The Work/Life Balance OR How to Eat Without Selling Out

"Ah, poor so & so," goes the familiar refrain. "Always wanted to be an 'artist', always got the lead roles at school but since we left university he's really been struggling. He can never afford to come out with us and is always couch hopping, can't pay rent. Oh no, I don't envy him at all". 

I heard some variation on this recently and, let's be honest, this isn't an alien situation for many of us. The divide between my 'artist' friends and my 'real job' friends is growing ever wider as each post-Uni year passes. For me it's been two years since we graduated and the latter are now already starting to amass savings, eye up mortgages and nestle in on the lower but sturdy rungs of the career ladder. They are generally starting to create fairly structured lives for themselves that include regular socialising, holidays, partners etc. On the other hand, the rest of us seem to be flitting around attempting to create some semblance of a personally chosen and shaped existence. 

Life for creatives (and, as different creative disciplines spawn a variation of routines and demands, I'm going to focus on actors here) can be quite difficult to impose any sort of order on. Acting roles come in dribs and drabs, sometimes they'll contract you for a few months at a time and sometimes for just a few hours. Opportunities can be few and far between for long periods of time and then, like the proverbial buses, they'll come one after the other in quick succession. This means that actors need to be ready and willing to take up said opportunities at any moment. Keeping in mind that there is already a dearth of work available for the sturdy, dependable employee it's even harder for actors to find jobs flexible enough to provide regular income alongside such an unpredictable routine. Yes, actors may need to 'suck it up' and wave bye bye to the concept of a 'comfortable' lifestyle but not being able to afford rent and a tin of beans is when things start to get a bit debilitating. 

For example, simply to cover my (extremely reasonable) rent, travel card and basic food bills I need to earn a few hundred pounds a month. This is before we factor in that I, like many others, own a car, pets and often need to pay for clothes, make up, prescriptions, postage stamps etc. And in order to give myself every opportunity to make my way in an oversubscribed profession I need to be able to be available at a moments notice, work on profit share, go on tour and find work soon after a contract ends. Easy peazy, lemon squeezy. 

At university I did a course called Working in the Profession where we were encouraged to try to find 'actor-friendly' jobs. These include the stereotypical waitressing and telesales gigs but, to be honest, drop out of these jobs one too many times and you'll still find yourself in a bit of a pickle. I think some people really do get lucky and there are jobs where employers will be understanding enough to try to work around you if they can. In my experience however the tougher the job market gets the less an employer needs to be concerned about working around your schedule because, frankly, there's always someone ready to take your place. 

I thought I had the perfect job. I was pretty smug. I work as a tutor, it's well paid enough that I didn't have to do a great deal of other work, I have some degree of flexibility and it's only a couple of hours a day. I thought this meant that I would be in the uniquely beneficial position of having the majority of the working day entirely free for writing, doing admin, auditioning and the like. I was obviously aware that an early evening job would potentially affect any theatre auditions I might get but I figured I'd deal with that when it came to it and that, since no theatre work was immediately on the horizon, in the meantime I'd be earning an okay amount of money. But no job is really that flexible. I realised pretty quickly that I wasn't really going to be able to get odd nights or weeks off very easily and that taking a few weeks off to do a single (potentially unpaid) theatre job would mean I'd probably be out of a job. Telling myself I was still in a pretty fortunate position, I've stayed in this job for over a year now. I haven't at any point stopped working on creative projects but I've certainly shied away from auditions that would demand any sort of commitment to theatre runs or shooting schedules that would interfere with my hours. Soooo...yeah. I've avoided pretty much any performance work for over a year. I only just realised this. I've done other things with that time of course. I've written and produced a play, run a comedy club, taught classes at an arts organisation and I've been sensible with regards to being able to pay the bills. But I wonder if I've been a little too cautious and focused on only the immediate Work concern and left my personal equation rather unbalanced by putting the Life I want at risk. 

