BEHIND THE CURTAIN

THE SHOW THAT BROKE ME

I remember walking into the theatre for the first time.
I’d had about six months out of work before that. Long enough to start thinking it might be over. That maybe I’d had my run, and that was it.
Then the audition came.
I went in, and I got it.
Ensemble, with Beast and Gaston cover in Beauty and the Beast.
I was ecstatic.
Not just because it was a West End show, but because I’d auditioned for it when it first came to London and didn’t get it. So this felt like a second chance. I loved the piece. The story, the effects, the prosthetics — it was exactly the kind of show I wanted to be in.
Walking into that building, I knew what I’d got.
From the outside, it looked like I’d landed a great job. And that part is true. The show was phenomenal. Big, polished, respected. The kind of production people expect you to be proud of.
And I was.
But that’s only half of it.
Because at the same time, I was walking into that show in a very different place mentally.
Everything felt already in motion.Connections were there, dynamics were set, people were comfortable in it.
I was the one trying to find where I fitted.
And I wasn’t starting from a stable place. I kept thinking time would sort it out, that I’d grow into it.
That never happened.
Very quickly, I could feel how I was being read.
Grumpy.Moody.Unhappy.A loner.Not friendly.Not part of it.Not someone worth investing time in.
None of that was said directly.
But you don’t need it said.
You feel it in how people look at you, how they don’t look at you, how conversations stop before you get there, how they don’t start at all.
And the truth is, from the outside, I probably did look like that.
I wasn’t sleeping. I was exhausted all the time, running on nothing. I had palpitations. I constantly felt like I wasn’t worthy to be there.
Mentally, I was frazzled. Making myself ill. My throat, my chest — always something. I had no energy. Everything felt like effort.
Socially, there was nothing.
No invites. No “come out with us.” No sense that I was part of anything. So I stopped trying. I would leave as quickly as I could, or stay out of the way entirely. It felt easier than trying to break into something that didn’t feel open to me in the first place.
And once that starts, it feeds itself.
They had already decided who I was, and I didn’t even know who I was at that point.
At home, it wasn’t much better.
I was living with my partner in a house share. Not a great one, but we were together. He was trying to support me, telling me it would get better, trying to keep things steady.
But I was always unhappy. Emotional. Trying to explain what I was feeling inside the show, and not really being able to.
It was eating everything.
At one point, I decided I needed something completely different. He was cabin crew for BA, so I thought I’d go down that route too. Get out of the environment, see more of each other, try to rebuild something normal.
Looking back, it was just me trying to deflect away from what was actually going on.
Inside the show, there was a constant voice in my head.
“Think how many other actors would love to be here.”
Over and over again.
And it didn’t motivate me.
It made me feel worse.
Like I didn’t deserve it. Like I was failing at something I should be thriving in. I knew I was giving everything I had just to stay afloat, and still feeling like I was sinking.
I did have a close friend in the company.
And I could have told him.
But I didn’t.
Because it felt too risky.
If I opened up, what would happen? Would it stay between us? Would it get passed on? Would I suddenly become “the one who’s struggling”?
I made a decision without really saying it out loud.
Better to be seen as grumpy… than seen as unstable.
So I said nothing.
And that silence just confirmed everything people already thought.
The turning point came when I was covering Gaston.
In that production, there was an alternate Beast and Gaston, so even though I was first cover, it was less likely I’d actually go on. But the expectation was still there. The work was still there.
Gaston is very choreographed. Very precise. Disney style. You hit your marks or it doesn’t work.
There’s a section called the “Mug Dance.”
And I couldn’t get it.
Not at all.
We had understudy calls, and I just couldn’t land it. My head went. My body went. Everything shut down.
I had a panic attack.
I left. I went straight to the dance captain and said I was calling my agent. I told my agent I couldn’t do it. That I’d taken on too much.
Looking back, I cringe at how I handled it.
But at the time, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was in a bad state.
The next day, I had a meeting with the company manager and the resident director.
They asked me if I wanted to keep the understudy.
That moment was one of the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been in.
You would think, at that point, someone might have asked what was actually going on.
No one did.
They asked the question, I said I couldn’t do it, and that was that.
I felt ashamed. Embarrassed. Like I’d let the show down, let myself down. I knew people would find out. I knew there would be chatter.
To this day, I don’t think they knew what was wrong with me.
Or if they did, they didn’t act on it.
It was about protecting the show.
Not the person.
And day to day, it just kept reinforcing itself.
Walking through the building to get to my dressing room at the top, passing floor after floor — you see it all.
You try to catch someone’s eye and smile, even when it feels forced.
They don’t engage.
Or someone else arrives and you get that look — like, why are you here?
You try to stand near a dressing room door, see if you can drift into a conversation.
You’re not part of it.
If someone does speak, it feels like they’re trying to work something out about you, not connect with you.
You learn very quickly where you’re not wanted.
And eventually, that does something to you.
I am not a weak person in essence.
I tried with all my might.
It wasn’t talent that was missing.
It was understanding and support.
But at the time, it didn’t feel like that.
At the time, it felt like I was the problem.
That I didn’t belong there.
That I’d somehow got it wrong.
And when you sit in that long enough, it becomes the only version you can see.
This was the show that broke me.
The one that took my self-belief, took the fight out of me, and left me exhausted, confused, and completely alone in a room full of people.
My contract wasn’t renewed.
No one pulled me aside to ask if I was alright.
No one tried to understand what had been happening.
A decision had been made.
And by that point, it didn’t matter anyway.
I was already gone.
That was 1999.
I didn’t stop working. I went into other areas of the industry and kept building a career. I just stepped away from that level of musical theatre at that time—because I had to.
This needs talking about. Not just for me, but for younger actors going through the same thing now.
I’m in a very different place today. I understand myself, I manage my mental health properly, and I know what I need to stay well.
This wasn’t the end. It was a break. And I’m not finished with musical theatre yet.
If this spoke to you, feel free to share it and leave a thought.

