Above: Fortune Ibrahim, Tobias Martin-Clarke Below: Tom George Fletcher, Alya Arrindell

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the forthcoming CAA Actors’ Competition for the website. It is all now done and dusted (apart from my feedback for the Finalists), so here is an account of what happened on the two glorious days.

In the first paragraph of that piece, I wrote about the necessity of allowing time for The Unforeseen, and both days presented us with precisely that. On Thursday, three candidates from Guildford School of Acting (now part of the University of Surrey) were scheduled to take part late in the afternoon. (I had grouped candidates from the same institutions together so they would have someone to talk to.) All three were travelling together, so it was unfortunate that, owing to a problem at the London terminus, it was announced that no trains would be arriving from Guildford. After several phone calls to the CAA and the stewards for that day, The Guildford Three, as they became known, managed to arrive in time and apparently unflustered for their allotted slots. How they managed it, I do not know, but at our end, there were conversations in the gaps between candidates about how we might incorporate them, either later in the evening or the next day.

Back: Lakshmi Robertson, George Adams, Maya Caitlin-Millar, Arthur Drury, Marcela Weltsek-Medina, Aimee Goodship Front: Marilyn Cutts, Abi Eliola, Tom George Fletcher, Fortune Ibrahim, Alya Arrindell, Nicola Blackman, Geoffrey Aymer (Missing: Tobia Martin-Clarke)

This was not the end of the story, however, as one of the three, when told at 6 pm that they had been selected to take part in the Finals the next day, told me they were needed at the Globe Theatre all that afternoon for a third round of auditions for Love’s Labour’s Lost. By that time of night, everyone working in the offices of the Globe had either gone home or was unavailable, so at 10 am Friday morning, on the bus into town, I called the casting department to see if we could, like King Solomon, find a way to apportion the precious individual between us. We arrived at a compromise: the actor attended a dance audition at Bankside, came straight to the CAA, performed for us, then took a taxi back to the Globe for a text audition. In practice, this meant squeezing him into the schedule whenever he arrived, which also meant other candidates being kind enough to accommodate him into a revised timetable.

I was stewarding that day and spent quite some time on my mobile, standing on the pavement outside the CAA, looking for taxis, but with outstanding goodwill and co-operation from the Globe Theatre, we did it. Tobias managed to be in two places at once (almost), and despite the frenetic day he must have had, he gained second prize in the (CAA) competition. I only hope that the Globe snap him up immediately. 

The standard this year was exceptionally high, and the winners were

• Fortune Ibrahim 1st (Central),
• Tobias Martin-Clarke 2nd (GSA),
• Tom George Fletcher 3rd (GSA) and
• Alya Arrindell | Song Prize (Royal Welsh College), all names I trust you will be hearing more of soon. 

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Marilyn Cutts | Competition Organizer (with Stephen Varcoe) | WordSong trustees
19.4.2026