to good use. I have therefore been rehearsing it, along with the other two pieces, every day while the Other Half is at work. I'm not sure how clearly my nearest neighbours - who, like us, live on the 8th floor of a tower block - can see into our living room, but if they have been watching through their net curtains, they will have been bemused by the sight of me either pulling my hair out while staring at a door or remonstrating with the bookcase on the other side of the room. I don't enjoy working with animate objects as much as with real people, whose presence helps give my performance depth, but the furniture nonetheless allows me to explore each monologue and give me a framework of movement and emotion that I can use.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday I've opted to spend £38 on a three-hour voiceover class with Cut Glass Productions. I have no idea what to expect, but the session is cheap and will, I hope, give me a better sense of how to develop my voice than the two days I spent with the London Academy last month. That brought confidence in my voice to a low, but since several of my companions on the Moroccan trek told me they liked what they heard and I'm convinced there's a voiceover artist somewhere within me, I'm ready to give myself a second chance.

A Mountain to Climb

I'm taking a break. One day at Hever Castle to see where Anne Boleyn once lived, then a week in Morocco, in Marrakesh then trekking in the Atlas Mountains. Taking my monologues with me to go over in the evenings. Hope to come back with a tan, some photos and good memories. Back the first week in October.

Once a Week

Once a week. That's about how often I've been called to auditions since my profile went up on Casting Call Pro. Considering I'm applying to 8 to 10 productions a week (paid, unpaid, film, theatre), I reckon a 10% follow-up rate isn't bad. Last week it was to do a rehearsed reading of Mervyn Peake's classic Gormenghast. I even recorded voicereels for the characters they were looking for and they called me in. The problem is, that they wanted me on a day when I'm no longer free and I had to turn them down. I begged them to reschedule for when I was free, but, not surprisingly, no can do.

The most recent call was last night. The Other Half and I were watching the last season of Lost (it's one of the most ridiculous programmes I've ever seen, but we're hooked and we're both going into withdrawal when it comes to an end), when the phone rang. Could I come in to audition for the part of an angry Peckham racist the next morning? Could I? Of course I could. And could I prepare something in character, combining anger and humour? Of course I could. So the dvd player was switched off while I hid myself away to spend a couple of hours drafting writing a monologue for this character, followed by an hour this morning to to rehearse.

I was pleased with myself. I pressed all the right buttons to create the obnoxious character I was meant to be. Stuff about working the railway (his job), being a Chelsea fan, insults about non-whites, sex and a situation where he thinks he has the upper hand and he doesn't. I was feeling quite chipper when I got taken into the audition room, gave myself a 70%+ on the quality of the monologue. Then I got asked one routine question and that was it. Not more than 10 minutes after I'd gone in, it was thanks, we'll be in touch, have a nice day.

Maybe they'll call, probably they won't. I got the feeling that while the script amused them, something in the performance was missing: not enough anger, perhaps, or dodgy accent (I've lived in London half my life and can do a reasonable imitation, but it might not pass muster in a tight spot), or just the wrong look. Well, I told myself on the way home, if they call me, they call me, and if they don't, it's been a good experience.

Good, but not fun. From the minute I put the phone down last night to the minute I walked out of the audition this morning, I had a tension headache. Creating a personality and an accent that were a long way from my own had pushed me far out of my comfort zone. The more I wrote last night and the more I repeated my lines this morning - getting deeper into the part each time - the more my chest and voice tightened. I was being taken over and I didn't like it. I couldn't help saying goodbye to the Other Half in character. I had on the earstud and tight white t-shirt and walked out of the flat with his swagger, not my lazy walk. My mind was alert and loving what I was doing - I wanted the part, I want to prove myself - but my body was definitely unhappy; it was being dragged into something it really didn't want to do.

I've read about actors undergoing these personality transformations, but this is the first time I've experienced it. All the other characters I've taken on board, from Azdak to Shylock, have been fairly close to myself in one way or another. This was the first time I had to be someone that was very different and very unpleasant. Maybe that showed up in the audition. Maybe my voice was trying so hard to do the accent that it didn't give the character depth. Maybe my body language was artificial. Whatever the problem, I'm glad it's over. But it's not going to stop me applying for such parts in future. The more I can be someone else, the better an actor I will be.

Of Rabbits and Men

I have to be honest. I'm not a fan of Bertolt Brecht (yes, that's him in the pic). We had to study Mother Courage in German when I was at school and the effort of ploughing through compound words and convoluted grammar destroyed any pleasure in the play. (Why do Germans the verb at the end always put? When the sentence very long is, can you find yourself a lot of difficult ideas in your head until the very last word holding, which often you the first idea forgotten have before you the last idea at arrive means.)

Things didn't get better when I saw one or two of his plays. I'm a simple man and while I can deal with multiple plots on the screen, I prefer my stage productions to be linear, with no more than one beginning, middle and end. The more that's going on, the less I'm engaged in the story. And with Brecht there's more going on than most.

On the other hand, I can see that acting Brecht is a player's dream. The characters are big and bold and run the gamut (what is a gamut?) of emotions and styles. Which is why I've chosen a speech by Azdak for my upcoming audition. Azdak is the village clerk, a poacher, a man with a fondness for drink and a man whose mind often runs faster than his voice. Through a combination of circumstances and cunning, he starts off by hiding an aristocrat escaping the mob, finds himself on trial and ends up as the judge...