TRYING TO COME BACK DIFFERENT

When I left musical theatre in 1999, I don’t think I ever truly believed I was leaving it forever.
I think I just stopped believing there was a way back.
There’s a difference.
At the time, after Beauty and the Beast, I convinced myself that I had failed inside that world somehow. Not talent-wise. Not vocally. Not professionally in terms of the work itself.
I thought I had failed at surviving inside the system around it.
The social side.The pressure.The politics.The constant feeling that people were assessing you.The feeling that if you didn’t fit in properly, the room would quietly move on without you.
At the time, I couldn’t separate my anxiety from reality properly.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me.
I just knew I felt exhausted all the time, emotionally overwhelmed, socially awkward, hyper-aware of how I was being perceived, and permanently frightened of getting things wrong.
So when I left, I retreated.
Not dramatically.
Not with some grand speech.
I just slowly drifted away from the audition room.
And once that happens, time moves quickly.
One year becomes two.
Two becomes four.
Then suddenly nearly ten years of your life have passed somewhere else entirely.
But those years weren’t wasted.
Far from it.
Going abroad probably saved me in many ways.
I needed distance from London and from the version of myself I had become there. I needed to feel useful again. I needed movement, sunlight, noise, change… something different.
And entertainment abroad gave me that.
I ended up working in Cyprus first, doing Broadway Dinner Theatre with a really talented international cast — English, Swedish, Norwegian performers. It was exciting. Different world completely.
I’d been promised that I’d move into Entertainment Management for the show, and because I carried my West End background into everything, I arrived with ideas immediately. New concepts. Improvements. Bigger vision.
But when the new season started, they brought in a Swedish director with his own show already planned and suddenly I realised my management role was mostly a title. I was still performing, still being paid more, but creatively I had very little influence.
And I remember thinking:
Why am I here?
That became a recurring question in my life for a long time.
Not because I didn’t work hard.
The opposite.
I worked too hard.
That was always my problem.
I carried West End standards, discipline and structure into lighter entertainment markets that didn’t really operate that way.
Most of the people I managed abroad were young. They wanted to entertain, yes — but they also wanted to live abroad, drink after work, enjoy themselves, fall in love, party, be carefree.
And I couldn’t understand why they didn’t take it more seriously.
I wanted everyone to be brilliant.
I wanted standards.
I wanted commitment.
I wanted people to care as much as I did.
And when they didn’t, I became frustrated.
Over time, I realised something difficult but important.
I wasn’t wrong.
But I also wasn’t right for that environment.
That’s a big distinction.
For years, I internalised everything and assumed:
the problem must be me.
But looking back now, I can see I was trying to apply one system to a completely different world.
Theatre discipline and holiday entertainment discipline are not the same thing.
In theatre, especially at a high level, structure matters. Precision matters. Reliability matters. You respect the system because if one part fails, everything suffers.
Abroad, things were looser. More relaxed. Sometimes too relaxed for me.
I became “the strict one.”
The difficult one.
The serious one.
The big bad wolf.
And nobody wants to feel like that person all the time.
Still, I don’t regret those years at all.
I learnt an enormous amount.
I worked in Cyprus, Majorca, Germany, cruise ships… all sorts of environments. I adapted constantly. Learnt quickly. Performed different material. Managed teams. Directed people. Built shows. Solved problems. Survived.
And underneath all of it, I was still performing.
That’s important.
Because I never truly left entertainment.
And I never stopped loving performance.
I just convinced myself that musical theatre no longer wanted me.
That’s the real truth.
And because I believed that, I stopped trying to go back.
Not consciously.
I just let life move.
Another contract.Another country.Another production team.Another reinvention.
I became very good at reinventing myself.
But eventually you realise something uncomfortable.
You can change jobs.
You can change countries.
You can change titles.
But you still take yourself with you.
And the thing I hadn’t understood properly was myself.
For years I believed I was suffering mainly with depression.
That’s what I called it.
That’s what doctors called it when tablets were prescribed.
But I never once properly connected myself to anxiety.
Even though, looking back, the signs were everywhere.
The overthinking.
The panic.
The catastrophising.
The physical symptoms.
The spiralling after conflict.
The fear of judgement.
The need to retreat socially when overwhelmed.
It was all there.
I just didn’t fully understand what I was looking at.
And then came 2023.
By this point, I’d already spent years caring for my best friend as her health declined. We’d been friends for over forty years. I had become a full-time live-in carer for her for about a year.
It was exhausting emotionally.
Not because we didn’t love each other — we did — but because watching somebody disappear slowly while trying to keep them alive, safe, calm and dignified changes you.
We argued.
We apologised.
We got frightened.
We got angry.
We got emotional.
Then we’d laugh five minutes later because neither of us wanted the reality we were facing.
It was incredibly intense.
At the same time, I was due to do panto again, which had become a kind of escape for me over the years. A reset. Somewhere I could still perform and feel useful.
But this time was different.
I didn’t want to leave her.
I felt guilty going away.
I tried to organise everything perfectly before I left. People calling in. Daily routines simplified. Plans in place.
But mentally, I was already overloaded.
I just didn’t admit it to myself.
Rehearsals started.
I knew something wasn’t right almost immediately.
I was struggling to come in on cues.
I suddenly felt like I didn’t know lines I absolutely knew.
Everything felt foggy and frightening.
And then during the dress rehearsal, it happened.
I broke down completely.
Out of nowhere.
Sobbing uncontrollably.
Unable to continue.
People tried to help. They suggested ways around it. Prompting. Script support. Adjustments.
But I knew.
If I couldn’t do the job properly, then I couldn’t do it at all.
So I left.
I drove home from London to Swansea that night against everybody’s advice because I just needed to get out.
And for the first time in my life, the lightbulb finally came on properly.
This wasn’t depression.
It was anxiety.
Years and years of anxiety.
Anxiety that had attached itself to work, identity, relationships, pressure, fear, performance, judgement and responsibility until eventually my system simply overloaded.
And once I understood that, something changed.
Not overnight.
Not magically.
But enough.
Enough for me to finally start understanding myself instead of just blaming myself.
That has been the biggest shift of the last few years.
Understanding.
Understanding where I struggle.
Understanding my triggers.
Understanding why certain environments affected me the way they did.
Understanding that I am actually quite quiet in real life despite having performed in major productions.
Most people who know me personally now can’t believe I was in West End musicals because I’m not naturally loud or attention-seeking at all.
And understanding something else too.
The stage was never really the problem.
In fact, the strange thing is… as soon as I’m on stage, most of it disappears.
That’s why I know I need to return.
Not because I need applause.
Not because I need validation from strangers.
But because something in me still aligns with that world in a way nothing else fully has.
And now, for the first time in decades, I actually believe returning might be possible.
Recently I auditioned professionally for musical theatre again for the first time in twenty-eight years.
Twenty-eight years.
And it went well.
Really well.
Great feedback.
I didn’t get the job because the actor stayed on longer than expected, but that almost doesn’t matter.
Because the important thing was this:
I walked back into the room.
And I was good enough to be there.
That changes everything.
Now I’m rebuilding properly.
New headshots.
Vocal training.
Focusing on my health.
Sorting my teeth.
Preparing myself seriously.
Because this is not fantasy for me.
This is real.
I know I still have work to do.
I know the industry has changed.
I know I’m not twenty-five anymore.
At fifty-seven, nobody owes me anything.
I still have to fight for my place.
I still have to earn it.
But I’m coming back differently now.
Not needing everyone to like me.
Not needing to prove my worth every second.
Not carrying confusion I didn’t understand.
Not mistaking anxiety for personal failure.
I know who I am now.
And if this works, wonderful.
If it doesn’t, I’ll survive that too.
But at least this time, whatever happens next, it will be me walking towards it clearly instead of hiding from it.
 
