“Only ONE of you will make it”

Reflections on the messages we feed young artists

Setting: National Youth Theatre, August 2010. I am 17 years old and away in London for two weeks (!) to take part in the National Youth Theatre (NYT) training course. I am beyond excited! Bright-eyed and bubbling with enthusiasm. I get to meet and train with teenagers from all over the country who share my passion for theatre and performance. As much as I adore the warehouse next to Ashford International Station where I rehearse and perform as part of my hometown youth theatre – having successfully auditioned for NYT, I now get to train in the chic, ethereal Laban Centre in London for a fortnight and it feels wildly glamorous. After the buzz of our first assembly with all 200 budding actors, we are split in smaller courses and sent off into different drama studios to begin working in groups.

Enter D. D will be my course director for the next 2 weeks. I’m calling him D because this isn’t about naming and shaming him, but more – discussing the impact of the toxic attitudes that D represents within the arts. In the first workshop I actually appreciated training with D. He was to the point, instructive and honest. He got us out of our heads and into our bodies. We were focused. Yet as the days progressed, the clarity evolved into sharpness, the instructiveness became bossiness and the honesty grew more and more brutal. There were a number of moments that made me dislike D, but there are three I will focus on here – the last being my main issue.

Firstly, D only let us make theatre from children’s books because he said as teenagers we had neither the experience nor the emotional capacity to deal with “grown-up” subject matter. Today I work as a youth theatre director and in my professional opinion this is utter bullshit. It is ignorant and patronising to assume young people cannot handle delicate subject matter and to therefore restrict their creative impulses. Also, so what if they take on topics that are big and advanced and complex? If that’s what moves them because it reflects the world around them, let them go for it! Facilitators should encourage young artists to take creative leaps, not play safe.

Secondly, at one point we had to perform our audition monologues one-by-one to the group, and I remember D said to one boy, completely ignoring his performance, that his “racial ambiguity” was a strength because he could audition for a broader range of roles. WTF! As if this was at all an appropriate comment for a hopeful teenage actor?! I can’t imagine how it felt to be that boy, but beneath the comment D was asking us to objectify ourselves. To view ourselves as casting types, outside-in, instead of artists that have something to express, inside-out.

Thirdly, the main memory I will focus on here, was on the last day of the course, when he sat us down in a circle to deliver some “cold hard truths” about the industry. Ironically it was a beautiful warm day and rays of sunlight streamed into the white-box studio. “It is highly likely that only one of you in here will make it”. He paused – letting the “fact” sink in. “The arts is a cut-throat industry. If you do not yet know one hundred percent that this is what you want now, then you will not make it. You need to reconsider.” Silence. Twenty pairs of teenage eyes were fixed on him. Anxiety silently rising. Who amongst us would be the one? “But I would encourage those of you who are not dead certain to consider teaching drama. I teach in a private school and the pay is much better than in state. You need to be smart about these things.”

In the ten years that have passed between now and then, I have considered this statement a number of times – growing more and more irritated at 1) the toxicity of this “dog-eat-dog” definition of the arts and 2) the idea that to teach drama is a mere “safe-bet” as oppose to a creative ambition in and of itself. In the space of less than two minutes, D imprinted on us a mindset of scarcity. “There’s not enough room at the top” crap. He essentially told us to give ourselves over completely to the one ambition of acting, age 17, or give up entirely. All or nothing. When I look back, I think D needed to talk to a therapist – not preach to a room full of students. He needed to confront his own low self esteem and feelings of failure, not infect us with his bitterness.

I’m glad I didn’t take his advice – and neither should anyone.

The last 10 years of my creative career have been full of ups and downs, highs and lows, certainty and doubt. But one thing I’ve learnt is that, for me personally, being a young artist isn’t an “either/or” consideration; it’s all about the “and”. Over the last decade, I’ve been a waitress and a performer, a student and a nanny, a Christmas market seller and a poet, a drama facilitator and a part-time translator, a voice actor and a director. Especially at this time when the future of the arts industry is so scary and uncertain, please don’t berate yourself for not being enough, committing enough or earning enough. Don’t throw in the towel because you can’t stick to that one thing and you don’t have the energy for the fight to “make it” (whatever than means?!) Bin this out-dated, damaging notion! Be kind to yourself, let yourself doubt and know that you contain multitudes and there is space for you and your creativity in the world.