The monologue I've chosen is near the beginning of his scene, where he's harbouring the Duke and negotiating with the policeman at the door who has come to arrest him for poaching rabbits. Will he hand over the Duke to save his own skin? Azdak's one-sided, tipsy conversation veers from mockery to the serious, from sense to nonsense, from bonhomie to mistrust. It's a challenge and I look forward to seeing how well I do with it.

I now have the lines committed to memory and I'm going through the second stage - repeating them aloud (thank goodness the flat is empty) again and again. Each time I say them, my understanding of the speech and of Azdak's character gains in depth, which means that my performance becomes increasingly nuanced as I play with different emotions, different speeds and different emphases.By the time the audition comes, the piece should be ingrained not just in my memory, but in my personality, my gestures, my whole being.

This is only the second monologue I have learnt in depth (the third will be Berenger's final scene from Rhinoceros), but as with the first (Shylock's 'Signor Antonio, many a time and oft in the Rialto you have rated me...') I find it a fascinating and almost magical experience to find my way into a character. And while I will be disappointed if the audition does not get me onto the casting agency's books, the mere fact of learning the speech is reward in itself. This, for me, is what acting is about.

Voicing My Complaint

At the beginning of the month I did a two day Voice Over class at the "London Academy of Media Film & TV". The website promised

Key Benefits of taking this course

1  Industry recognised Diploma

2  Work experience

3  Professional Voice Over Tutor

4  30% discount off your next course

5  Build your own voice showreel

What happen during the course (note the grammatical error)

During the voice-over course you will experiment with your voice on various themes, such as; narrating documentaries, corporate videos, trailers for film, TV & radio commercials as well as radio station promos. 

I had my doubts about the Academy's efficiency when I had to contact them by phone to pay the fee. An automated North American voice gave way to live human beings for whom English was a second language, who did not have a record of my application (although I had received an automated email in reply) and who, when they found it, had me down for the wrong course.

Doubts increased when I read the class instructions. "Turn up at the door on Lancing Street only five minutes before the course begins. Your tutor will let you in." Was this a prison? An army camp? No, my fellow-students and I discovered on the wet and windy day as we stood waiting in the street; the grandiosely-named Academy is no more than a couple of hired rooms in an anonymous block of flats; there is no office, no reception, nowhere for students to come in from the cold.

There were three of us on the course, plus tutor Bill (not his real name), replacing advertised course tutor Melinda. Bill was an affable chap, an actor with a wonderful voice - you will have heard him and seen him in old films - but also an actor going through a difficult patch, as witnessed by his unshaven face and the various stories of his private life that came out over the next two days.

It took Bill the first 45 minutes of the day to finish telling us about the problems he was having in his new flat and to start us on a series of vocal exercises. It was then time for lunch. After an hour's break, we took turns to read poetry (Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark) before we were shunted off to the computer and told to choose three or four potential pieces for our voicereel. (We queried the poetry, thinking that it might be better to practise on the pieces that we were more likely to be asked to present and were told it was useful to train clarity of speech...)

Once we'd chosen our pieces - with no guidance as to which would be more suitable for our voices or which different styles they represented - we each read through them a few times and decided with Bill which ones we were most comfortable with. We were then sent home. At five o'clock. An hour before the scheduled end of the class.

Next day. A few vocal exercises. Time spent while the engineer discovered that the loudspeakers he needed were missing and had hunt up a pair. Time in the cubicle reading our pieces. I was crap. I sat at the microphone and for the first time since I took up this career, I froze. My voice came out thin and throaty, with no emotion or variety. I wanted time out, to relax, but it was clear this would not suit either Bill or the engineer. I had three shots at each piece (a continuity announcement, an advertisement, a documentary narrative) and I was only happy with one.

But never mind, it was five o'clock, an hour before the scheduled end of the class and that meant it was time to go home...

Jack, one of my fellow students, and I sat in the pub afterwards and agreed that we had not had our £300 worth. There had been no structure to the course (I should know - I was a teacher for 10 years and one of the basic principles was to have a clear structure to each part of the lesson, what should be taught and what students were expected to achieve); no explanation of the differences between the various styles of voiceover and how we could and should adapt our voice to each; too much time had been spent listening to Bill's tales of woe; Bill, a classically-trained actor was obviously uninterested in the crass commercial side of voiceover; an hour had been shaved off the end of the class each day; and so on.

I intended to complain, but I wanted to complete the course - receive my "professionally produced" voicereel and "Industry recognised Diploma" first. The voicereel came. Of the three recordings, only one was usable and I have uploaded it to Casting Call Pro and my website. The other two were bad. I'm sure if I had spent an extra twenty minutes in the booth I wouldn't have produced a perfect voice, but I am also sure that if the course had been more professional and we had been given the time we needed, I could have made better recordings than the ones I ended up with.

Then came an email about the Diploma. I would receive it but only after I had rated the course. I looked to see if could rate the course online so that potential students could see my comments. Surprise, surprise, I couldn't. My comments had to be vetted by Sari Bannister of Student Support. I wrote back that I gave the course 3 out 5, with my reasons for that rating and in the hope that the comments would be posted, together with a reply from the Academy recognising my concerns and agreeing to improve the course in future.

I did not get that guarantee; I did not even get a response acknowledging that I was disappointed. A couple of days ago, however, I did get my diploma - a pretty piece of paper that looked as if it had been designed by a 13 year old girl playing around with ClipArt.

I notice that on the "London Academy of Media Film & TV" website there are comments from students suggesting they have profited from their courses. I will be charitable and assume these comments are genuine, but my experience is that the London Academy is happy to take your money and to go through the motions of tutoring and does not care about the quality of the classes it offers. In future, my money - and I suggest other people - will go elsewhere.