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THE PERSON THEY THOUGHT I WAS

The hardest part of musical theatre for me was never the stage.
It was everything around it.
For years, I genuinely believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me because I didn’t behave like most actors.
Most people who know me now can’t believe I was ever in major West End productions.
Because I’m quiet.
Not shy exactly.Not socially incapable.Just quiet.
I’m not the person organising huge nights out. I’m not naturally loud or constantly performing socially for attention. I don’t walk into a dressing room and immediately become the centre of it.
And in theatre companies, especially large long-running ones, that can become a problem very quickly.
Because theatre doesn’t just reward performers.
It often rewards personalities.
There’s an unspoken hierarchy in companies. The funny ones. The loud ones. The quick-witted ones. The naturally theatrical extroverts who can walk into a room and instantly create energy around themselves.
And then there are people like me.
People who observe first.
People who listen before they speak.
People who take time to trust.
That was me.
Whenever I joined a company, I absolutely made an effort. I would go out, mingle, try to let people get to know me.
But in bigger groups I naturally became more reserved. More observant.
And once people notice that in theatre, they start attaching meanings to it very quickly.
If you’re quiet, you’re moody.
If you don’t instantly join in, you’re unfriendly.
If you’re not socially “on” all the time, people think there must be something wrong with you.
And what nobody really talks about is how quickly theatre companies can quietly decide who you are without ever actually knowing you.
I think part of the reason I became guarded was because I learnt very early on that some people in theatre are not trying to know you when they first meet you.
They’re assessing you.
Working out where you fit.
Whether you belong in the clique.
Whether you’re socially useful to them.
And if you open up too quickly to the wrong person, suddenly deeply personal things about yourself start travelling around a company through whispers and half-jokes before you’ve even realised you trusted the wrong person.
So over time I became more careful.
More reserved.
I could be sarcastic sometimes, hopefully funny. I’ve always had a good sense of humour, but if people decide early on that you’re “not fun,” they never really give you the chance to show another side of yourself.
Eventually you just stop trying.
What I found exhausting was the fakery of some of it.
Not everyone. There were lovely people too.
But there’s a type of theatrical behaviour that always made me deeply uncomfortable.
You’d come back after a day off and someone would ask:
“How was your weekend?”
And you knew they didn’t really want the truth.
Because nobody was going to say:
“Honestly? It was awful. I barely slept, argued with my partner and spent most of Sunday convinced people at work hated me.”
You were expected to say:
“Yeah, lovely thanks.”
Then listen to twenty minutes about somebody else’s fabulous weekend while feeling completely disconnected from the room.
Or the corridor smile.
That fake theatrical smile.
“Hiya… you alright?”
Then gone.
No warmth behind it. No sincerity. Just social theatre.
And the thing is — you know when somebody genuinely likes you.
You feel it.
And you also know when they don’t.
Nobody has to openly bully you for you to feel isolated.
Sometimes the silence does all the work.
I remember walking into stage door in one particular show and instantly feeling something was off.
The stage door keeper clearly didn’t like me. I can’t explain it properly. Just the look. The coldness. Like I was an inconvenience before I’d even spoken.
What I didn’t know at the time was that the actor I was replacing had died.
Nobody told me.
Not management.Not the company.Not my agent.
Nothing.
So I walked into that theatre genuinely excited to be joining another West End production, completely unaware that emotionally I was stepping into a company that was grieving somebody they loved.
And honestly, I think I was doomed from the start there.
Not because I wasn’t capable of doing the job.
But because emotionally, nobody wanted another person standing where he had stood yet.
And instead of preparing me for that, I was just sent in blind.
So every day became psychologically exhausting.
You’d walk through the building, up winding staircases to the dressing rooms, passing people on different floors.
Some would give half a smile.
Some would say hello.
Others would look straight through you.
Nothing openly cruel was ever said.
That’s the important part.
Nothing.
But the silence was the killer.
Because thirty seconds later you’d hear those same people laughing and joking with someone else further down the staircase.
And because I didn’t understand anxiety properly back then, my brain obsessed over everything.
Every look.
Every silence.
Every tiny shift in somebody’s tone.
Every half-smile.
I was constantly analysing whether people liked me, tolerated me or wanted me gone.
The irony is that once I stepped onto the stage, most of it disappeared.
Focused.Confident.Reliable.
That’s what people find hard to understand about performers like me.
The stage was the easy part.
The dressing room was harder.
Especially because I knew I didn’t fit the expected mould.
Most companies were filled with naturally theatrical extroverts in one way or another. Some genuinely lovely. Some hilarious. Some completely real underneath all the noise.
But many had learnt how to socially perform in company life too.
I never could.
I’m very much:
take me as you find me.
I can be professional. Polite. Friendly.
But I cannot do the fake luvvy-darling act. It makes my skin crawl.
And because I didn’t perform socially in the same way, I think some people genuinely couldn’t understand how I’d ended up there at all.
“How did he get the job?”
I got the job because I was talented.
Because I could act.
Because I had a very good baritone voice.
Because when it came to the actual work, I delivered.
But offstage, I was just… normal.
Quiet.
Thoughtful.
And apparently for some people, that was disappointing.
Over time I became “the grumpy one.”
Partly because I do naturally have what people call a resting grumpy face. Heavy forehead lines, deep lines between my eyebrows… when I relax, I look serious.
I can’t help my face.
But gradually people started attaching personality traits to an expression.
Moody.
Boring.
Not fun.
Unfriendly.
And eventually those ideas solidify into a company version of you.
The person they think you are.
Not the person you actually are.
And the worst moment of all came during a Secret Santa.
One of the principals hosted it in his dressing room between shows on a two-show day. The whole cast packed in there. People on sofas, people on the floor, everyone opening presents one by one while the room watched.
Most gifts were thoughtful.
Funny in a warm way.
Then my name got called.
And I opened a cheap chrome cake slice because I played a cake slice in the show.
And a Mr Grumpy badge.
That was it.
And in that moment, I honestly felt humiliated.
Not because the gifts were cheap.
Because it confirmed every fear I already carried about how I was viewed.
It felt like the whole room had just been handed a public definition of me.
“This is who Richard is.”
And the horrible thing was I had to sit there smiling while feeling myself collapsing internally.
Because there was absolutely no way I was giving anyone the satisfaction of seeing me break in that room.
So I smiled.
Laughed weakly.
Took it on the chin.
Then went home devastated.
Crying my eyes out thinking:
“Why do they hate me so much? I’ve never done anything to them.”
And years later, I still think about that moment.
Not because of the badge.
Not because of the cake slice.
But because it represented something much bigger.
The person they thought I was never truly existed.
It was a version built from assumptions, silence, awkwardness, anxiety and shallow conclusions made by people who never genuinely tried to understand me.
And if I had understood anxiety back then the way I do now, I genuinely believe things would have been different.
Not perfect.
Not magically fixed.
But different.
I would have understood why certain social situations overwhelmed me so deeply.
Why silence affected me the way it did.
Why I withdrew when I felt emotionally unsafe.
Why my brain spiralled after tiny moments most people would probably forget within minutes.
And I probably would have communicated better too.
Because I accept something now that I couldn’t see at the time:
People could sense something wasn’t right with me.
They just completely misunderstood what it was.
And because I didn’t understand it either, I wasn’t able to help them understand me.
That doesn’t excuse the cruelty.
It doesn’t excuse people quietly ostracising someone they barely knew.
But it does explain why I spent so many years trapped inside a version of myself that was never really me at all.
 