The other day a friend asked me if I'd heard of a particular theatre company. 

"Oh yes," I replied. "They're pretty well known". 

"Yeah, I thought so," she said. "The guy who runs it went to school with my brother. Apparently he was struggling for years, doing the 'artist' thing and they all felt rather sorry for him. Suddenly everything seems to have changed all at once and now he's doing really well." 

It's nice to hear a happy ending to the story and it makes you realise it doesn't have to all go to plan from the very start. But it seems you do have to put yourself on the line before that can change. So, if I believe in those sort of things, perhaps that was my sign. 

A Film Actor's 'Right' to Protection

The other night I was watching television and caught sight of a friend playing a substantial role in a fairly major movie. I called him the next morning to congratulate him and, thanking me, he said that he'd been thrilled to work with the stars in the film and had loved the process but absolutely hated how it had been edited. He thought the film had the potential to be so much better than it ended up being. This got me thinking about the lack of control an actor has when appearing in a film over anything but the performance he puts in on set on the day of filming. The reason I've always aspired to work as a performer in the theatre rather than on screen is because, for me, it's an actor's medium. Once the work on the script, direction etc. is complete and opening night rocks up it's the actor's world. Obviously you're playing by certain guidelines but the show is in your hands, you're in control of what the audience sees and what might be created in the moment. With a film the actor's performance can potentially be dramatically altered by the editing process or even last minute changes to the script - think Thandi Newton's complaint when the director of Crash significantly rewrote a scene in the movie after they'd already filmed what would be her reaction to the events of that scene. In her opinion the acting choices she had made based on the original script were no longer as relevant or effective and reflected badly on her as an actress. 

So what rights - bar the initial contract signing and script approval - do actors have? Once we commit ourselves to a project are we agreeing to lend ourselves, our faces, our skills, to become instruments for the filmmaker's vision? It's all very well saying we only choose to get involved with projects we believe in but that's not always an option when looking for work and it's also not always possible to be entirely sure of where a director or producer is ultimately going to go with a project. Keeping in mind that we are all now much more aware - thanks to reality TV- quite how spectacularly editing can change our perceptions of people and events, should we not all be a tiny bit more concerned how our performances can be twisted and turned into something entirely different? Most of us are far too focused on the desperate struggle to actually get cast in a film to spend time thinking about what might happen afterwards. This might be okay with harmless comedies, over the top action films or sentimentally sweet films where, if anything goes off piste the worst that's likely to happen is that we get a bit of flack from reviewers or are underwhelmed with the showreel material we get from it. But what about when a role holds us up as poster people for a political stance or religious belief that we don't represent? Then it becomes a bit more serious than mere questionable acting choices. 

I pick these out as possibilities because they're particularly relevant at the moment after last month when actress Cindy Lee Garcia went to court to sue the filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula claiming she was 'duped' into appearing in her infamous movie Innocence of Muslims, which led to worldwide riots and deaths, and had not been 'aware of its anti-Muslim content'. Her request for a 14 minute trailer of the film to be removed from YouTube as it had 'violated her privacy and endangered her life' was rejected by the Los Angeles superior court judge Louis Lanvin who agreed with Google lawyer Timothy Alger's statement that 'the rights of an actor do not protect that person from how a film is perceived'. 

Now, not having seen the film, her contractual agreement or truly knowing for certain what the endangerment to her life is, it is impossible to comment on this legal decision. However, taking Judge Lanvin's assertion as a stand-alone comment, I ask my own. 'Is this right?' After author Salman Rushdie was issued with a fatwa for writing a book he was offered protection based on how it was perceived. Why wouldn't actors be offered the same rights based on how work they are involved with is perceived? After all they're the ones who will be instantly recognisable to those offended. This is obviously a unique case and it would be silly to blow it out of all proportion since most of the time an actor's concern is that their scene has been unfairly cut or weirdly edited. Unfortunate but the way of the world. However this did all make me stop and think about when it might get a bit more serious. If an actor does choose to get involved with a ground-breaking - whether that be politically, religiously or other - movie or television project and, in doing so, takes an even greater risk than the directors and producers of said project will be doing, shouldn't they then be entitled to protection in the case of a public reaction to it which may result in endangerment to life, death threats and the like? If not then perhaps we should all be committing ourselves only to sweetly flippant projects or all be making our own work. 

