frustration.

right, it seems my weekend job has taken over everything. although I can now support myself financially for auditions and short courses and things, it now means I haven't applied yet, and it's been almost a week since I planned on be all applied and ready to go.
feeling like my hands are tied in many ways.

top tips for applications and auditions (tips I can think of right now at midnight)

• work out at least two referees for references, really important as a wrong choice of referee, like the parents of the child you babysit, really show the school that you don't have much experience in the industry. try and maybe use one academic ref and someone linked in the industry. Oh! and make sure you okay it with your ideal referees, as an unexpected email or phonecall from guildhall might not look great on your part.
• get a good personal statement in draft right from the word go. make it punchy and make sure it isn't clichéd. as tempting as it is to say 'acting is my life' how many students do you think might write that. it may seem easy to use up the characters you have left but make sure you don't dumb yourself down with typical phrasing and things an admission office will have read ten billion times.
• have at least four speeches in your rep. if a panel thinks you have potential they could throw you a curveball and make you do another classical speech even though they only asked for one. to say to a panel 'that's fine, I'll do another speech right this second' looks impressive and shows how overly prepared you are. make sure you know your speeches inside out. they will grill you. if the panel start provoking you to try different things with your speech then do it with conviction. many auditions I went to, the candidates who got call backs were the ones the panel gave a hard time to. one audition I witnessed, one member on the panel threw a pen at the auditionee to will them to take the moment and mess about with their overly practiced speech.
• get a CV done with relevant information on it. don't write that anything that wasn't relatively recent as the panel will ask you questions about it, if it was sooner in the past rather than when you were five, you can talk intelligently and informatively about your experiences. it works. just try and get a good image, your acting experience, your physical description, any skills/talents that you have qualifications in. stuff like that. I'll do a post on CV's and post mine. to give a small guideline.
• sign up to more workshops and masterclass's. working with industry professionals such as Roger Rees and Geoffrey Coleman, as I have done recently, looks amazing on the old CV but is also an amazing experience to see into the professional side of the industry. honestly worth every single penny of money. very worth anyone's time.
• you can never read enough. I have this pile of plays and books on my floor by my amp. I've started all of them and am yet to finish them :L feeling like I might challenge myself to read every Shakespeare play in the next year, I might post about possible monologues in them. People really freak out about Shakespeare and you don't need to. it's quite simple really. I won't go into it or I'll ramble for seven hours.

anyway. I could go on, i wont. I need to do some of these points in the next few days. maybe Tuesday as I'm working until Monday.

well, peace out.
-Ivy.

Okay.

Evening/Silly o'clock,

I am Ivy Lowe. This is where I am going to record my journey to or not to drama school. I applied last year to five schools in an around London. I was unsuccessful. It actually bummed me out for like a month but then I realised that I now have at least one year to do whatever I want, earn money and literally do as much stuff as I can. So. I'm gonna blab on this thing for as long as I can keep up with it in the hope that someone might be in a similar situation and looking for someone with a blog who is documenting the experience as I am going to do.
Hopefully writing a personal statement tomorrow and finishing my application to Guildhall. Feeling the burn from six days in a row at work, pilates yesterday and work today- short staffed. What a martyr I am, and how well it becomes me. 
                                                                    -Ivy.