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Having read Julie Walters’ recent interview in The Daily Telegraph, I began to ponder on Walters’ Working Class Warning. Is a career in acting becoming more and more difficult for the working class to access? Does a silver spoon fast track you, and more importantly sustain your career in the acting world?
Julie Walters is a heroine of mine. I have grown up in awe of this lady’s capability to stop me in my tracks with her power to share emotional truth on stage and screen. Her autobiography is also a must read for any actor.
My first reaction to Walters’ warning was “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
Before reading the article I had never considered Walter’s class, only her talent. And, as I thought further, I found myself tipping Walters’ concerns on their head. Perhaps a working-class background is actually a gift to performers.
Having experienced struggle, having weathered hardship, will this not deepen an actor’s emotional depth? Doesn’t the best writing regularly explore these life conflicts?
It is the individual who counts, and not the class they come from
We are all aware of the benefits drama school training can provide to its students – often it can be crucial to an actor’s progression. But life experience can be just as valuable as any training that drama schools can offer.
So what will happen if financial assistance for drama school places is stopped altogether?
Will Walters’ warning, of a future where only the ‘posh’ can afford to act, materialise? Or will new barriers only serve to ignite the burning desires of budding working class actors, making us work harder to rise to the challenge, to get, what we know, is deserved to all.
Drama school fees may be rising but with this we must rise to the challenge. I might be being overly optimistic, but if we decide to unite or find our own way to fund our acting success, the results we will get in return will only taste sweeter.
I may be young, but one thing I do know is that with £7 left in my overdraft with mounting debt, my prayers were answered before I gave up. The cards you have been dealt are the ones you play. How you play is up to you – and I am a firm believer that it is the individual who counts and not the class they come from.
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Dear Ms Atkin,
As idealistic you take is on perseverance through poverty regardless of financial background I can’t help but feel that your view is slightly stunted.
I myself come from a working class background and have grown up through the ranks of cultural adversity also being from Northern Ireland where the arts is more of a pastime rather than profession. However where I have faced most hardship is in the politics that surrounds Drama School training.
From my own experiences I cannot help but feel fortune favours the affluent as I have now had to compromise my training at not one but TWO drama schools due to lack of support.
After leaving Music College where I was studying Opera I decided to take the plunge and follow my heart, I moved to London, worked day and night and attended my own classes also financing two one year courses through my own wages.
Having paid my dues I was lucky enough to be offered a place on the 3 year musical theatre course at an accredited London school but was unfortunate in not receiving a DADA. 3 years of hunger and sacrifice for training was ripped away within 1 second.
Undeterred I moved back to Northern Ireland for a year in a bid to save money and re audition, convinced that there must be something I could do better to secure this illusive DADA award.
Having lived independently for 4 years prior this was quite a shock to the system and I took every part-time job going whilst also trying to give back culturally to a city that, as I have mentioned places no great importance on the creative arts.
A year on with a string of teaching and directing credits I was also successful in gaining a place at another prestigious drama school. Relieved finally that I could train for definite and with the support of the student loans body.
The school was an incredible experience and as I had always hoped from a drama school training, I gained a mass of skills essential to the working actor. However misfortune struck again in that I was attacked during a house break in when In London and required 2 surgeries to my eye as glass penetrated and lacerated the cornea…This event led on to series of events whereby I couldn’t work over the summer months and thus I could not support myself to finance my term abroad studying Musical Theatre in Syracuse University, another dream of mine, eagerly anticipated but just as swiftly crushed.
Whilst I understand that as more independent bodies of study- drama schools rely heavily on private funding but as I was at a college recognised by the government student loans body I had hoped I would have been able to aid my financial despair so I could fulfil my study obligations.
Alas the only option made available to me was an exorbitant private loan from the college that I would have to pay back before I finish or never graduate. Alongside this student loans had also updated my loan status and reduced both my grant and maintenance loan due to an error on their system.
As I can probably tell my back was against the wall and I faced financial imprisonment which undoubtedly would have put any form of personal life behind a desk until I paid my debts and gained the freedom to work as an actor and not work to support my training and thus never act.
Since then I have now once again returned to Northern Ireland and hope to pursue a masters course at drama college within the next two years as a better form of consolidating my rather haphazard training. I as an individual have to take the steps to secure myself practically before falling off my cloud of drama school dream land again.
My point being that as lovely as it is exalt and glorify the ‘working class actor’ as an emotional acting tool asset…It is guileless to take such an accessible example as Julie Walters and deem it anything less than a rarity and exception. Let’s not forget that Drama school, before the influx of grants and bursaries, were regarded as finishing schools for the flush few who sought to perform.
Consequently I cannot help but fear that this old system of elitism is what will now be fostered by the increase in fee’s but lack of funding for the arts to support the talent of the nation.
I too whole heartedly agree that as you highlight, ‘ it is the individual that counts, and not the class the come from…’ however this is the attitude that needs to be garnered within government and the private collegiate institutions who are too posh to push for the class equality within training that is often overlooked in aid of immediate private funding to support their dream of design based on a systematic discriminatory lie.Report comment