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. 

Getting an Acting Agent

How!? How exactly does one do this getting an agent thing? And by that I mean one of the good ones. 

Oh I've had agents. I've had one who was okay and got me auditions for things like Crimewatch and a particularly good medical role playing job for the GMC but ultimately wasn't very get-up-and-go and never came to see me in anything I was in. A couple of years later I had another agent who, frankly, was one of the growing group of what I call Cowboy Agents. These are people who sign up to every casting call website going and call themselves agents for submitting other people's CVs and Spotlights to these online cattle calls and unpaid jobs. They have no contacts in the industry and few to no skills in contract negotiation or entertainment law. Yet wannabe actors and newbie graduates go flocking to them and lock themselves down into pointless year long contracts because they feel that any agent is better than none. Frankly, an agent who fails to chase up contracts, forgets to respond to a major casting director with whom you set up a meeting and calls regularly to ask "Did you say you could sing again? Oh sorry I thought you said you couldn't, that's why I turned down a well-paid job for you earlier", is not only a hindrance but also a great liability. 

Having said that, I totally understand why people are hedging their bets and going with these guys when it seems impossible to otherwise find a footing even right at the very bottom of the ladder in this profession. Like the other billion actors out there I've been curled up around the computer for days with a copy of Contacts at my side, painstakingly contacting one agency after another and selling myself hard. I'm not a Drama School actress (though this does not mean I'm untrained - I'll leave this for another blog) and I don't have a CV boasting an extraordinary body of work with big name companies but I have done a respectable amount of work in theatre and film both paid and unpaid over a significant number of years playing major and minor roles and have received some really good reviews. I have also worked in a variety of other positions in the business including running a live comedy company, directing two fringe plays and interning in the casting department at the Donmar Warehouse. I've written a play which has toured and had fantastic reviews. I have a MDrama & Theatre Studies degree. I have clearly made every effort to stay within the profession and be involved in the creation, presentation and production of theatre and film. I'm not sure how else I can show my commitment to the industry, my get-up-and-go mentality or my clear need to work as an actor. Yet not one agent has shown an iota of interest in meeting me. 

I know I'm not the only one in this position and it doesn't affect my opinion of my talent. None of these agents have seen me perform or read my reviews so their opinions are based on something other than my potential abilities. Plus some of the most incredible actors I know are unrepresented. And you can work without an agent, of course you can. But you have to be terribly organised and disciplined and many actors aren't or don't have the time to be. Plus, an agent's connections really help in getting seen for those important auditions. Many of the casting directors I have spoken to are very open about the fact that they tend to mostly audition from a list of actors pitched to them from the major agencies. 

So how do you get one of these magical Fairy Godmotherly types? From the responses I've had what I have worked out is that you should either: 

a) Stand-out in a end of year major Drama School production

b) Have a kick-ass showreel 

c) Be in a current show that they are able and willing to come and see and be good in it

a) has worked for many many people and is a major reason for going to Drama School (in addition to the training of course). Doing so is not, however, an option for everyone nor is it the be all and end all to being a great actor. Also, a great number of those who do pay thousands and do three years of training do not end up with agents out of it. 

b) is getting more and more common for a way of attracting both agents and casting directors. Most of us have done innumerable short and student films to bulk up our showreels but, of course, not everyone has been as lucky as others in the quality of the productions they have ended up in. Without the agent to help you attract the professional TV and film makers it is not always easy to create a solid showreel. The thing that actors are now doing more regularly is paying £500 to shut themselves into a studio with a script and a cameraman and creating a showreel. 

c) is something I personally find quite hard to master. Firstly the type of theatre productions one tends to end up getting involved with without an agent to guide the way are often profit share, fringe shows and personally I get very nervous inviting agents to come and see something when I have no idea how it might turn out. This is true with any show of course but a little more risky on the fringe circuit. However if you wait for the show to develop before inviting people it's often too late. Putting on a showstopping vehicle starring yourself is not always the great marketing tool that people think it might be since casting directors and agents tend to like to choose shows where they'll get the opportunity to view numerous potential clients at once. 

Yup, despite the fact it's the first step in getting yourself seen for most serious and properly paid opportunities, getting an agent is a real tricky business. 

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.