Theatre's Working Class Problem Nearly Destroyed Me.
The industry's resistance to and ignorance of working class people is systemic, ingrained and fuelled by years of nasty snobbish tradition. Has anything changed since the 1980s?
This piece has been burning my insides for years and could no longer be held in. Last week I auditioned a young woman who is about to graduate from performing arts college. She told me that she is making a film about the challenges faced by working class people in the arts and it made me realise that I need to speak out too.
I work with and hire theatre school graduates, and I see first hand that these young people are vulnerable and afraid but also keen and desperate to please. They need support, guidance and knowledge more than the gaslighting, abuse and negativity that was rampant at my college. I am always open to speak with any young performer or creative that might need support.
In 1987 I thought my dreams had come true. I auditioned and was accepted for a place on Guildford School of Acting’s prestigious three year musical theatre course. This was going to be the solution, the redemption and the escape. All those that had mocked and abused me at school because I took dance classes or went to youth theatre would soon see. I arrived in Guildford on day one as an excited 18 year old ready to absorb, learn and become someone. But I was too young and naive to spot the signs of terrible treatment ahead.
Much like in an abusive relationship, you try to normalise behaviour, so it was with Guildford School of Acting’s actions, decisions and ethos. They told us in our first year that they would break us down into neutral performers who they could then build up into successful actors. We believed, we were scared, we knew no better. and those who challenged were disappeared in our first year; including the only two women of colour on our course. They sent us a list of books to buy (that were never referred to), and of costume pieces to find (including a cape for fuck’s sake).
Something else happened in 1987 that has stuck in British history and in the minds of those who lived through it. In true British tradition this monumental event is often viewed through the prism of failure. What happened is that a TV weatherman called Michael Fish was presenting the regular forecast on BBC1 after the Nine O’ Clock news. He laughingly dismissed a viewer’s suggestion that a hurricane was on its way to Britain. That night the most powerful hurricane in British history hit the country, knocking out power, felling trees and leaving the BBC News to be presented by candle light.
It also blocked the railway line and roads from my house into college. After trying every way possible to get there I tried telephoning to say I was stuck but the lines were down. When I eventually could get back in, I explained what had happened (as if nobody knew), and was told by the catty head of my course that I had not tried hard enough and asked if I “really wanted this.”
During that first year I was knocked unconscious in a weird acting class in which thirty young adults had to run around a dance studio like wild horses but IN THE DARK! (WTAF). I was taken to hospital with a severe concussion and head to rest for a week before a doctor would allow me back to college.
I twisted my back in a dance class and was put on painkillers and then my mother divorced her husband. At the end of the year there was a performance review. The college’s Head of Voice, a particularly bitter woman, told me “Jason when you arrived here your voice was at square minus seventeen. I don’t think we’ve reached square one yet.” I asked if she thought that it would have been more useful to help me throughout the year rather than save her feedback for nine months into the course. The head of our course, told me that my reply was exactly what they meant about my attitude. A confusing, gaslighting and bullying statement that was meant to put me in my place.
I was then told that my attendance record had been so bad that I would need to come back and do a four week summer school to prove I was worth my place. This meant that instead of having the summer to work and earn money I would have to stay at school. However, at that time there were Government grants that paid students’ maintenance while they were in further education and this summer school qualified – if the college would sign the form to say that I had to do the course.
My head of year, and head of course both refused, telling me that if I really wanted to work in the theatre then I would find a way to support myself. And I did. Kind of. I went to college Monday to Friday from 10am to 6pm and on Saturday and Sunday I worked in a petrol station from 5:30am until 3:30pm to have enough money to eat. I told the college that I was finding this difficult and, once more, they refused to help. My family were not in a position to support me; my mother was going through her third divorce and getting out of an abusive relationship as well as having four other children to support on a single wage.
Imagine being in a position to help someone from a less privileged background succeed in the arts and refusing. Imagine as a college that your pastoral care is so poor that, instead of supporting a young performer, you make that 19 year old suffer. Imagine that someone is taken unconscious from your school to hospital and you don’t even follow up with any kind of after care. And imagine that you do all of this knowing that they are experiencing financial hardship and family break up.
Imagine being so heartless as an institution, as fellow arts professionals and as human beings that you tell a young person who has no financial or emotional support to draw on that you also refuse to help them.
This experience did not teach me anything useful about theatre. It taught me not to trust authority and that nobody had my back which, for a long time, was an emotional hindrance because when I met people who did try to help me, I was unable to accept their hand.
I mentioned the two women of colour who vanished from the musical theatre course; they were told that they didn’t fit in. A woman with Puerto Rican Heritage was told she was ‘too Latin’ and a young black woman was told by an improv teacher “ why don’t you show me the rhythm you people have.” I’m not sharing the teacher’s name because who wants to embarrass and shame an elfin woman whose contribution to theatre is yet to be discovered? And those of us who were there know what happened and that we did nothing about it.
I also met some wonderful people at Guildford School of Acting. There were people among my fellow students that, I now see, helped me, supported me and even put up with my silly shit. Some continued this support after college but reminders of my three years there can trigger such negativity that it is difficult to keep in touch.
And this is the saddest thing; 35 years later, I am still bitter about how younger me was treated despite the professional, personal and financial success I have achieved since then.
But Guildford School of Acting was not and is not alone or unique in our industry. There was pressure to conform back then; to speak in a certain way and adopt a certain attitude to life, to class and the world which obviously followed a kind of upper middle class middle England loucheness. There was an assumption that if you got a part time job it was because you weren’t focused enough on your career. Today, this pressure might not seem so overt but where are the 30 year old working class theatre stars, choreographers, directors and writers? Where are the 20 year old working class dancers getting their first West End show? I’ll wait.
Not much has practically changed since I left college in 1990 - only the terminology. Performers are still referred to as ‘working class actors’, ‘black actresses’, ‘disabled performers’ but nobody calls Benedict Cumberbatch a ‘rich, upper class white male performer.’ It’s about time we did.
As a footnote, I recently received an invitation to join the Guildford School of Acting alumni association.