The First Recall Audition
Later the same day as the First Audition for Othello, I had another call from my agents.
I picked up the phone as quickly as possible.
"Hey" trying to be as cool and as calm as possible.
"Adam, we have an audition for you tomorrow"
"Great" I said, a little disappointed, as it wasn’t any news about Othello.
Turned out it was for a TV commercial the next day. It was a good distraction though. But I thought that was it with regards to Othello. Then I got another call from my agents,
"Hey, have you got me on speed dial or something?" I tried to joke.
"How did it go for Othello?"
"Yeah it seemed to go well. We discussed the play, spoke about the stakes of the scene, worked on it, and had a chat."
"Ok. Great, and you were happy with everything?"
It seemed like I was being let down softly - which doesn't happen often. It's either a yes, or you never hear.
"Well...they like you..."
Get to the point please I thought. If its a no I want to know.
"…and they want you to go and meet Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre on Friday"
Then an even bigger "WOOHOO" than when I received the first call about the audition.
My agents are used to this reaction from me upon getting a job. It is always a great feeling – and although this wasn’t for a job it was still a wonderful feeling. I heard my agent chuckle on the other end of the phone. He then briefed me and congratulated me. This time I knew what I had to work on: Act II Scene III.
Excellent. I had focus. I had somewhere to vent all of my effort for the next 24 hours to help myself get ready for the biggest audition of my career so far. Let's get to work. I re-read the play, focused more on the part of Cassio, and began to learn the lines for that scene.
Whenever I have to learn lines very quickly, especially ones as complex as these, there is one person I lock in a room and we don't leave until we both know it back to front. That's my amazing Mum.
I told her what was going on, and requested her help learning my lines – tea and biscuits was the bribe of choice. She said yes, as she always does, and we began.
Four hours later, at 22:30 my brain was knackered. I understood what Cassio was talking about when in the scene he says,
"And discourse fustian with one’s own shadow."
I took myself off to bed, spent the next half hour re-reading the scene, focusing on my Actions and Activities and then finally drifted off with my script crushing my nose.
TV Commercial Audition Day!
I was faced with all the same terrors I outlined in my last post, except this time I had the small added worry of the recall to worry about on Friday.
The day went by quite slowly, as killing time in London always does – especially when you are the World’s worst person at waiting. The TV commercial went well, I didn't get it, but it was a God-send because it forced me to work on my script in yet another large coffee shop in Soho.
By this time it was 1600 and I heard my iPhone ringing: Sainou. It was yet another audition for Friday morning. The week felt like it was spinning out of control however I wasn't complaining...but it meant one more thing: another script to read and to learn.
I raced home, got in, threw my bag in the hall and sat at my computer. I started printing the script for Friday morning. Whilst that was printing I decided to keep working on Cassio:
I made tea and biscuits and inevitably called,
We closed the door and continued to work on the scene. My mum is a person blessed with more patience than anyone else I know, but her best talent at helping me learn lines, is coming up with the tricks for me to remember them.
For me, there are two main things you have to do to learn lines. I first have to learn them intellectually. I have to know what order the words come in, how and why. I recite them until they are perfect. I don't work on the feeling I just hammer my brain with them until they're in there - and mum knows all the tricks with this. She can link words and make up reasons as to why one word follows another (if I am struggling with it). It's usually something silly. If we take the line,
"Drunk! And speak parrot! And squabble! Swagger! Swear!" Cassio, Act II Scene III
Mum would look at that, and without a beat say:
"They are all in alphabetical order. P, Q, Swa, Swe"
Easy peasy. Once I have found a little trick like that rarely forget the line.
The second phase of line learning is something that occurs over a period of time. It seems to sink into me and it's something that becomes second nature; muscle memory. I once heard that what happens is that lines transfer from one side of the brain to the other. I have no idea if this is what happens, but there is definitely a transferring that takes place. I feel that it usually sinks deeper into me. It lives in my bones. It becomes my technique. The same way a golfer doesn't think about his swing at the first tee of a Major Championship, I don't think of my lines in the heat of a performance – or in this case an audition. I know, just like a golfer, that I have worked hard enough on it all before the moment of 'truth' that if I was actually asked to think about it, I would make mistakes.