If this spoke to you, feel free to share it and leave a thought.

THE 7 MINUTE JUDGEMENT

THE 7-MINUTE JUDGEMENT
Episode One – The Audition Files
I woke at 3am to get ready for my 4.30am drive to London.
There was no real sleep. Just that light, surface drifting where your brain keeps rehearsing songs and worst-case scenarios.
This wasn’t just another audition.
It was my first serious step back into musical theatre since 1999.
A reputable agency had taken a punt on me. I was older. I’d been away for decades. I wasn’t current. I wasn’t visible. Psychologically, this was enormous.
Vocally, enormous.
Physically, enormous.
Everything had been planned meticulously — as I always do. Parking booked. Tube route mapped. Backup songs. Backup thinking. Nothing left to chance.
Except the car.
Approaching central London, it started playing up.
Then in Holborn, in rush hour traffic, it stalled.
The car park I’d booked was about thirty feet away.
I restarted it. It caught. I crawled it forward and somehow made it inside.
No time to assess anything. I was already late.
Grabbed my bag. Suit bag over my shoulder. Ran.
Tube delays.
Wrong turning off Bond Street.
Call to my agent while moving: “I’m on my way.”
I arrived about thirty minutes late.
They were doing movement.
My agent had said not to worry. “They know you’re not a dancer. It’s just to see if you’ve got rhythm.”
This was not rhythm.
This was a full routine. Proper choreography. Young bodies picking it up cleanly.
I tried.
Within seconds I knew.
This wasn’t something I could bluff through.
While the choreographer was working with someone else, I quietly walked to the front and spoke to a runner for the show.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’m not a dancer. This is beyond me. I think I should pull out.”
She was kind. She said it didn’t matter — I was up for a principal role that wasn’t a dancer. Movement was just to assess basic ability. I should come back at 3pm to sing.
I hadn’t expected that.
So I regrouped.
Lunch. Water. A phone call.
A close friend of mine was very ill. I’d been caring for her 24/7 and had arranged for someone to cover for the day so I could come to London. I’ve always called her after every audition I’ve done. It’s a tradition.
I rang her and told her about the morning.
At 3pm, I sang.
It sounded good.
They asked for it again with a small adjustment.
I adjusted.
Seven minutes.
All that preparation.The 3am wake-up.The drive.The breakdown.The movement room.
Seven minutes.
I left knowing.
Sometimes you don’t need the email.
You feel it.
I got back to the car. It started.
I drove home wondering the entire way if I was going to break down again.
Next time, I’ll tell you what the first thing I did the following morning was.
 