When Words Win: Notes from Rehearsal

Lucy: You're saying the line wrong. That's not how it's written. 
Graham: That's 'cos you've written it wrong. I'm saying it right.
Lucy: No I haven't! I can assure you it's right. 
Graham: It's wrong! People don't speak like that. 
Lucy: Graham. It's a transcript. 

...and that's why I love verbatim theatre. Quash the actor!

Lazy Creative - A true story of procrastination triumphing over artistic creativity

I've written an awful lot of light frothy blog posts on here about people I've met, things I've seen and issues that wind me up. What I've done a surprisingly small amount of - seeing as how this is supposed to be my blog about attempting to be creative and work professionally in the Arts & Entertainment industry - is chronicle the real ins and outs of what it's like to be right on the bottom rung of this ladder. 

I think one of the reasons that this is so, is entirely down to the fact that I can be uncompromisingly lazy even in the face of trying to make strides in one of the toughest and most insecure industries in the world. Guilty and repentant as this may make me, I don't feel alone in this regard. 

Lazy Creative is a paradox that is a pretty efficient way to describe a large number of people working in this industry. While it rarely springs to mind when we're confronted with the in-demand, agency represented actors, directors etc. who we see dashing from audition to show to meetings to heaven's knows what, it's a more commonly associated term with the sporadically working artists, those self-employed freelancers searching for a break, for their big idea and recognition. While there are those who truly do sink into sheer laziness (daytime TV, all day lie ins) and those who will maintain a determined work ethic (gym, writing/acting classes, networking events) regardless of their professional success, I believe there is a more general middle ground of artists who, like me, have great bursts of energy and creativity followed by a moony, mundane period of existence where the urge to create is tempered by the lack of focus and direction normally created by a surefire publication date, TV role, upcoming major audition or world arena tour. 

So while I absolutely understand that the fact that sometimes I can go days just staring at a computer screen idly expecting inspiration to strike, that rejections from agents or producers can send me into a tailspin of reruns of Gossip Girl and giant bars of chocolate and that the thought of finishing scripts just to have them sitting unpublished and unperformed in front of me can make me give up and pop out to see a real show at the theatre is a reality that hundreds of you out there are facing, I can't help but be embarrassed and ashamed of it. Hence the lack of blogs about the more negative sides of the business. 

In my opinion it is much easier to produce something - a show, a play, an event - than to create something new. It's not that the work load is lighter at all, it's simply that the relationship between problem, solution and deadline is more tangible than the more abstract issues between creating and adapting a piece of art for public consumption. For me, while irritating, the first step needed to take to deal with a problem obtaining the rights for something is more clear cut than where to begin rewriting a script to add an extra 40 minutes onto it when it seemed the perfect length to begin with. It's not that I can't do both jobs, or even that I might not do the latter better, it's simply that first step, that entry point is so much more fineckity and slow-moving that frankly, it's clear why most of us procrastinate like all hell to avoid having to start. 

But this year I have started to fight against the haze that can descend when the monotony of days staring at computer screens, self-promoting and near-begging are broken only by the need to make money or reassess one's life plan and instead I have set myself the task of imposing a much more tangible game plan onto this airy fairy profession I refuse to separate from. So from now on I promise that my blog will stop shying away from being a slightly more personal account of what an exciting and ridiculous life I've set out on. 

