May 2012 Archives

It’s the season of student showcases, writes Jo Eames, The Stage’s Head of Events. Performers in their final year at drama school, university or college are taking their talent into the marketplace, demonstrating the skills they’ve acquired over years of training that’s pushed them to their physical and emotional limits.

Make-or-break relationships with agents, casting directors and other industry professionals are being developed. It’s a critical time for anyone embarking on their career as a professional performer.

At The Stage Events, we understand the challenges that a graduate faces as they enter this highly competitive industry. Our next session, Graduate essentials: how to launch your career, has been developed to help graduates get their career off to a flying start.

Dearest readers, It’s been a while. It’s been nearly four years to be precise. Four fun filled and fruitful years have past since I last shared my ‘fresh out of drama school’ whoops and woes with you all.

When I look back at my old musing and scribbles, I smile at my ever-hopeful glee and cringe at my cringiness. When you’re new to the business and things aren’t going exactly to plan, it’s very easy to feel lost when you’re serving your thousandth customer of the day or sat in a call centre booth with your head in your hands.

I once played the bitter out-of work-actress very well. I played her in said restaurants, call centers, soul destroying promo jobs and even dole queues.

Four years later, I feel like the leading lady.

Readers I apologise; I have been AWOL, with less emphasis on the ‘leave’ and more emphasis on the ‘working my behind off’. My behind and several pounds that the gym couldn’t get rid of but the stress of assisting on a fringe show did in super quick time.

Now, I’m the kind of girl that finds sitting watching the telly stressful unless I can do three other things at the same time. If I’m told to sit still and do nothing but “chill out” — well, I want to gnaw my own arm off and use it to do some very productive things. For example use it to batter the person that just told me to “chill out”.

I love being busy and the times when I’ve bitten off more than I could chew have been few and far between (hey, I’m a former fat child!) Nevertheless my friends, I’ve come pretty close to overload these past few weeks and have been suffering with the work equivalent of meat sweats.

Hiraeth Artistic Productions’ skinhead-inspired production of Titus Andronicus is now up and running at The Etcetera Theatre, Camden. And if I do say so myself; its ruddy awesome. Produced and directed by my dear friend and creative visionary Zoe Ford, the show is a collision of NFskinheads and Immigrants in a vengeful turf war which brings Shakespeare’s bloodiest horror hurtling into the 1980s. As the body count piles up with each passing scene there’s dismemberments, beheadings, rapes, murders and tears and depending on your sensibilities; a few laughs.

Unlike the actors, who are still slogging their guts out on a daily basis, now the show is open my workload has eased considerably and I am no longer waking up in the middle of the night worrying where I’m going to find a wheelbarrow of bricks or a severed hand. In case you’re wondering; the brick problem was resolved by some of my most focussed flirting with the builders across the road and the severed hand… well, it’s odd what some people have lying around the house.