End of an Era

 When you're forced to close a business, you're also forced to be self-reflective to work out what went wrong. Over the past few months as the seriousness of The MTA's position became ever clearer to me I've done nothing but self reflect.  The obvious answer really must be that the course didn't work - after all, if it did we'd have people queuing outside the door to come and train with us, except that in many ways we did have those people queuing up - but they all turned away when they found out that our course came with no funding stream. It didn't matter how much we'd try to reassure them that we'd find a way to make it work for them, we know for a fact that it stopped people auditioning.

This dichotomy of running a college that clearly worked - 100% of students securing agent representation is no mean feat when you're not massaging your figures with signings with associated agencies. In total we trained 193 students through to graduation, and a further 15 were trained up to the end of their first year.  When I opened the college I was told that 95% of our graduates would drop out of the industry within 5 years.  I always vowed to base our success on the longevity of the careers that we created. Pre-pandemic a staggering 78% of our graduates were still in the industry with 23% of those having secured West End or No 1 touring contracts. However that's just the PR headline, as the reality is even richer, our graduates went on to perform all over the world, from Lapland to the USA (via China, Malaysia, Australia), working at the National, the RSC, West End, International tours, open-air theatres, schools, community theatre, on screens big and small.

Hard to see the place as a failure when you're looking at the evidence, isn't it?

So where did we go wrong? We stuck to the idea that vocational training was enough to get you a career, we didn't buy into the Tory-inspired myth that people needed a qualification to succeed in our industry. We invested in the students, not in the system. That ultimately was our downfall. With no desire to expand, the business model literally involved securing enough students year after year to train with us. We had various plans in place for low numbered year groups so we plodded along quite nicely. However, in 2019 with the demise of the PCDL, it became harder to recruit students as we suddenly had no funding attached at all. We saw the drop of applicants instantly during the 2020 'audition season'.  We started to explore other options but these things take time, so when we were suddenly facing Brexit (20% of our students tended to come from the EU, but we would no longer be permitted to train them), and then Covid right on top of it, all the wheels that we had started to put in action ground to a halt.

We had exhausted our evaluation of moving to a degree model when we realised that to successfully do that we would need to change our course in order to make it financially viable as we could only realise a certain amount of government funding. It was suggested that we could introduce the idea of a reading week (thereby saving us money), or dropping some of the performances, or putting private study time in - basically filling the course with non-contact hours in order to save money, but at the expense of the training. Then we explored taking on extra students in order to make up the deficit that we would hit should we end up running a degree course which didn't give us the option of adding a top-up. Of course, by taking that route we would once again be diluting the students' training - so we just wouldn't do it. However even if we'd opted to sell out that much in order to secure a degree status course we knew that the timeframes involved in all that (pointless) bureaucracy would be too long, and the pandemic pushed those timeframes ever longer.

We were mid exploring applying to get approved for a named diploma. Whilst we'd gone down this route once before, we were stopped by their criteria of only considering 3-year courses. This time though we pursued it and were negotiating the changing of the wording of that one sentence, setting the criteria at minimum hours/year as opposed to naming the length of the course. The organisation was definitely up for it but needed to discuss it fully as a Board themselves as this was a major change for them. That meeting still hasn't happened over a year later. . . as of course covid has meant that other things have had to get prioritised.

To give you an idea of the timeframes involved, all of this was going on (including independent consultations) whilst we had been forced like every other UK college to put our training online. Even writing that reminds me of the stress that we were under at the time. Desperately restructuring the course to ensure that our students still made progress during 2 terms of online training, attempting our best to pastorally support them all, plus try to strategise how we could protect the college against the oncoming juggernaut of Brexit just 2 years after the demise of the PCDL. 

Of course, as the 2021 audition season kicked off the world felt a little less certain after months of lockdowns, so we weren't surprised when the applications slowly came in as opposed to all land together as they did every other year. The expectation was of course that we'd get later applications once things were more normal. The Christmas Covid wave was on its way - who the hell would be applying for college then? As the applications started to trickle in we also saw a much larger percentage than normal of withdrawals - even before coming to the audition. Now, this was a new pattern for us. On one of our audition days literally, 2/3rds of the applicants withdrew at the last minute. We'd been forced to move their audition date when we went into lockdown in January, but this was still really unusual.

As we always audition late we usually get a steady stream of applications from May-August each year, in fact, several times in our history it was the August auditions that proved to provide us with a large percentage of our year group. However, those applications just never materialised this year. Then when all the applicants dropped out of our June audition date (again, a first for us), it was clear that things were really bad and potentially critical. Board meetings were hurriedly called in a bid to update but also brainstorm new ideas. Friends of the college started to lend their expertise (very generously I must add) in a bid to see what was going on, the marketing spend increased, hell I even gave up 2.5 months going live on social media 4 times a week in a bid to remind people that we were here and still auditioning. Literally, nothing worked.

