Appendix C:
Alumni Career Journeys “A” “A” left LAMDA with an agent and initially had “lots of auditions and a couple of jobs”. However, she described the material she was sent as unsatisfying; “you spend 3 years on great texts then get sent a Hollyoaks script”. The combination of this, together with her first agent dropping her after 18 months, resulted in her starting to make her own work. She had “got the bug” to do so while at LAMDA, but felt that there was an “undercurrent that if you were making your own work, creating something for yourself, it was seen as dirty or second-rate, not as exciting as getting something through your agent”. She described having to battle with this perception for a few years. She’s continued to have an agent throughout her career, but this hasn’t been the route that has brought about work. Her income from acting is “very small” and she combines this with her own theatre company, some private teaching work, some “IT stuff” and some directing. She’s now studying for a part-time master’s degree in a related area.
“B” Although he had no drive to start his own business, “B” applied for the Deutsche Bank Award, as a back-up plan when he saw his fellow students being “snapped up by top agents”. With a friend, he used this funding to run a theatre company for two years, resulting in two small productions. They took the decision to stop it afterwards, as running his own company and trying to launch his acting career was “like getting a dog and a baby at the same time”. Since then, he’s been a jobbing actor, combining this with some writing, some creative projects and working for an after-school company. About 60% of his time is spent on these other jobs. Although he said his initial ambition was to be a full-time actor at the National, he’s since realised the most important thing in an acting job is it being a good environment, working with people he likes and enjoying the work. He understands now what he values most and is less concerned with prestige.
“C” “C” was a recipient of the Deutsche Bank Award and used it to create a pilot for a TV series. She was also working in a pub for a year, receiving scripts at 6pm for an audition the next day but because her shifts wouldn’t finish till 1am, she had little time to prepare, wasn’t able to learn the script in time, was turning up exhausted and wasted her opportunities. Though she did get some acting jobs, she also felt like she had ideas that were valuable and so started to co-create with a friend. She describes herself as a “jobbing actor”, but also still creates her own work and supplements her income with corporate work for two days each week (“high-end lead generation”). She also does voice work, despite saying that this opportunity wasn’t mentioned whilst she was at LAMDA. She said she feels it is frowned upon, but it is another useful way of finding income. 35
