‘The Voice’ Needs a 5th Judge

1) 16 year old contestant: Music is my life.

Me: Thats because you aren’t old enough to drink yet.

2) Contestant: I’m doing this for my dead granddad.

Me: He’s dead. He won’t care.

3) 16 year old Contestant: This is all I’ve ever wanted.

Me: Come back in 10 or more years when you know what the verb ‘to want’ actually means and then we’ll talk.

4) Will: You’re only sixTEEN?!

Me: You learned to speak at 2. If you can’t sing a little bit by now, you aren’t a singer.

5) Will: That was dope. Kylie: You’re so cute. Ricky: I can’t breathe, that was so good. Tom: I want you on my team.

Me: Is anyone going to acknowledge that the entire song was in the wrong key?

6) Contestant: I’m doing this for my little girl.

Me: Go take her to Mcdonalds and buy her some Moshi Monsters on the way home. It’ll mean more to her.

7) Contestant playing the quirky card: I’m just not really suited to that 9 to 5 thing.

Me: None of us are. It’s barbaric. But until we’re way in the future, and people have raged against the machine, you need to get yourself a job and stop living in your parents’ attic.

8) Contestant’s Parent: He’s got raw talent. He can play 4 instruments.

Me: That’s not called raw. That’s called middle class.

9) Contestant’s Parent: He’s always up in his room playing with his guitar.

Me: Trust me. It’s not his guitar he’s playing with.

10) Will: I just loved the way you bounced around the stage.

Me: Have you ever heard of Lithium?

AUDITIONS!

How to navigate your way through the minefield of auditions for various shows (as always, my tongue is firmly in my cheek).

 

The Voice: To succeed, you must riff manically between chest voice and falsetto. Look unattractive. Twang if you want Jessie, chest belt if you want Tom, sing breathily if you want Danny, say how much you love your mam if you want Will.

 

Britains Got Talent: Be bendy, have a dog, or a special need. 

 

X factor: Tell them your granddad died (they don’t seem to understand that everyone’s granddad dies eventually and will put you through to boot camp immediately).

 

Les Miserable: Sing with a slack jaw, low larynx, and slow vibrato (think: someone experimenting with clutch control on a new car).  

 

Other classical musical theatre shows: Sing from your pharynx. Think Katherine Jenkins. But with more sincerity.

 

Mamma Mia – Get a spray tan.  Smile a lot. Hide the break between your chest voice and falsetto by ‘mixing.’ Don’t sing with any vibrato and don’t riff. Practise your back bend and your pirouette (both are in the audition choreography, despite it ‘not being a dancer’s show’). 

 

Function band: you need to be able to look like a girl but talk with the boys, have the legs for a little black dress but the arms to carry a Marshall amp. You’ll need to be able to sing 30 songs a night without double tracking. Don’t even bother auditioning if you don’t like Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’-you’ll spend your entire working life singing it.

 

Bill Kenwright Shows: Be graceful during your audition. If you’re clumsy you’ll knock the set over (and he’ll be needing that for his next show. Whatever it is). Do a cockney accent. Play an instrument. 

 

A ‘devised’ piece: You will have to do teddy bear rolls in this audition, and then nod convincingly while the panel spout pretentious shite about ‘the process.’ If you get the job, be prepared to spend lots of rehearsal time chatting and rolling around on a dirty floor.

 

Schools Tours: Before the audition, practise catching a ball – you will spend half the audition playing ball games. You will also need to do lots of different accents and show a full, clean driving license. This audition will last HOURS so take a packed lunch. If you get this job you will spend 70 per cent of your free time in travel lodges. The other 30 per cent you’ll be in a van. 

 

Cruise ship SINGING auditions: Throw the entire contents of your make up bag at your face. Wear a Lycra dress. Sing an Andrew Lloyd Webber number for your ballad and something by Aretha for your uptempo. In the audition, EVERYone else will be ‘warming up’ by doing scales & sirening. Take TWO packed lunches to this one. And possibly a sleeping bag.

