UPDATE: My New Job

As EU Casting Director for TAGLive® I am looking for Ireland's best performing talent

Jun 06, 2024

Classic Dance Audition - from A Chorus Line at Leicester Curve Theatre

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I’ve had a busy few weeks. It all started with a LinkedIn message I sent offering help to someone else’s business and it finished with me being a Director of the Irish branch of that same business. In between times I have looked for offices, lawyers and partners to work with and taken a literal planes, trains and automobiles trip to the UK for a two day meeting with my new colleagues. In all the excitement my writing has been knocked a little off course.

My plan was to use my travel time on those planes and trains (and the waiting time in airports) constructively to work on the book I’m writing. I thought I would use the novelty of a new office space to inspire me to write articles for Substack. And while it is true that I wrote two book chapters while travelling on the Thameslink train from Gatwick Airport to Bedford and another one on the way back, the story came to a bit of a halt after that as it felt like all my creative energy was pouring into the new job.

The role is EU Casting Director for the UK based global entertainment producer called TAGLive. The company was founded ten years ago by Andy Mills-Brown and, like many similar companies, it has traditionally hired the majority of its performers, creatives and technicians in the UK. With Brexit that has become expensive, complex and increasingly unsustainable - the cost of a visa for each British performers in one European country now runs to £3,000 (€3500 / $3800) while for another the performers are required to fly to the country to get an official stamp before flying home to fill out a form at that country’s embassy before then flying back out to start work. This is where my new role comes in because I have been tasked with finding the best performing talent in Ireland and across Europe.

One of the reasons we moved to Ireland was a desire to live in the EU. My wife and I both have family ties to Europe and speak several European languages so it will come as no surprise that we voted for the UK to remain in the EU in the 2016 Referendum.

The fall out from the UK’s decision to leave the EU has been widespread with nearly every area of life in the country affected in some way: from exporters having to wait days at ports to get their goods signed off by customs to a lack of workers to pick fruit or work in hotels. The creative industries have also been hugely impacted as it now massively complex to take UK culture and entertainment to Europe and increasingly difficult for creative organisations to hire talent from the EU because of the split.

TAGLive’s Mad Hatter’s Circus - Currently touring the UK for Haven Holidays

There is a deep pool of creative and performing talent in Ireland but many people have had to leave their home country not just to find work but to even be considered for work in the first place. We will change that by holding in person auditions later this year here in Ireland and in our auditions performers will not be cut after ten minutes but will have the chance to show the best of themselves and grow as professionals.

It is strange to benefit from something that I am so opposed to. Brexit has divided families and broken up friendships for me and many in the UK and, although it has been swept under the carpet by politicians and the media, there is still a nervousness when meeting someone new as you try to discover whether they are a Leaver or Remainer before engaging in conversation.

My new office is in the Ludgate Hub in Skibereen, West Cork which is a very cool wo-working space that was both a bakery and a cinema in former lives. Many of the other members are creatives including architects, musicians and web designers who come from all over Ireland, the UK and the EU. I had to leave the UK to feel a Brexit benefit and it feels like my adopted country, Ireland, is set to reap the biggest benefit from the UK’s act of economic, social and cultural harm.

If you are an Irish or EU performer and would like to know more about working with TAGLive® in any of our global venues then please write to me at:

jason@tag.live

Follow TAGLive Casting on Instagram to hear all about new opportunities:

@TAGCasting