Hosting auditions feels like entering a vacuum. You’re holed up, for hours, in a kind of rift in the space-time continuum. If you aren’t smart enough to schedule a gap (like a certain someone a few weeks back …) then there’s no toilet breaks. Want to eat? You’d better hope for a no-show, so that 15 minutes open up and deliver what I can only assume is the same effect as when noblewomen in Versailles tore off their corsets after a long day at court: you can breeeeathe. Then you go back to being strapped to the same table, same chair, repeating the same introductory phrases again and again – 30 times over. I find auditions put me in the same kind of hypnotic hyper-space as an all-nighter, or an exam; by the end, it’s like I can hear the chemicals flowing in my head as they switch course to however which way my brain has been altered.

“The nature of amdram means these sudden hierarchies are erected in the audition room; fellow students are considering your worth”

Yet despite the intensity, it all seems to go like that. Boom! The day is over. And you’re disoriented by the overload of information – meeting new people, studying them forcefully in a space of ten minutes, then opening the door to the next one. Oddly, I find it hard to remember people’s faces if we haven’t met before. I’ve got their names down, my comments – I remember the rough outline of their appearance. Then I walk past them in the street and wonder where I’ve seen that face, contorted for comic effect or sobbing inches from my face, and it clicks.

I don’t audition much, but I know it’s daunting; in fact, I don’t audition much because it’s daunting. You walk through that door to face people who are your peers – maybe even your friends – and invite their judgement in a way that just wouldn’t come about otherwise. The nature of amdram means these sudden hierarchies are erected in the audition room; fellow students are considering your worth. The friendly stage manager from your last show is now telling you to read the excerpt again, but louder, while the people sitting either side stare you down like they’re in a glaring contest. And afterwards, you wait for an outcome stewing in the knowledge that those people poured over you, pitted you against others, ranked you in a red-yellow-green system. In the case where they were your friends, you have to contend with whether they preferred others – strangers – over you. No wonder auditions ruin some friendships.

“If I’d understood how impersonal auditions are, maybe I’d have gone for more than about five during my degree”

The audition room is a vulnerable space, but not for the panel. You become numbed by the entries. It’s an intensely scrutinising, but oddly indifferent, process. The only comparison I can suggest is with antique collectors – pouring through items on display, all of them interesting, but trying to find that one special thing they’re looking for amid dozens of brilliant contenders. To see printed extracts shaking in people’s hands feels so at odds with your own mood, just metres away. Granted, you’re both acutely focused in the vacuum of the moment, but to different effects. I feel like saying to people who are obviously nervous: don’t get worked up! We all want you to do well. And god, please don’t care about slipping up in front of us: we don’t.

Understanding this means understanding, as I have, that there are countless people in Camdram who have been rejected, and rejected others, and have gotten on with their day. It’s just not that deep. This is what made me get over myself: I’m no longer embarrassed by the times my own auditions went bad. Instead, I’m embarrassed by how embarrassed I was.

I know the prospect of exposing yourself – and maybe messing up – in front of peers is daunting. But I know something else: as a finalist, a year from now, I won’t see most of these people again – and wherever I go, I won’t have the opportunities I had here. If I’d understood how impersonal auditions are, maybe I’d have gone for more than about five during my degree. Because in the vacuum of the audition space, whatever happens fades the moment you leave. It’s all fleeting.

My point to all this? I guess ‘put yourself out there’. For one: it’s uni – what’s to lose? But also, it takes a surprising amount to stand out. I’d wager that the best way to stick around in people’s minds is to do something different. Does everything work? No. But is that worth giving a damn about once the audition is over? Equally – no.

So shoot for the moon, I guess. You just might land among the stars. And if one panel, or several, don’t appreciate what you’re going for, don’t deep it. Someday, someone will.