Congratulations to Lower Sixth student Alexander Molony who has secured membership to the prestigious National Youth Theatre (NYT), after successfully auditioning for and completing a course over the summer.
The NYT is a world-leading youth arts charity and the world’s first-ever youth theatre. Being a member means Alex will have access to casting auditions, backstage roles, a creative leadership programme, workshops and events. He’ll be in good company too, with alumni including Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Zawe Ashton, Rosamund Pike, and Daniel Craig. Here Alex explains what was involved in the process:
“I first auditioned for the National Youth Theatre in February 2023. I had planned on using the experience to practice performing my new monologue at the time; a section of a monologue from Disney+’s ‘The Bear’, which was a relatively new show at the time.
“I auditioned in person as I wanted to be able to get live feedback and reaction to my performance, which I understood would be just with the director running the session. It was only once I arrived, that I discovered I was in a group of mainly young adults in their twenties, some of whom had flown in for the opportunity, so it was a bit daunting, especially when they announced that we would be performing to the whole group!
“We spent a few hours doing techniques such as envisioning our characters as animals, and embodying them like that, improvisation and finally, performing our pieces. I was pleased with my performance, and the jury seemed to enjoy it too. The whole audition process made me go from just wanting to try out my monologue to desperately wanting to get a place on the course. However, I knew that thousands apply for the coveted places, so I prepared myself to not get in. I was therefore so excited when I received my email in May, telling me that I had a place on the Summer Intake Course.
“The course itself lasted two weeks in August. Pretty much everyone was the same on the first day: timid and eager to make a good impression. I really envied those who could completely relax and make friends immediately. The first two days were spent getting to know each other, settling nerves and working on improvisation. The first Wednesday was easily the most intense day. We started off looking at various techniques such as mirroring, and Meisner (repetition), and then devised our own characters. We ‘hot-seated’ and made sure we had every little detail of our characters known.
“Then for a full hour-and-a-half, we did ‘The Grid’. It sounds intimidating, and it was! It was effectively a massive area of space lined with chairs. Everyone entered in-character and stayed in-character for the whole time responding to various random events that the director introduced into the space. It was intense, but so much fun! On the first Friday, we did a monologue workshop and prepared a monologue to perform to the group on Monday. I did ‘The Bear’ again, and everyone enjoyed it! In the second week, we started our devising. Our stimulus was ‘radical joy’, and our director helped us create a piece exploring someone who gives joy to others through little acts of kindness but gets nothing back herself.
“I loved every moment of the course. I learnt so much in the form of acting techniques and script preparation, but also in the form of friends. I created so many good friends, who I will stay in touch with for a very long time! It is also such an honour to be a member of the National Youth Theatre now.”
Alexander has been working professionally for many years, and recently starred as Peter in Disney’s remake of Peter Pan & Wendy, alongside Jude Law.
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