Recently I joined Wicked Women with Tmesis Theatre and a group of brilliant female creatives. Before this, I trained for four years at two different drama schools, both of which I loved, and what’s surprised me most is how empowering Wicked Women feels and how that’s unfamiliar to me as an early-career practitioner. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent” and I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because, like many #2020grads, I’ve felt a heck of a lot of imposter syndrome. I don’t know why or when I stopped properly taking up space, but I know I’m not alone. Looking back at training, and I see this as an institution-wide problem; I believe many of us disempower ourselves before even properly setting foot into the industry.
Digging deeper into why, I think language is a huge factor, particularly that now we’re using social media more. The way we speak about ourselves becomes our reality and especially now, when we’re being dismissed as “unviable”, a “low-skilled” hobby, and viewed with a disrespect that runs from that near-stranger that who laughs at my degree when I see him in ALDI, to the very top, the Prime Minister who allegedly ruined his own school play by not bothering to learn the lines (who’s surprised?). We are seen to be precious, over-sensitive, divas, drama queens, fake, irritating, desperate and dispensable. We can complain about that until the cows come home, or until we’re stressing over our next Spotlight payment (I hear you), but it’s irrelevant because the power to change that narrative begins with us. It has to. I’ve never seen a lawyer speak about being “lucky” to book a job, if they did you’d probably raise an eyebrow and wonder if they’d somehow snuck in underqualified. I’m yet to meet a shopkeeper feeling “honoured” to have sold that tomato and when I worked as a waitress I didn’t feel “#blessed” to serve kippers to businessmen at 6 in the morning, I felt fed up, miserable, tired, and I also smelt of fish – all things I’ve felt as an actor, save the last one, so far. All things I’ve felt because it’s still a job, it’s still hard work. So why, especially as graduates, do we use these words to describe booking a job in an industry which we are more than qualified to work in? Why do we paint this picture of this Utopia that actually needs a lot of work to readdress the structural inequalities and power imbalances? Why do we let ourselves buy into the narrative that as graduates we must be grateful for absolutely anything and everything that happens to us? That we can’t say no? I’m not waging a war on expressing gratitude entirely, of course it matters, but when it comes at the price of undermining our ability, we need to question why we’re using it and who it’s serving.
“This is just the way the industry is”, I’ve heard this in bars, when a director shrugs, rolls their eyes and looks away a little embarrassed after saying something not that PC. “That’s just the way the industry is” a phrase used in audition rooms, hopefully on the decrease. “Well you can’t get sick, because you’ll never work, that’s just the way the industry is”, a phrase used in rehearsal rooms. Give me just a second, I want to add ‘superhuman’ to the special skills section of my CV because I will never take a sick day! Haven’t you heard about my immune system? It’s infallible. I could be run over by a tractor and I’ll still show up smiling! ... You get the gist. I’ve seen this phrase in action so many times and in my experience it is always used to reinforce the status quo and to shut people up. The narrative during training was that “unprofessionalism means you’ll never work again, that’s just the way the industry is”. On face value it’s a phrase that makes sense, but in reality it only works if you’re the unprofessional one, because the director is allowed to do as they please. With this power imbalance, how do we define unprofessionalism? Drinking with the director? What about clubbing? Yes, these things can be innocent, but when and where do we draw the line if they’re not?
As a graduate, over lockdown, I’ve attended lots of zooms with industry professionals. The overwhelming impression I’ve got is that they are human, and they care. Part of their job, as they see it, is to be decent people and help push for an industry that is fairer and safer for us all to work in. So, who exactly are we preserving with the phrase “that’s just how the industry is”? Who are we protecting? If it’s not us, the grads, if it’s not the students, if it’s not even these bigger more established practitioners, then who? And do we really want to continue to protect them?
Hannah is an actor and writer and co-director of the Moonlighters Collective
Follow her on @HL_Roze @Moonlighters_TC_