Again the clock ticked round to 23:00 and I had managed to learn my few lines for the TV show as well as my Cassio scene.
I woke up the following day and I didn’t have to worry about what I was going to wear. I will just put on what I wore to the first audition. It worked then – it should work today. I had to make a call between the TV audition in the morning and the Recall for Othello, in terms of what to wear – and so I weighted it to the recall.
I headed into town – got there far too early once again and had time to kill. I used this time to double check all of my work for the TV audition. Feeling quite good, that audition came and went, and then it was time to get to the Southbank once more.
I headed over to the National Theatre after my morning audition. It left me with a number of hours to kill as the recall wasn’t until around 1600. Which to an actor can be very destructive. It can sap your energy and you can lose focus quite easily when faced with time to kill. Luckily I was aware of this potential banana skin and had a plan in place: to work.
So I found a quiet corner in the foyer of the theatre and decided to open my script - and work. I kept running the scene in my mind, pretending the other person was there, looking for their reactions and analyzing how to interact with them. To be honest, I was reminded of the quote about the Underground my Drama Centre teacher had told me (see First Audition Post).
Slowly but surely the clock ticked round, and with about 15 minutes to go I walked round to the stage door - I had plenty of time still so I stared out into the Thames and decided to give the scene one last blast. It helped.
I arrived at the stage door and gave my name, and was then told where to head. As I was walking up the stairs I bumped into someone who was in the year above me at Drama Centre. We had a quick catch-up, I asked him why he was here,
"Oh ok, great. How did it go?" I replied.
"Yeah, well. Got to shoot"
I then turned around and there were two more people who were in the year below me at Drama Centre. One was in Simon Stephen's brilliant 'Port' and we said hello, and the other guy works in the box office. These brief experiences made me realise one thing: this is well within my grasp. It made the theatre a more accessible place to me. If these guys are here, why can't I be? And the only answer I could find was: I could.
I felt the pressure lift slightly. I felt happy and comfortable to be there - which is a very welcoming feeling when you are faced with the prospect of achieving a lifetime goal.
I managed to not get lost and knocked on an office door with three lovely ladies sitting in there. I double-checked with them that I was where I needed to be - it was. They offered me some water and we shared some small talk which led to me promising them an iPad, and I found myself getting distracted by the amount of posters, postcards and other bits and pieces they had up on their wall.
Then the casting director came along and asked me to follow her. Which I did. We walked through a very large open plan office, and admired the glorious view. I then walked through another door…and there was Nicholas Hytner.
We had a quick chat and he asked me to do Act II Scene III again. I made a very crucial decision very quickly at this moment in time. Despite all the work I had done on the lines, I knew I wouldn't be able to give an accurate account of myself if I did the scene off book. So I flipped open my Pukka Pad and we began.
"Very good - but once again just don't lose track of what Cassio has lost. He is very very angry at himself and he just doesn't want to let himself off the hook"
"It's the stakes again" I replied, "We discussed this at my first audition. Got it!"
And I did it again. I beat myself up, I nearly broke my pencil. But it worked once again. I really enjoyed it - and I went for it. I didn't hold back, kept no reservations. If I was going to go down, I was going to go down with all my acting guns-a-blazing!
"That's great. Thank you."
We shook hands and off I went with the casting director, back through the beautiful office. I shook hands with her, and left.
I called my agent, and spent the whole journey home dreaming of the possibility of being told I would get it.
N.B: I just want to take a moment to explain that this process for this audition is specific to me on that day. I wouldn’t want to assume that I have put together a blue print for a successful audition every time. There is no such formula. I change what I do for every audition depending on a variety of factors:
1. How I feel on that day.
4. Where the audition is.
And I am sure there are others I am not aware of. My point is that I got it right on this particular day, and this is what I did. If it was another day and I did this I might not have been successful in getting the job. You can only do what you can do for every audition. It always depends on what you do, at that moment, on that day.
