University of the Arts, Philly --> my audition

College Majors Visual Arts and Film Majors
1

<p>Hey everyone,
Just wanted to share my audition experience at this school:</p>

<p>First off, all my correspondence with them before I even visited was impersonal, disorganized, unwelcoming and unfriendly. </p>

<p>I flew into Philly Friday night, to audition the next morning.</p>

<p>Anyway, my general impression of Philly was a bland, uninteresting, uneducated and unfriendly city.</p>

<p>I show up at the school among a teeming throng of 17 year olds and their parents. A table with three students sat at the entrance to sign up and check your name off.</p>

<p>We then went into the "great hall", essentially a big empty room with far less folding chairs than people. A student came up to the mic and instructed the different majors where to go audition.</p>

<p>I walked a few blocks with the acting group, a large group of about 100 people, and sat in the hallway of another building for about 2 hours, until my name was called by another student.</p>

<p>I went into a tiny room with a bunch of desks pushed to the back, a piano, and a chair. There was one faculty member behind a desk who said hello. He later told me he was the head of the acting department.</p>

<p>Well, I had prepared two contrasting monologues as requested, and wanted to do the weaker piece first. My second piece had strong meaning to me, and I had spent the last two weeks rehearsing it wtih an old acting teacher, pouring all my energy into it.</p>

<p>I began the first piece and soon glanced in the direction of the professor. I noticed that not only was he NOT watching me, he had his head pointed straight down, was taking notes, and nervously twitching his legs under the desk. This immediately took the wind out of my sails. I'd venture to guess that perhaps for 90% of the first monologue, he was not looking at me.</p>

<p>I went into my second piece with a defeated energy, and the worst part of all was that he cut me off half way through it, before I had a chance to develop it and reach the climax.</p>

<p>We had a decent talk afterwards, and I refrained from telling him how ****ed off I was and how disrespected I felt.</p>

<p>Anyway, I'm still annoyed by it that I'm going to withdraw my application. I realize cutting me off has nothing to do with how good or bad the performace was, but it just seemed incredibly rude and impunitive.</p>

<p>No one was friendly to me there, the majority of the kids applying seemed of low intellect at best - basically bland, boring amorphous blobs. One guy said to me "dude, you have a cheesesteak yet? --- you gotta!"</p>

<p>There were whites and blacks, and absolutely not one single other ethnicity represented.</p>

<p>Well, disappointing to say the least. I can't say that I reccomend the place.</p>

<p>On a brighter note, I auditioned at Emerson this afternoon, and the difference in friendliness, professionalism and respect is like night and day.</p>

<p>Good luck to everyone,</p>

<p>Ben</p>

2

<p>You're an arrogant, stuffy, stuck up, self important snob.</p>

<p>This friendship is OVER!</p>

<p>(half kidding)</p>

<p>but seriously..</p>

<p>Sorry I encouraged you to write on your audition experiences only to take a giant smelly turd on what you had to say. I really have no place judging you, as you at least have the balls to put yourself out there amidst tumultuous self apogamy and blisticated shlobbery, but I thought you were going to talk about your great experience today at Boston - instead you decided to huff and puff in true Ben form on all the negative experiences of your weekend and the egregious shortcomings of everyone you dealt with instead of choosing to share the good stuff which just might be what people are actually interested in hearing about. Just a thought.</p>

3

<p>Hi,
I also auditioned at UARTS and was accepted, and I have to say that I felt very welcomed and warm and accepted at the school. I felt it was a wonderful location, filled with warm and refreshing people. If anyone else has any information about the school please do tell.</p>

4

<p>What you write about the acting teacher is incredibly disrespectful! By what you wrote, I have to guess that you must have very minimal acting and auditioning training. Do you really expect him to watch you the entire time? That does not show disrespect, but merely the fact that he was interested enough to write down his thoughts about your audition! If he didn't do that, how would he remember you when it was time to make decisions! And the fact that it threw you off shows that you are not prepared for this kind of work.</p>

5

<p>I don't think that the professor's note taking says anything at all about him, the school, or the quality of your audition. Do you honestly expect him to remember every prospective student's work later? He takes notes so he can remember what he observed. </p>

