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Audition Day

The Auditions flyer was circulated to over 200 people as well as promoted in the local press and radio and of course word of mouth to everybody we know!

Finally 6th Dec arrives and we are waiting at the Normanton Park Community Centre on a fine but cold Sunday afternoon.

Waiting tentatively for the first arrival - Mobile phone rings: Where exactly are you? I can see the park but I am on the opposite side of the road? Can you tell me where to park?

People had come for auditions not only from Derby but from the East Midlands. As the teas, coffees and cold drinks were being served the room began to buzz with new folk making their introductions and friends from the distance past reconnecting again.

8 people had now arrived and also two young children who were very keen and came with their dad.

1 woman 7 men attended. She could certainly hold her own though. She had had experience of holding 7 pots on her head and performing at the Royal Centre in Nottingham.

They all must have had one thing in common and that is nerves but they were such good actors that they didn’t let it show.

No wasting time on our part as we were waiting for all the actors to arrive we asked each participant to fill in the Bowel Cancer Awareness Measure. This will help us to have a baseline measure of the knowledge that people had about bowel cancer.

So what happened for the next three hours?

We started off with an ice breaker -getting to know you- the idea was to throw the ball to each other by saying out our name and an adjective to describe ourselves using the first initial of your name

You know how these things work you remember the adjective but not the name!!!

So who did we have: we had P for positive, N for naughty, J for justice, H for humanistic, S for spiritual, D for doer, A for action and so on.

A background to the projects was given and the process of using a community development approach was discussed.

The actors were then asked to pair up and carry out an exercise in making the other person feel really big in what they might have achieved in their life or something they were very proud of. This was then followed by portraying a visual image of that experience.

The next stage of the auditions process was to develop a monologue from the point of view of a patient/friend or one of the medical team eg nurse /GP. The monologue was from the point of view of denial, acceptance, and early diagnoses or during the course of treatment. A choice was given as to the age group being played as well as a choice of looking at bowel cancer or heart disease.

The session ended with each participant singing in tune or out of tune!!

Throughout the improvisations the actors were being assessed for their acting ability, language skills, voice projection, singing skills as well as confidence in team working, commitment and understanding of the issues and a whole load more.

Individual photos taken by our in house photographer

I know you want to be a fly on the wall of the decision making process. Well as we are transparent as a company so we will let you in.

Our discussion goes as follows…

What fantastic talent

We want them all

How can we involve them all in some shape or form?

What a great team they make

There real commitment to health issues shines through

Can’t we devise a script to have them all involved as actors?

We have seen so much potential in all who came and we really want to nurture and respect that.

Finally we had to make a decision. Really wasn’t easy. We don’t want to lose touch with any one of them as they have so much talent and passion to make a difference to the health of the South Asian communities.

Watch this space for the final selection of cast members