2,500 young singers auditioned hoping to get one step closer to their big break into musical theatre. I am one of 15 that did. Annually, the BBC holds an international professional competition that is attended by all of London's big names in producing big West End shows and also huge films. The winner gets £5000, a huge recording contract, plus everyone will want them to be in their next show. This year, for the first time BBC New Talent has held an amateur leg of the competition. They went to every major city in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland auditioning pretty much anyone that wanted to give it a try. So the auditionees ranged from young drama students to accountants andpharmacistss. I attended the Cardiff audition at the end of July and then spent the next month and a half waiting for a reply. And the reply came. I was working behind the bar at the Funky Buddha Lounge when the woman running the competition came in with her co-worker (a friend of my boss). They have often been in the bar for a drink in the past and I know them both fairly well. I knew something might be up, but as I greeted them they said that the results were not quite confirmed and that they would let me know next week. So I went about my business as usual trying not to get my hopes up, when a few minutes later a camera came in through the front door and I was hearing the words, "you are going to boot camp"! So, with hands shaking, I took down the dates for the 'boot camp' as it is so lovingly named, where fromTuesday to Friday, every day from 9am - 7pm we will be diving into every conceivable facet of musical theatre and workshopping our audition songs. We are staying in a hotel in Cardiff with everything paid for, and then thatFridayy night we all audition again. Of the 15, 5 are then chosen to proceed on the following day to the professional preliminary round with 30 singers who are already through to that round. The judges will not be told who is professional and who is amateur. If I continue to be successful after the preliminary round, I will then proceed to the proper BBC Radio 2 Voice of Musical Theatre Competition at the New Theatre in Cardiff. The audience will then be filled with casting directors, agents,producers, and all the other big wigs of the musical theatre industry. This is incredibly exciting and I need all the positive energy everyone can muster, because this could be my big break!
In the meantime, the woman who heads thecompetitionn also heads the BBC Music Projects department, and she told me in the next four weeks before the competition continues, I am welcome to go to the BBC and meet the casting director and other directors around just to begin sponging as much advice I can as well as learning some new names to be able to begin to network myself all over the place! She is very helpful and shows lots of signs of having a great deal of faith in me. I'm the only one who they chose to bombard with a camera up my nose to film my reaction to this very exciting news.
Another little piece off news came through my mobile phone yesterday morning. The Welsh National Opera phoned me up saying that a film company is looking for young voices from their youth opera. This film company is taking on Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd' (the demon barber of Fleet Street). Tim Burton's directing it and I hear Johnny Depp is meant to be in it. I haven't heard anything yet, so I may not even have an audition, but one can always hope...