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THE WAITING ROOM

THE WAITING ROOM
Last time, I told you I’d explain what I did the morning after my disastrous audition in London.
Well.
The very next day, I bought breakdown cover.
Lesson learned.
Now…
The waiting room.
It varies.
Sometimes you’re auditioning months before a show even starts rehearsal.Sometimes it’s urgent.Sometimes recalls are the same day.Sometimes you wait weeks.Sometimes you know within forty-eight hours.
But one thing never changes.
The hallway.
You arrive.You scan.
Different age brackets. Different “types.” Different energies.They might be seeing multiple roles. So you don’t even know who your competition is. You’re trying to decode it from shoes, posture, headshots, snippets of conversation.
You clock people immediately.
If someone looks like they might be in your bracket, you drift closer. Not obviously. Casually. You listen. You join in if it suits you. You extract information.
It sounds calculated. It is.
This isn’t a coffee morning.It could be a life-changing job.
If they go in before you, you listen through the wall. Human nature.
If they sound mediocre, you relax.If they sound brilliant, your stomach tightens.
Then the mind games begin.
“They sound good… but maybe they’re not right physically.”“Great voice… but are they too young?”“Strong belt… but is that what they want?”
You take whatever helps you and discard the rest.
Some disappear to toilets to warm up loudly.You hear scales echoing down corridors.
I’ve already warmed up. Quietly. Alone.
I don’t need someone returning with,“Oh wow, you sounded great earlier…”Planting seeds.
Because that’s what it is.
Seeds.
Everyone is polite.Everyone is pleasant.Everyone is slightly terrified.
You can smell fear.
Sometimes it’s fear of the panel.Sometimes it’s fear of each other.Sometimes it’s fear of themselves.
You put your confident face on.Even if you’re wavering inside.
Younger actors now are fearless — or at least they present that way. Drama school fresh. Shoulders back. Energy high. They could be average, but confidence sells it.
Confidence is currency in that corridor.
If someone’s probing too much, raising my anxiety, I might casually drop:
“Oh, I’ve worked with the director before.”
It levels the field.
It’s theatre before the theatre.
Then you go in.
You sing.You act.You do what you prepared.
You walk out.
And almost without fail someone says:
“Wow, you smashed that.”“You’ve got such a lovely voice.”
You smile.You say thank you.You take it with a pinch of salt.
It’s theatrical politeness.
Some avoid eye contact.Some stay in their bubble.Some don’t want to lie.Some genuinely mean it.
You hold eye contact with the ones who look open.You stay composed.
Because until you leave the building…
You’re still auditioning.
Next time — the pianist who didn’t play what was on the page.
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THE AUDITION NOTICE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

The Audition Notice That Changed Everything
Back in 1991, open auditions still felt like a big event.
Now they happen constantly. Every other week there’s an open call for something somewhere. But back then, certainly outside London, it felt rare. Exciting. Dangerous almost.
And this was Les Miserables.
At that point, if you were young and interested in musical theatre, Les Mis was everywhere. Even people who’d never seen the show knew the score inside out. I certainly did. I hadn’t seen the production itself yet, but I knew the music. Everybody did.
I was twenty-one and finishing my BTEC Performing Arts course in Swansea.
I wasn’t sitting there thinking:“I’m about to get cast professionally.”
Not remotely.
I just wanted to work in musical theatre one day. Somewhere down the line. Hopefully.
And this wasn’t even the West End company.
This was the first ever national tour of Les Miserables.
Up until then, Les Mis belonged to London.
This was the first time they were taking the show out around the country properly, which meant the casting had to be right.
It wasn’t some small regional production.
This was a huge gamble for them.
Which made the scale of the auditions even more intimidating.
Then this newspaper article appeared announcing open auditions around the country. London had already happened. Manchester had happened. Other cities had happened.
Glasgow was the final stop.
I didn’t even know about it initially.
A friend of mine did.
She wanted to go and somehow convinced me to come with her.
It all became very rushed very quickly.
Could we afford it?Where were we staying?What was I singing?Did I even have proper sheet music?What actually happened at a professional audition?Would there be dancing?Acting?Cuts?Rounds?
I had absolutely no idea.
I’d spent around seven years doing amateur musical theatre by then, and I was doing college productions constantly, so I wasn’t inexperienced onstage. I knew how to perform. I knew how to sing in front of people.
But this felt different.
This felt like the real world.
Not college.Not amateur dramatics.Not “well done, darling.”
Professional theatre.
We travelled up the night before and got there ridiculously early the following morning because we thought we might end up near the front of the queue.
We were probably around a hundred people back.
Which felt brilliant… until we turned around.
The queue went down the street and around the building.
Thousands.
Absolutely thousands.
And what I remember most was the atmosphere.
Hope.
That’s genuinely the word.
Just thousands of people standing there hoping this might be the thing that changes their life.
Because open auditions mattered back then.
A lot of people didn’t have agents.A lot of people didn’t have Equity cards.A lot of people had no access to the industry at all.
This was the doorway.
I remember looking around thinking:every single person here believes something might happen today.
That’s quite powerful when you’re young.
My friend and I stayed together for most of the wait. She was — and still is — a brilliant performer. She’s had a very successful career. But this wasn’t her moment.
And that’s another thing auditions teach you very quickly.
Timing matters.
You can be talented and still not get through.
Eventually I got called in.
No massive preparation strategy.No carefully crafted repertoire book.
I sang “Where I Want To Be” from Chess because I knew it well and knew I wouldn’t forget the lyrics under pressure.
That was the extent of the thinking.
I sang the full song.
Then a short conversation.
And then:“We’d like to recall you.”
Honestly… mind blown.
That was more than enough for me.
That alone felt unbelievable.
Because suddenly this thing I’d treated almost like an experience…an adventure…a learning opportunity…
had become real.
Not:“You’ve got the job.”
Just:“Come back.”
But when you’re twenty-one, that’s enough to send your imagination into orbit.
The next recall was at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London.
Even writing that now sounds surreal to me.
I remember sitting in one of the bar areas waiting to sing for the associate director thinking:“How on earth has this happened?”
This time I sang “Anthem” from Chess.
A huge song.Big notes.Big emotion.
Again, not strategic.I just loved Chess.
I sang it once.
Then they worked it with me.
Different intention.Different emotional approach.Again.
Which I later realised was them checking whether I could take direction properly and adjust quickly.
At the time I just thought:“Right… don’t mess this up.”
Then:“Thank you for coming.”
And home again.
That became the pattern for months.
Five recalls altogether.
Different theatres across London.
The Cambridge Theatre.Another on the actual set of Cats, which completely blew my mind.And others I genuinely can’t remember now because it was 1991 and everything was happening so fast.
And with each recall things became more specific.
Material from the show.Specific sections.Specific characters.Smaller groups.
You could feel the process narrowing.
I knew I must be doing well.
I wasn’t arrogant enough to think:“I’m definitely getting this.”
But hope…
Hope was becoming enormous by that point.
I used to lie in bed at night genuinely saying:“Star light, star bright, make my wish come true tonight.”
Sounds ridiculous now.
But I meant it.
Completely.
Hope was running through my body at a hundred miles an hour.
I think that’s the thing people forget when they talk about young performers.
Before cynicism arrives…before bills…before rejection becomes normal…before the industry hardens you a bit…
there’s just belief.
Pure belief.
Then weeks passed.
And in 1991 there were no mobile phones for me.
I’d left my friend’s number as the contact number.
One day she came flying up to my flat banging on the door.
“You’ve got it!”
I genuinely think I stared at her for several seconds before it fully landed.
Around five thousand people had auditioned in Glasgow.
And somehow…
I was in the cast of the very first national tour of Les Miserables.
My first professional job.
Not summer season.Not a small regional production.
Les Miserables.
One newspaper article.One rushed decision.One journey I nearly never made.
And my entire life changed because of it.
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KNOWING WHEN A ROLE ISN'T YOU

