I take notes constantly. During shows, at showcases, in meetings, over coffee, on the tube, on the couch at the end of the day. My brain needs constant emptying.
This week I saw three shows, one showcase, spent a day at Actors Expo, had a meeting with a literary agent, spent a lot of time on the phone and marked up a couple of very long contracts. I spent a considerable amount of time throwing things around my kitchen in frustration and a good couple of minutes with my head under the duvet screaming.
Reading: Moss Hart, Act One. Ewan McKendrick, Contract Law: Text, Cases & Materials
Watching: Beautiful Little Fool, Hunger Games on Stage, Small Prophets on BBC.
Here are some of my notes from the week just gone and my thoughts on how they all work together. When I pull them together I realise what I’m circling is ‘survival’.
How do we build from this?
Energy!
Exhausted from this.
It lacked structure.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Get it out of the way first.
Screen, screen, screen, screen?
I’ve been reading Moss Hart’s autobiography, Act One. Since I was given Kenneth Branagh’s Beginning in 1989, I’ve loved theatre autobiographies. I think preparing for the future requires understanding where we’ve come from. Maybe this is why I’ve spent a lot of this week thinking about beginnings. Mind you, a graduate showcase makes you think about beginnings too.
I go back and forth on how useful a showcase is to me as an agent but then I remember they’re not just for the industry. It’s often the last time the full year group perform together and may be the first time family and friends see them. Showcases have a lot of people to please and I really don’t envy the creative teams putting it all together. It’s exciting to be in the audience watching the next generation of talent but I share the industry-wide concern about how many phenomenal young performers are coming out of training and whether the industry has enough work to sustain them. It is increasingly hard to build the foundations of a long-term career right now. Building a career takes time and planning and I think knowing when to turn a job down is as important as knowing when to say yes. But you also have to factor in paying the rent and continuing to develop your craft. We talk about CVs showing progress and demonstrating what kind of performer you are (or want to be), but these days a CV is just as much a record of how you paid the bills as it is of what truly interests you. Are we really planning careers or are we just trying to keep our head above water? Is it structure or survival?
I went to see a couple of clients on stage this week. One stepped into a leading role he was covering and the other went on for her swing track. I am truly in awe of understudies and swings. It’s often a thankless task, lauded when they go on and save the day, but all too often overlooked. It’s a liminal role, essential but always just…almost. Almost on, almost getting the chance, almost getting the recognition. It’s a role that requires high competence but low agency and it’s tied up with a theatrical mythology that is rarely accurate.
Some producers really get it. They totally understand the role and what it demands of a performer and they go out of their way to make the experience valuable and enjoyable. Producers who themselves come from a professional performing background often have a lot of empathy. Some producers come from a more business minded background and while it’s a generalisation, sometimes they seem to forget that it’s people, not spreadsheets, who make art. That can be seriously frustrating for a performer and, by extension, for their agent whose job it often is to be the bridge between artist and employer.
UK agents, unlike a lot of American agents, tend not to be lawyers. A lot of us were once performers and so sometimes in our work we’re heart-led rather than head led. I’m constantly trying to extend my knowledge of contract law and retrain myself to focus on facts and clauses rather than vibes but its not the kind of subject that comes in easily digestible paperbacks. Hauling around a giant brick of a book isn’t my idea of fun. I’m restructuring my days right now to try and study in the morning before I go to the office rather than when I get home. I get weirdly nerdy when a legal concept finally clicks in my brain.
Theatre is a business. As much as it is creative and joyous to make and to watch, it is also an industry and we are often talking about big money. I was at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane last week for the extraordinarily beautiful To Maury, With Love concert produced by Danielle Tarento. But stunning as the entire evening was I couldn’t help but think of how, just a few days before, Danielle was in The Stage and on social media talking about how badly ticket sales were going. To produce such a beautiful concert, so professional, so flawlessly executed, and with such world class talent, and then to lose money on it must be heartbreaking.
Money out doesn’t equal money in, nor does high-budget necessarily mean good art. There’s an argument to be made regarding transparency about how much things cost. I’ve had conversations with producers over the last year about the economics of theatre production, particularly the fringe and off-West End. Is the recent spate of lavish, high-budget spectacle-theatre teaching audiences to want high production values? If that’s the case then how might the fringe or off-West End survive? Ticket prices in those venues are already pushing the limit of what people are prepared to spend. Will people pay £70 or more for a standard ticket in an off-West End venue? Or do we compromise on production values and/or salaries?
I have always thought that stage is the foundation of the art form of acting. It has endured for centuries and will continue to endure. We forget that radio, tv and film are technological art forms and technology develops fast. I honestly don’t think screen work is going to disappear but I am concerned that AI will replace, not all, but certainly some opportunities in that area. Live performance, on the other hand, can never be replaced.
I saw an Instagram post this weekend that said January might be the calendar start of the year but March is the psychological one. The days are lighter, the weather warmer and we start to come out of hibernation, stretch and wake up. Let’s hope so.