 

Cruise ship DANCE auditions: Throw the entire contents of your make up bag at your face. Wear a bra and knickers. Intimidate everyone else by sitting in the splits for 3 hours in the waiting room. Once in the audition room, push your way to the front.

 

Adverts: Take THREE packed lunches to this one. You’ll wait for hours in a room full of people who are thinner, prettier versions of you. Then you’ll say your name to camera, turn to the right, turn to the left, show them your hands and leave. You will never hear from them again.

 

Pop band: Get a spray tan, stick some hair extensions in, wear false eyelashes. If you have the legs for it, wear hot pants. If you don’t, don’t bother auditioning. Also, if you look over 22, skip this one. If you’re still determined to go, sing like Pixie Lott – think ‘Les Mis’ slow vibrato but ‘We Will Rock You’ raspiness.

 

Wicked: Tilt your larynx and sing through your nose. You may want to paint yourself green to really improve your chances.

 

We Will Rock You: Customise a T-shirt with rips and safety pins, and sing like Bonnie Tyler. 

 

Independent Film: Read the script and tell the writer ‘how layered’ you think the piece is. You’ll then get the job, but be prepared to perform a nude scene and work for free. Plus, that copy of the film they promise you for your show reel? You ain’t never getting that. Every time someone tags you in a photo on facebook from then on, you will be filled with dread that it could be that freeze frame of you on all fours.

 

Hopefully, this has put a smile on some poor,  knowing actor’s face somewhere. If I’ve missed out any audition styles you’d like me to add, let me know….

 

Thank you,

 

Kelly xxxx

 

Copyright Kelly Rickard April 2013

 

 

 

 

Surviving the industry: what drama school won’t teach you

1. Unless you reign yourself in you will finish your first tour with an extra stone in weight and liver damage.

2. Be careful what you say. It is likely that you are talking to the director’s son/the MD’s wife/the MD himself.

3. Don’t be ‘the funny one’ at auditions. The funny one is liked, the funny one gets remembered, the funny one does not get hired.

4. Do not become too involved in cast gossip.

5. Do not be so uninvolved in cast gossip that you appear to have a borderline personality disorder.

6. The casting couch definitely exists. Lie on it and it is quite possible that you will find your way in to the industry. But stay off it if you actually want to REMAIN in the industry.

7. Even Yoko and John couldn’t have survived if one of them had done a year long tour. Don’t kid yourselves. Break it off or don’t go.

8. 90 per cent of the men you will work with on tour will be up for, or indeed will be actively seeking, an affair. Even the ‘nice’ ‘sensitive’ ones who talk about their girlfriends a great deal. In fact, especially those ones. They are probably grooming you.

9. Don’t trust men who call you babe or hun.

10. Imagine the industry as a giant game of Chinese whispers. Kiss someone and within minutes your director who is 700 miles away will be hearing that you’ve had a drug fuelled orgy with the entire cast.

11. Be the girl with extra hair grips. She who holds the hairspray holds the power in the dressing room.

12. Be wary of casts who don’t have that one person to pick on. It is likely that you are that one person and that they are doing it behind your back.

13. Always have spare show tights.

14. The girls in the dressing room will look at you like you’re clinically insane if you admit to wearing anything other than capezio tights but M and S ones actually last longer.

15. A man with an opinion will go far. A woman with an opinion may never work again. Keep your thoughts to yourself.

16. If you are under 40 and under 5ft4 be prepared to spend the next however many years playing elves and pixies.

17. There is only one thing scarier than walking into an audition room – and that’s walking out, Nerves can do weird things to you, dont be surprised if you try and walk out backwards or end up curtseying.

18. A signed contract does not mean that you have the job. You can only know for sure that you have the job when you are actually on the job. And even then it can be taken from you.

19. If you are in the right industry then every failed audition and shitty part time job will feel completely worth it when you’re standing in the wings waiting to go on stage. If you aren’t cut out for it then you will give up after the first knock back, run home to your parents and bitch about every person you know that manages to hack it when you couldn’t.

20. If you get work, don’t moan. You are not on the front line, you are not a surgeon, you are a very lucky person who gets paid to pretend. Smile like you mean it.

Copyright Kelly Roberts.