ColumnsThere is a familiar sight in zombie films: ruthless, inhuman creatures scrambling to feed on destruction, a mindless follower mentality drawn by the promise of brains/food/life. Let’s relocate that image, make the carnage less visible…
Performer's Perspective
Looking after your voice
Today I’m embracing a very rare occurrence. I am immersed in a state of bunged-upness, complimented by a persistent tickly cough which is rapidly throwing me into a state of grogginess. I’m positively looking at…
What do you do when you’re not acting?
What do you do when you’re not acting? There’s a question that never gets old… Having always been told to ‘have something to fall back on’, for the past decade I have mainly worked as…
The musical theatre stigma
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that performers in possession of a good musical-based CV, must be in want of film and television work. With musicals asking for performers to go from revolutionary Paris to…
Acting vs banking
Why did I decide to make my vocation as a theatre maker? To hold a mirror up to the world and show it for what it is worth. Why did I decide to become an…
‘New talent’ and ageism
In 2011, Samantha Spiro received the British Comedy Award for best female comedy breakthrough artist for her role in Simon Amstell and Dan Swimer’s Grandma’s House. In her acceptance speech, the fantastic actress (whom I…
Audition perdition
You’ve just left the audition and it went well. Oh come now, the panel obviously loved you – they were beaming throughout and implausibly positive. That was pretty great, you find yourself confidently thinking as…
What’s next for you in 2013?
Numerous studies have pointed out the hugely positive effect that writing down your goals has, concluding that those who do achieve significantly more than those who don’t. I am always hungry to find out how…
Who can afford to be an artist?
Six actors sit around the dinner table in the gentrified part of Brixton on a Sunday. It’s that long stretch of road where the streets are named after dead poets and writers. Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare. Jamie Oliver…
Understudies – acting’s superhuman breed
There is an ancient acting lore that has been passed down over the years (as all good lores are) which tells the tale of the infamous understudy in The Mousetrap. She sat in her dressing…
Casting director for a day
They are plain-clothed magicians. They are people with the potential to make us analyze a handshake. They might look like civilians but they have a power over us actors that reduce us to nervous wrecks,…
Auditioning: Los Angeles vs London
“Oh my god I love your accent. What is it like to be an English actor over here?” It wasn’t until my most recent trip to Los Angeles that I became very aware of what…
The cost of being an actor
As the new year and Tax Return deadline looms, it’s important to remember the things actors can claim as part of our personal allowance. The list is impressive, from theatre and cinema tickets as ‘research’,…
Bookers are turning a deaf ear to disability arts
I work in the disability arts sector and find myself to be one of the last of the actor – managers: devising, booking, performing and packing the van. While wrestling with another tour budget, and…
Life after soaps
When you’ve spent four years in a soap, people see the character, not the actress
Can a black actor ever be just an actor?
Call me difficult, I’ll shrug it off. Call me bad, I’ll be hurt till tea time. But call me a black actor and you devalue me.
It’s push, not posh that makes an actor
Is a career in acting becoming more and more difficult for the working class to access?
Audition perdition
Let’s face it, we’ve all come out of auditions that leave us standing on the street thinking, ‘what the hell was that?’, wondering if we’ve been part of a new hidden camera show. It starts with drama…
Jobs & Auditions