Knowing When a Role Isn’t You
One of the strangest periods in this industry is the bit after your first major jobs.
People outside theatre think once you’ve done something like Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera, you’ve somehow arrived.
You haven’t.
You’ve just entered the next phase of uncertainty.
Because suddenly the question becomes:“What exactly are you?”
Leading man?Character actor?Singer who moves well?Proper dancer?Ensemble?Cover material?
The industry likes categories.
And in your late twenties, things can become awkward because your casting starts shifting whether you realise it or not.
I’d had several agents by this point.
Some very good.Some less so.
And eventually I reached a stage where I stopped using agents altogether and represented myself because I realised something important:
Nobody understands your instrument, your limitations, or your casting better than you do.
I remember getting a call telling me Grease wanted to see me.
Grease.
Honestly, I thought:“Come again?”
Now vocally, technically, yes — I could have gone in and sung something.
That wasn’t the issue.
The issue was everything surrounding it.
The physicality.The movement.The energy of the show.The style.
I just knew instantly:this is not me.
Not “slightly outside my comfort zone.”
Not “a challenge.”
Wrong.
Completely wrong.
And by this point, I wasn’t some nervous college student grateful for any audition room.
I’d already done Les Miserables.I’d already done Phantom.I understood how auditions worked by then.
Which is exactly why I refused to go.
I remember saying:“I’m not going to that audition.”
And I genuinely questioned why they’d even submitted me for it in the first place.
I never really got a solid answer.
That told me quite a lot.
I don’t think they passionately believed I was perfect for Grease.
I think I simply wasn’t working at the time.
And sometimes when actors aren’t working, representation can become reactive instead of thoughtful.
Instead of:“Where should this person actually be heading next?”
it quietly turns into:“Let’s just get them seen for things.”
That’s where I strongly disagree with parts of the industry.
Because actors are constantly told:“Just go.”“It’s good practice.”“At least you’re in the room.”“You never know.”
I don’t buy that at all.
If I truly wanted a job and genuinely believed it suited me, I would always find a way to get there.
Actors do that all the time.
Train fares.Petrol.Cheap hotels.Borrowed money.Credit cards.
You make it happen.
But that’s completely different from knowingly walking into a room where you fundamentally do not belong.
That doesn’t build confidence.
It damages it.
Because deep down, before you’ve even left the house, you already know.
You know if the material sits wrong.You know if the physical world of the show is wrong.You know if people are trying to force you into something you’re not.
And one of the biggest lessons I learned in this business was understanding the difference between:being challenged…
and being miscast.
Those are not the same thing.
A challenging role still feels connected to you somehow.There’s fear involved, but there’s also recognition.
You can see the path.
A completely wrong role feels cold immediately.
You feel it in your stomach.
You start mentally apologising for yourself before you’ve even entered the building.
That’s not growth.That’s self-destruction disguised as professionalism.
So I didn’t go.
Flat out refused.
And honestly, I think that decision probably marked the beginning of the end of that relationship with that particular agent.
But I don’t regret it.
Not for one second.
Because somewhere along the line, every actor has to stop blindly handing over responsibility for their identity.
An agent can open doors.They can get you appointments.They can negotiate contracts.
But they cannot tell you who you are.
Only you know that.
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THE AUDITION I COULDN'T AFFORD

The Audition I Couldn’t Afford
One thing drama schools don’t really prepare you for is the cost of opportunity.
Not training.Not rent.Not dance shoes.
Just…getting in the room.
Because if you don’t live in London, an audition can become a military operation very quickly.
Especially in the 90s.
People already based in London could jump on the tube, grab a coffee and be at an audition in forty minutes.
For me, living in Swansea, it was never that simple.
It was planning.
Train times.Tube routes.Advance tickets.Backup plans.Where to stay.What happens if the train is delayed?What happens if I miss the connection?What happens if I don’t have enough money left for food?
And most of the time, I probably didn’t really have the money to go in the first place.
But actors become very good at making things work.
Especially if it’s an audition you truly want.
You borrow.You juggle money around.You put things on hold.You stay with friends.You survive on almost nothing for twenty-four hours.
Because if a major show asks to see you, you go.
Simple as that.
I had one friend in particular who helped me endlessly over the years.
Sometimes financially.Sometimes driving me to auditions.Sometimes helping me work out how to physically make the journey happen.
Without that support, I genuinely couldn’t have attended half the auditions I did.
Occasionally there’d be the suggestion of getting the coach instead.
Cheap.Technically practical.
But absolutely brutal.
Stopping constantly.Hours longer.No space.No real comfort.No proper food unless you brought it yourself.
And most importantly for a singer:no ability to warm up properly or keep your energy where you needed it.
You’d arrive already drained.
Then somehow still be expected to walk into a room looking fresh, confident and employable.
And that’s the bit people outside the industry don’t always understand.
The audition itself might only last five minutes.
But for some actors, getting there is the real challenge.
Especially regionally based actors.
There’s a massive difference between:“Tube to Soho in twenty minutes”and“Entire day organised around one chance.”
Back then, if you got told late about an important audition, the train prices jumped immediately.
You could sometimes get decent advance tickets if you had notice.
But if the audition was tomorrow morning at 10am in London?
That’s a very different financial conversation.
By the time you added travel, tubes, food and contingencies together, you could easily be looking at eighty or ninety pounds in the 90s.
In today’s money, that’s roughly the equivalent of spending around two hundred pounds just to attend an audition.
Which is enormous when there’s no guarantee of work at the end of it.
Of course, you could plan a much cheaper trip.
But that almost certainly meant a far longer journey, getting up at the crack of dawn for a five-hour coach ride, people sleeping on your shoulder, someone eating something foul-smelling three seats behind you, somebody inevitably blocking the toilet for half an hour — yes, that genuinely happened — and generally arriving in London already life-drained before the audition had even started.
And remember:you’re spending all that money with absolutely no guarantee of anything.
No payment.No expenses.No certainty.No callback promised.Nothing.
Just:“Please attend.”
I remember once having to fight with the Jobcentre because they helped people travel to job interviews, but initially didn’t want to recognise a professional audition as the same thing.
I had to produce letters proving it was legitimate employment opportunity.
Eventually they paid for the ticket.
But I remember thinking:why is this considered less real than any other profession?
I’m still trying to get work.
I still deserve the chance to attend.
That stayed with me.
And over time you learn something else as well.
Not every audition is financially sensible.
That’s the painful truth nobody really talks about.
Sometimes there are productions you would genuinely love to do…
but the maths simply doesn’t work.
Especially if the contract is short.Or the wages are low.Or it’s expenses only.Or the rehearsal period requires you to somehow live in London with no real support.
You sit there with the script thinking:“I would love this…”
while another part of your brain quietly says:“This could financially damage you.”
That’s an awful feeling.
And actors constantly have to make those decisions privately.
Even years later it still existed.
In 2023, a newer agent contacted me about a workshop opportunity connected to David Grindrod Casting.
A week in London.Fee: £250.
Now for all I know, that workshop could have led to something enormous.
But once you actually calculated:travel,accommodation for a week,food,daily tubes…
the fee disappeared instantly.
Financially it made no sense whatsoever.
And those are the moments actors rarely talk about publicly because turning something down feels dangerous.
You start thinking:“What if this was the opportunity?”
But eventually you learn that not every door can be walked through.
And if you miss one, you have to let it go.
Completely.
Otherwise you’ll drive yourself mad grieving possibilities that never actually existed.
I never felt guilty turning auditions down.
Disappointed sometimes.Frustrated occasionally.
But not guilty.
Because at some point you have to stop pretending unlimited access exists for everybody equally.
It doesn’t.
Some actors have family money.Some live in London already.Some have support systems.Some don’t.
And there’s a huge section of performers who are quietly scraping together enough money just to stand in the same corridor as everybody else.
Nothing glamorous.
Enough for a train.A tube.Something cheap to eat.A bottle of water.And hopefully enough left over in case something goes wrong.
Because something usually did.
A delayed train.Missed connection.Signal failure.Tube closure.Wrong platform.
Every audition carried risk before you’d even sung a note.
And you still went.
Because if you truly want this industry…you accept very quickly that opportunity rarely arrives conveniently.
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MY SAFE SONG