Other friends came on board with suggestions of where we could raise charitable donations in a bid to support our class of 2022 to finish their year (with the hope that this was just a 'perfect storm' situation, but next year would be better). A call to action was sent out to everyone and anyone we could think of, but of the 40 or so emails that I sent out we had just one reply, and whilst that person offered a donation, it was clear that we weren't going to hit our figure, or indeed get anywhere near it.  In truth when it came down the fact that we were going to need to raise the funds I knew that we were stuffed. Over the last 3 years we'd undertaken a brilliant fundraising feasibility study, the consultants involved felt sure that we would be able to raise a regular amount of money/year in order to fulfil my dream of running a college where 50% of the places were funded. Yet a couple of brilliant fundraisers later, and a load of rejected applications, and it was quickly evident that people weren't interested in independent colleges. How many times did I read that sentence "we've already allocated our funds to other institutions" only to see the same old names come up time and time again.

We were aware of the ticking clock of the end of the academic year which meant that students would be putting down deposits on houses for the next year, plus of course starting to pay for their 2nd year (or 1st year) So it was at this point that the Board had to make the devastating decision to close as if we didn't close we would run out of money by March.  The business model could not support the size of the year that we had coming in, and the business model of the course was never designed around just one year group (well. . . other than our first year obviously).

So a week ago I had to start making calls to other colleges to try and secure an alternative for our first years. I mean how bloody horrific for your college to close in the middle of your training, but also how horrific to be planning your new London life at your drama college only to get the rug pulled from beneath you 3 months before? Knowing that we were letting down 22 students was by far the hardest part of this journey. Also going into college to work with them whilst knowing that things were not looking great was horrible, and definitely not a position that I'd ever want myself to be in again, and in fairness I wasn't scheduled that much during the first few weeks anyway as I was also trying to write a show whilst this real life drama was unfolding. The only thing I could think of to soften that blow was to try and secure them places at another college.  I am indebted to Leo at Associated Studios who firstly didn't just try to grab the money when I called her, but first offered to sit down with me to see if there was anything that we could do to save the college, but then secondly reassured me that as another 2 year MT course in London she could take on our lot if they chose that option. This of course meant that they could continue their training together. Obviously, it's up to them whether they take this option, but I'm so relieved that the option was offered to them. Plus thanks to Louise at PPA and Adrian at LSMT for also agreeing to see any of our students that were interested in their courses. So nothing here is ideal, but at least there were 3 concrete alternatives being proposed to the 22 students most impacted by this and indeed 2 of those options were considerably cheaper than us, and potentially came with government funding attached.

. . . and so we're here with the announcement of our closure. 

As you can imagine there is so much more to sort out now, and the next few months are going to be difficult for all of us I'm sure. Why the blog? Because I need to remind myself right now quite how hard I fought to save the college that I set up in 2009. I need to hold onto the reality that I really tried everything to save it.  100% I failed, but as no doubt I'll cover in another blog (now that this one is out of my head), there's been a massive shift in the training industry this year, and I think that we're going to see a very different landscape emerging over the next few years unless somebody starts to regulate it.

A Funding Crisis

 This week Yale School of Drama was able to announce that thanks to a donation by David Geffen all of their training would be free from September onwards.  I facetiously and blindly optimistically retweeted the article with the comment that my DMs were open in case any UK philanthropist equally wanted to make such a generous and life-changing gesture. You won't be surprised to learn that my DMs have been relatively quiet ever since.

However, there is a major issue around philanthropy and indeed supporting the arts in this country. Oh for sure the usual suspects literally throw money at the same old colleges and they all continue to build and rebuild their spaces, ensuring that the benefactor's name will live on in bricks and mortar form. 

I've always found it really sad that a donation worth millions was spent on a building as opposed to supporting more underprivileged people training for nothing. Of course, a nice theatre is great, but investing in people always seems a preferable option to me. Saying that. . . most of those same colleges are also on the elite DaDa list, so why get benefactors to sponsor their students when the government will do that anyway?

The MTA opened in 2009 and we have constantly been chasing our tail to find supporters that would invest in our students. Over the years we've had a few - notably the Take That Trust Fund that supported us for the first couple of years until our students were eligible for a PCDL.

Now the Professional Career and Development Loan was nowhere near as generous as a regular undergraduate loan but it was something, and actually, something that facilitated a lot of our students training with us. Knowing that a large chunk of their training made the rest more accessible. It was only £10k (and our course is £32k), but it allowed us to massively reduce our instalment plan so more people could access it.

