We caught up with former Swish student and ex-ogre(!), Lewis Edgar as he nears the end of his first term at Urdang Academy where he is studying for his 3 year degree course in Musical Theatre.
How have you found the first term?
My first term has been amazing, the hardest thing for me has been pacing myself and not trying to do it all straight away. Normally I’m in between 8:30am-7pm give or take, usually staring will ballet and generally moving on to jazz etc. Most days we cover an array of styles. We also cover singing, acting and voice but that varies from day to day.
Did you feel prepared for what to expect?
I feel as though I felt pretty prepared for full time drama school in the way that I kinda knew what to expect but at the same time I also had plenty of nice surprises. I wish that I had done more homework on the vast array of musicals and who wrote them as it would have made life a bit easier
Is everyone else super talented? (Like you!)
The standard of the talent here is exceptional – although I am never complacent. It doesn’t get me down though, it just pushes me to work harder which will hopefully pay off in the end.
If students are wishing to audition for full time performing arts schools, how would you advise that they approach it?
My advice to students thinking of auditioning is not to get too stressed about it, auditions are meant to be fun and the people there genuinely want you to get in. Also I wouldn’t worry too much about finding really obscure songs, people always enjoy hearing ones they recognise as long as you are your best doing it.
Overall I’ve had an amazing time and found that theatre school is everything you want it to be as long as you work hard for it :-)