My Safe Song
Every actor has one.
Or at least they eventually find one.
The song they trust.
Not necessarily the flashiest song.Not the cleverest choice.Not even the most suitable choice for every show.
But the song that somehow removes fear.
Mine was “What Would I Do?” from Falsettos.
A beautiful, emotional piece about two men reflecting on love, anger, life and loss as one of them is dying from AIDS.
It absolutely broke my heart the first time I heard it.
And because I’m gay myself, the song connected with me instantly on a very personal level.
Not specifically through the illness side of the story, but through relationships.Loss.Love ending.The fear of losing somebody emotionally even while they’re still standing in front of you.
It felt truthful to me.
And that matters in auditions.
Because audition rooms are frightening places.
People talk very casually about auditions afterwards:“Oh I just went in and sang…”
No.
Some people are terrified.
I certainly was.
I got better at hiding it over the years, but inside?Massive nerves.
Your mouth dries.Your breathing changes.Your focus narrows.You suddenly become aware of every sound your body is making.
So when I found this song, it became safety.
Not safety as in:“I can’t fail.”
Safety as in:“I know who I am inside this material.”
That’s a huge difference.
Vocally, it sat well for me.Emotionally, it sat even better.
And most importantly, it allowed me to stop thinking about singing.
The second I emotionally connected to the story, the audition room disappeared slightly.
I stopped “performing a song” and started communicating something.
That’s when rooms listen.
You can actually feel it happen sometimes.
Panels looking down at paperwork suddenly lift their heads.Someone stops writing.The room changes temperature slightly.
Not because you’ve hit some gigantic note.
Because they’re listening.
That’s the difference.
A lot of actors chase difficult material because they think auditions are about vocal fireworks.
Sometimes they are.
But storytelling is what makes people lean forward.
I wasn’t trying to sing the newest material either.
I honestly didn’t care.
Some people constantly chased whatever the latest big audition song was at the time.
Then suddenly you’d hear the same song six times outside the audition room before you even went in.
And accompanists must have wanted to launch themselves through the piano by the end of the day.
Especially with songs like Stars or Empty Chairs from Les Mis getting absolutely hammered into the ground.
I had those songs in my folder too, of course.
Everyone did.
But my thinking was always:“Yes… but I sing this better.”
You have to believe in yourself slightly.
Otherwise there’s no point walking into the room at all.
And I depended on my safe song heavily.
Probably too heavily at times.
Because once something works for you psychologically, you cling to it.
Agents would sometimes ask:“What are you thinking of singing?”
And I’d casually say:“Oh, I’m not sure yet… going to look through some stuff tonight.”
Meanwhile I already knew perfectly well what I was probably going to sing.
My safe song.
Then came the terrifying moment every actor knows.
“What else have you got?”
Inside, complete panic.
Outside, trying to look calm and professional while mentally scrambling through your folder thinking:“Oh God…”
Because the truth was, although I had other songs, this was the one I truly trusted.
This wasn’t laziness exactly.
Looking back now, I think some of it was anxiety that I simply didn’t understand at the time.
I genuinely believed:“If I can just get into this song properly, they’ll understand me.”
And often they did.
Not always because it perfectly suited the production.
Sometimes it definitely didn’t.
But it suited me.
That was the difference.
I also learned very quickly that overconfidence could destroy people in auditions.
You’d hear performers outside absolutely convinced they were about to blow the roof off the room.
Then five seconds into the top register…strain.Push.Panic.
And you’d think:“Why would you risk that?”
Ego.
Sometimes actors choose songs to impress instead of songs they can actually live inside comfortably.
That rarely ends well.
And accompanists notice everything as well.
They can tell immediately when someone truly owns material versus when they’re trying to manufacture a moment.
Especially when actors start giving long-winded musical instructions before they’ve even sung a note.
“This is the tempo I want…”“I’m going to pause here…”“I need this to build…”
You could almost see some pianists thinking:“Please just sing the song.”
I never wanted to be that person.
I just wanted to tell the story honestly and sing it well.
That was enough for me.
Eventually, though, even safe songs stop being safe.
Voices change.You age.Material shifts.And after singing something enough times, even you get bored of hearing yourself do it.
So over time I developed several “safe songs” instead.
Different songs for different rooms.Different casting.Different periods of my life.
But Falsettos was the first one that genuinely made me feel:“I can survive this audition.”
And sometimes survival is more important than brilliance.
If this spoke to you, feel free to share it and leave a thought.

