personal statement (Draft)

Sebastian White

The hour before a performance starts when I am preparing, I walk around the stage. This is the time when I feel the most comfortable, anxious and focused all at the same time.  I plan to enter the theatre industry and see this course as the logical next step. I have spent my time at college learning more about the industry and have taken on roles on stage and behind the scenes; I spend a lot of my spare time looking for more performance opportunities and relish the chance to work with a company to create something the audience will love. I am looking forward to the challenges that studying at the next level will bring and I feel I am ready to apply myself fully to the training ahead.

Alongside my studies I have spent the past two years working with a local theatre group called Titchfield Festival Theatre (TFT). This has been a great arena for me to experiment with what I have learnt; it has also challenged me to learn a role within a very short time scale. I have been lucky enough to be in demand with this group, and being almost 7 foot tall there are a lot of roles to which my height lends itself such as ‘The Creature’ in ‘Frankenstein’. I have also taken on roles such as; Borachio in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘A Christmas Carol’, Les in ‘Bouncers’, Timms in ‘History Boys’ and an array of characters in an original play by Stewart Trotter for TFT called ‘Our Cousin Will’, a play based on Shakespeare’s life. After that I went on to direct my first project for the company, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. I also played the voice of Audrey II. ‘Little Shop…’ went on to be nominated for Best Amateur Musical for the Portsmouth Guide awards. Despite having had very little directing experience, I put together what little knowledge I had and pulled together a very enjoyable and engaging show. This was a great project that made me fully appreciate how much time and dedication is needed for even the smallest of details in making a production work.

I think the first flicker of inspiration I had was when I was younger -  I used to watch bloopers from films, mainly featuring Jim Carrey, such as The Mask and Liar Liar, and thought “That looks like fun, I want to do that!”.  I would watch his films and study the way he would deliver jokes; I’d then go into school the next day trying to mimic him or re-enact a scene to get a few laughs.  The other films that inspired me were the Lord of the Rings trilogy - I was obsessed with these films for years; in my opinion they’re the closest a film can get to perfect. Watching documentary footage of its making really inspired me to want to be an actor. For a few years screen acting was all I wanted to do, but being part of a theatre and seeing crowds laugh at a line I delivered or a physical gag showed me how amazing it can be on stage. My uncle is a young filmmaker and wherever we have the time we make short films together: Sometimes I’ll write and perform, sometimes I’ll just perform. After I finished my National Diploma in Performing Arts course I went on to complete a National Diploma in Creative Media Production, so I have had a valuable experience in the two fields of performing that I enjoy.

During my college course I have performed in productions that range from large scale musicals such as "Our House", "Crazy for you" and "The Producers" to small scale plays such as Peter Brook's "The man who" and some devised plays. My real enjoyment came from exploring texts such as Harold Pinter's "The Lover" and Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman". I appreciate the dark and realistic writing styles of Pinter and McDonagh and found these more challenging, its something I would very much like to go onto do in the future, this is why I am ready to progress onto a Higher Education course, I  am looking forward to working in a more challenging environment with people who are equally driven. I will be able to devote all the time to training and developing in preparation to enter the industry.