<p>Also, many auditioners choose to look disinterested with the very intent of throwing the actor. Perhaps it was a sort of acting exercise? I think that it demonstrates a great lack of professionalism that you allowed your adjudicator's seeming lack of interest to detract from your performance.</p>

6

<p>Schmolze, if you want to go into this field, you can't be picky about your auditioners. First of all, I want to let you know that is lack of eye contact and mannerisms is not necessarily an indication of how he felt about your performance. But your reaction to it is something I do advise you learn to temper. My son's teacher used to yell, "If a herd of pink elephants stamped across this room while you are doing your piece, you still stay focused on it," </p>

<p>My son had a terrible auditon, or so he thought at one school. The morning group was larger than expected, took longer than it should which pushed the afternoon group back and he was one of the last auditioned. The auditioner showed no interest whatsoever, and S wondered if he was falling asleep. He did, however, continue on his auditon path, ignoring any of the auditioner's behaviour. He did complain to me about the situation and was sure he was going to be denied. Well, too weeks later he was accepted. So much for judging the audition by the behaviour of the judge. Some kids who auditioned earlier and got chances to show off extra stuff, and got positive feedback did not get in. So you can't always tell. If you want to speculate and complain later, it is one thing, but you just hurt yourself when you let the auditoner's reaction throw you.</p>

7

<p>I seem to recall audition pointers for some sites recommending that you not make eye contact with the auditioner, but rather look slightly above their eyes/head. Some actually state that the auditioner will not be reacting to the monologue and warn you to not be thrown off by that.
Just remember that different auditioners practice their art differnetly.
Good luck to you.</p>

8

<p>guys, i was simply writing my experience at this particular school, and it had much more to do with just the audition itself. with all due respect, none of you (except for singstarder) was there and thus you have no idea what happened and no right to tell me that my experience was somehow wrong or misinterpreted; it was merely the way i experienced it and i felt like sharing that.
thank you to those who replied and refrained from personally bashing me. as for the rest of you, making comments such as "you don't belong in this business" is unhelpful and unappreciated, at best.</p>

<p>incidentally, briarbrad, i spent over a year and a half in los angeles doing nothing but auditioning. and, for a city known for its disrespect, i experienced far more courtesy and professionalism there than i did at Uarts. and my comment about the professor was disrespectful? how do you figure? did i personally insult him? did i make any sort of hurtful or disrespectful comment directly to him, or even in my writing about him? is he automatically omnipotent and unquestionably respectable because he's a professor? i think it's unprofessional on the part of Uarts not to have more than one person watching an audition. the guy could be having a bad day, tired, or simply be biased against you for any reason at all. it had nothing to do with making eye contact. if he doesn't want to watch what i'm doing, i might as well send in an audio cassette.</p>

<p>anyway, disagreeing with me is fine. i understand i tend towards over-expectancy and negativity; i just resent the personal judgements. in the end of the day it wasn't the right school for me and i decided to withdraw my application to narrow the odds for the others. end of story.</p>

9

<p>Schmolze, your opinion, observations, complaints are fine. You are certainly entitled to vent and criticise and warn. I was referring to your reaction to the situation, and made my remarks because as a budding performing artist, you will be auditioning a lot, I hope, and you will run into all type of auditions. Even if you hate the audition and feel it is hopeless, it is best to stay the course and not let it distract you from your best. If that is an issue with you, and at that particular audition, it was, you need to work on this in order to be more successful and more auditions. I also wanted to point out that just because the body language and attention of the auditioner might seem unfavorable, it may have nothing to do with the outcome at all. I related my son's experience with this and others have said the same. I was not making a judgement so much as an observation that may hurt you if it remains unchecked, and you certainly are young enough to make the change. If you audition enough,you are going to run into these types and to write them off may be missing some good opportunities. I do agree with you about the auditioner's behaviour, and I was not happy with my son's feedback about his audition after we spent the time and money to go there. I think anyone auditioning should get a interested, positive auditioner. But that is not reality. To complain and share the info is one thing, to get distracted and have it affect you audition is another. Just letting you know that it does not necessarily mean a rejection if you can stick it out.</p>