WHY THE PANEL LOOKS LIKE THEY'RE IGNORING YOU

Why the Panel Looks Like They’re Ignoring You
This isn’t guesswork about audition rooms. This is exactly how West End auditions actually work.
One of the biggest misconceptions about auditions is that the panel is sitting there purely to watch you perform.
They’re not.
By the time you walk into that room, every single person sitting behind the table already has their own mental checklist running.
And there can be a lot of people there.
Director.Producer.Musical Director.Choreographer.Writer.Casting team.Sometimes assistants.Sometimes runners organising the entire day.
All with completely different priorities.
The Musical Director might have a show to conduct that night.
The pianist could already be mentally preparing for their evening performance somewhere else.
The choreographer might have rehearsals after this.
The director may already be behind schedule and trying to get through another sixty people before six o’clock.
Meanwhile, you’ve built your entire day around five minutes.
That imbalance is important to understand.
Because younger actors often walk into auditions believing:“They’re all staring at me judging every second.”
Honestly?Half the time they’re exhausted.
You normally get greeted by whoever is leading the room that day.
Usually the director or Musical Director.
Some panels are warm immediately.Some are chatty.Some try to calm you down.Others barely acknowledge you at all.
And if you’re inexperienced, you immediately start analysing it.
“They hate me.”“They’re bored.”“I’ve already failed.”
But what’s actually happening most of the time is instant assessment.
Before you’ve even sung a note they’re already subconsciously thinking:Too tall?Too short?Right energy?Wrong energy?Too old?Too young?Confident?Nervous?Friendly?Cold?Can I imagine this person inside the company?
That’s the brutal reality of casting.
Sometimes you walk in and you are already broadly wrong for what they want.
And if that’s the case, they’re probably not going to behave like they’ve just discovered the second coming of musical theatre.
But that doesn’t mean they hate you.
It means they’re filtering.
That’s what auditions are.
A filtering system.
Not emotional support sessions.
I learned eventually that you cannot spend your energy trying to decode every face sitting behind the table.
You’ll destroy yourself psychologically doing that.
You have to satisfy yourself first.
That became my rule.
If I walked out thinking:“That was the best I could do today…”
then fine.
The rest was out of my hands.
Now occasionally, rooms do suddenly lock onto you.
You can feel it.
My Phantom audition a few years ago was a perfect example.
It was my return to a serious West End casting room after twenty-eight years away.
To say I was nervous would be an understatement.
But the room was lovely.
The pianist gave me exactly what I needed.The panel were warm.Chatty.Relaxed.
And one young guy at the end of the table smiled at me almost the entire way through my song.
Now the song itself wasn’t cheerful at all.
But I knew exactly what he was doing.
He was trying to settle me.
Trying to make the room feel safe.
And it worked.
Then right at the end I mentioned quietly that this was my first major audition back after all those years away.
Not for sympathy.Not for praise.
I just wanted them to understand that whatever they had just seen was me giving absolutely everything I had.
Then one of the panel members suddenly realised who I was.
He’d crossed over with me during Les Miserables years earlier as I was leaving and he was joining.
Twenty-eight years later…he remembered me.
And when he told me I still had a beautiful tone in my voice, honestly, that made my day.
Now compare that to another audition years earlier for The Sound of Music.
Completely different atmosphere.
This was for a cover Captain Von Trapp role on an overseas tour and I genuinely thought:“This is right in my wheelhouse.”
I sang.The panel gave notes.They wanted a completely different feel.
So I adjusted.
Still wrong.
More notes.
And this is where auditions can become psychologically horrible because sometimes you genuinely do not understand what they want from you.
You can feel the room thinking:“Why isn’t he getting this?”
But inside your own head you’re screaming:“I honestly don’t know what you mean.”
That’s the panic nobody sees.
Especially when you normally take direction very well.
My instinct as a singer is naturally quite powerful emotionally and vocally.
This director wanted something far more restrained and internal.
I softened it.Adjusted it.Tried again.
Still not right.
And because he never fully clarified what he actually wanted emotionally, I was completely lost.
That happens sometimes.
People think auditions are:sing song,get job.
They’re not.
You’re constantly trying to interpret incomplete information under pressure while being observed by five silent people.
That’s the actual job.
One of the strangest auditions I ever did was for Notre Dame de Paris.
Huge theatre stage.Stand microphone.Lighting.French composers sitting out front.
And the Musical Director already knew me and liked my voice.
I could feel that.
So when the composers gave adjustments, I’d sing again and quietly watch the MD from the corner of my eye.
If I was moving closer toward what they wanted, I’d get slightly raised eyebrows.
If I drifted away from it…he’d look down.
No direct help.Just tiny signals.
And in auditions you become hyper-aware of those microscopic reactions.
That’s why younger actors can completely unravel trying to read a panel.
Because every movement suddenly feels loaded with meaning.
A scribble on paper.A whisper.A glance.Someone stopping you halfway through.
And yes — being stopped mid-song is terrifying.
If they say:“Nothing wrong with it, but can we try…”
Fine.That’s workable.
But:“Thank you, that’s all we need.”
That usually isn’t good.
You learn the difference very quickly.
And eventually you stop needing the room to emotionally carry you through it.
Because the panel is not there to cheerlead you.
Their job is to build the strongest cast possible.
That’s it.
And once you truly understand that, auditions become far less personal.
Still nerve-racking.
Still brutal sometimes.
But less personal.
Because most of the time, the panel isn’t ignoring you at all.
They’re simply trying to decide whether you fit into a puzzle they already see clearly in their heads.
If this spoke to you, feel free to share it and leave a thought.