Acting and Watching: In which I fall back in love with the theatre

Sometimes I forget I want to be an actress. Or, more honestly, I convince myself that I no longer wish to be an actress. Because quite frankly it's a pain in the ass. I've barely been out of university more than a year and I'm already fed up with a dearth of auditions, people ignoring my emails, no stable income and so little control over my potential career path in comparison with other professions. And to be honest I've made a fairly good go of relinquishing the acting bug over the path couple of years.

I've been running a comedy club* for which, I like to think, I pick out the best of the up-and-coming comics on the circuit to perform in our shows. I'd say I'm pretty good at working out who's going to do well, many of the acts we booked a couple of years ago after seeing them at open mic nights have since gone on to perform in high profile television showcases, been signed by major agents or won comedy competitions, and doing this casting agent-esque work and producing the shows briefly filled my need for taking part in theatrical ventures.

I've also been writing for online magazines and for the theatre. My debut play Rachael's Cafe was premiered last year at the Edinburgh Fringe 2011 and it was an amazing feeling to see my words being spoken aloud by a talented actor and hearing the audience's response there in the moment. I've always been primarily a text based actor with the highest respect for the written word and it's authors, so being on the other side of the script has been an unforgettable experience.

I'm not belittling my past year or so. I've certainly learnt a lot, experienced plenty of ups and downs both in my professional and personal lives and I feel like I've completed the equivalent of a two year theatre and performance course in what I've learnt from the actors and comedians I've worked with regarding writing, acting, the voice, the body, determination, the evolution of material and the artist and too much more to mention. In terms of my own career progress and financial security I feel like I'd be a lot better off continuing down the path I've been paving these last couple of years. After a while, however, watching others progressing in their performance careers is making me feel a little antsy. That's how I realised I wasn't going to be happy without setting foot on a stage again.

Nothing has confirmed this more to me than tonight's experience at the Wyndham's Theatre. I went to see The King's Speech (The Play) and was totally captivated from start to finish. I haven't actually seen the film yet so I went knowing only the actual historical facts behind the play and with no preconceptions or lingering memories of Colin Firth's brand of stuttering King. It's really a very gentle play, it has plenty of humour and perhaps a little too much of a farcical double act courtesy of Winston Churchill and Cosmo Lang, but overall it's a very British tale about loyalty, duty, love and friendship. There were no big musical numbers, no startling technical effects, shocking revelations or interactive moments. Nothing that -for better or for worse- characterises a lot of the theatre making waves on the scene at the moment. A combination of a relatively simple set, clean and effective directing, a beautifully written script and touchingly realised characters kept myself, my Grandmother and the hundreds of people filling the theatre around us utterly enthralled.

Yes, when I'm sitting at home printing out CV after CV, waiting for the telephone to ring, watching others play roles I'm certain were written solely for me and wondering if I'll ever be able to afford my own house I do find it easy to imagine going down another route, still entertainment based but not as risky. But when I see those actors lined up on the stage to take their bow and the audience rising to their feet I know it was worth the wait for them. And it'll be worth the wait for me.

http://www.kingsspeechtheplay.com


*Chatback Comedy Club (www.chatbackcomedy.com)

IdeasTap Portfolio

IdeasTap is a pretty nifty little resource for creative types, particularly those under 30. In times characterised by a sharp drop in the amount of Arts Council funding available for creative companies and projects, this organisation seems to have opportunity after opportunity for creatives to state their case and potentially receive some cash. There is a £30K cash injection available from Sky Arts for five individuals to receive in order to create new projects, £10K for an Edinburgh Festival show plus jobs, paid internships and free classes/sessions based in and about the arts sector.

The website also offers you a platform on which to showcase your own work so far and it's this that I'm attaching here today. This is really a work in progress but I hope it may well become a great resource for me in the future regarding jobs, funding applications and more.

http://www.ideastap.com/people/LucyDanser/portfolio/31b2ff97-62ac-48e0-b535-9efb00129ba6/?tracker=LucyDanser%3A-1%3A875734094#.TtwXAVIdqIg.facebook