More pg rambling:Nicola wrote:IF they DON'T redirect, how do they distinguish between "highly polished" and "actually, just very good"?! I'm just thinking about the amount of effort that people must put into this application process that, bloomin' heck, if they're not highly polished by the time they turn up, doesn't that say more about how committed they are to the process? It really sounds like if you've rehearsed and rehearsed until you're "polished", it will actually count against you, and they'll just assume that there must be a higher power at work!!
I have no direct experience, so don't worry - this isn't a rhetorical question, but how DO they distinguish between someone who has practised every hour they have to get it just so, and someone who has put less effort in and is therefore overall "less polished"? And how do they know that the person less polished hasn't actually practised like billy-o to get to the level they're at, but just can't get any better?!
It certainly sounds a tough balance to achieve?! Good.....but not TOO good that it appears you couldn't have done it alone?!

I don't think the auditionee should worry about this to be honest. The auditionee should just do the very best they can, with or without help, depending on what they find most useful, making sure that they have at least a couple of goes in front of others...probably. It wouldn't be at all sensible to go to a drama school audition intentionally under-rehearsed. It will be up to those auditioning to decide which talent they wish to accept. It won't, unfortunately, necessarily be those who have worked the hardest to prepare.
I think that we as parents are often used to watching our own offspring perform but don't always get the chance to watch other young people. If you watched a lot of people auditioning, I think you would be likely to have quite strong views about which you considered "good" or "interesting". You couldn't then go home to your offspring and say "if you do it like this, you will be good and interesting" because that's not how it works. Every actor has his/her own way of being good or interesting and some are better at it than others. I still think a good teacher can help someone to work on their own "good and interesting" abilities and cut back on bad habits (otherwise there would be no point in any kind of training). Not everyone on a panel will necessarily agree, and not everyone will get it right (I'm sure panels sometimes make decisions they regret or don't turn out well). Even for something like NYT, where I do think they try to give everyone a fair shot, there will be unfairness. That's hard to accept, but an unfortunate fact about performance.