Then, as I've written about countless times before, in 2019 they stopped the PCDL literally overnight. Suddenly there was no help at all available to a performer that chose to train at a 100% vocational college. Other than a small article in The Stage nobody shouted about its demise. Nobody cared that this lifeline for vocational training had been stopped. Of course, fast forward to this year when the government started discussing reducing the funding for performing arts degrees and we had petitions the lot

Once again let me contextualise this for you some more - literally any university can suddenly start up a performers degree course (and check through UCAS, literally anybody does), their students can do no shows, spend as little as 16 hrs/week in lessons led by tutors, the lack of contact time alone on their course means that they graduate not eligible to even get onto the Spotlight directory - but those students are given access to a loan of up to £27k. They are literally being trained for nothing (both financially and career-wise). The government finance is not based on the results of the course, but rather the piece of paper that says degree is worth £27k of our money to train these wannabe performers. Lots of the courses don't even audition their students - they accept them on grades only.

Now I've worked at some of these colleges and I've seen for myself how shocking the training is. I've seen 3rd year graduates who literally don't know their way around a rehearsal room, unable to warm up, unable to understand a basic theatrical language - and yet these students also told me that they were going to work in the West End once they'd graduated. They were lovely, kind but clueless. They raved about their courses, but of course, they knew no better. Check out some of the posts on various Facebook groups if you think that things can't be that bad. If you've just paid £27k to be trained you should not be asking in the group how to get an agent, how to find work.

Then jump to our course at The MTA. Our students do 40 contact hours/week, they put on a production every term, they exclusively work with top industry professionals, they all graduate (to date anyway) with an agent. . . and they now get zero funding.

Then let's look briefly at how else some of the colleges make their dosh. Overseas students are a massive earner for them. They mark up the price and recruit from abroad - after all, it seems like you can't pay enough for a UK education in the arts. As they are all offering degrees this source of income has not been hit by Brexit at all - they can still fleece the overseas students, no questions asked.

Now we've always had a great tradition of training EU students (due to being a vocational college we were never permitted to sponsor a visa for any other overseas student). Controversially we always charged our EU students exactly the same as our UK students - after all it didn't cost us any more to train them, and we loved the diversity of culture that they brought into the college. Fast forward to Brexit and we are no longer permitted to train anybody without a UK passport. . . . but the college offering just 16 hrs of training a week can continue as normal?

Over the past year and a half, we've been exploring all of our options in an attempt to get some funding for our students. Covid has made this task particularly hard as all the various departments stopped accepting applications for anything. We explored turning our course into the UK's first accelerated degree in musical theatre (stage and screen). We brought in consultants who agreed that we were easily working at the right level, and discussed ways in which we could stay true to ourselves and not sell out (I remain adamantly against this idea of private study when students are paying course fees), but this was to be a long drawn out process, and covid meant that we couldn't even start the process. We explored the idea of a degree franchise (which in truth I'd never even heard of). Now, this was a positive thing as it was felt that if we found the right uni to work with, we could be offering this by Oct 2021. . . except for one thing - our fees would drop from £16k/student to £9k. We already budget within an inch of our lives as it is because we know that our course is only so successful because we only take a max of 22 students/year. There was no way that we could run or even adapt our course to make it work on £9k/student. We'd have to stop all first-year performances and probably a couple of the 2nd year ones too . . . which would mean that our students would be financed but they wouldn't be industry-ready.

So we looked at the Trinity Diploma as an option, after all that does come with some funding these days in the form of an Advanced Learners Loan. However, you might recall some years ago when I moaned about this then. . . one of the first criteria that they list is that the course must be 3 years. We're out of the loop before we even got on the ride.  Not one to be deterred though (and knowing that Brexit was looming) we started to liaise with Trinity to see if there was any desire to change that wording at all - and glory be. . . there was. They agreed that in terms of hours, outcome, standard we appeared to be doing it all (obviously subject to a proper inspection etc). They would have a meeting to discuss rewording that one clause. Unfortunately, thanks to covid that meeting still hasn't happened, and indeed is unlikely to happen for a few more months.

The government department that handles the ALL won't even consider funding a course that is attached to one establishment. 

So to recap literally any university can start a Musical Theatre degree and will get access to instant funding, no questions asked, they can automatically accept students from anywhere in the world (and charge them a premium) - nobody checks whether their students are industry-ready at the end of the course. Their degree, that piece of paper, those marks are enough to open the government's coffers to support training.  You might recall that I explored the impact of vocational training turning into degree cash cows a while back

Our course - the first of its kind in the UK, which used to be eligible for a PCDL (a loan that we had to apply to be eligible for, and in order to access it, we had to prove that our course worked), is now eligible for literally nothing. Our students work 40 hours a week with us, 100% of them have secured independent agent representation before graduating. In 2019 pre-covid, our stats were that 78% of our graduates were still in the industry, 22% of those had secured West End or No 1 touring contracts, at the time of the survey all but one of our graduates had secured a professional job after graduating (and the one that hadn't had emigrated within a month or two from graduating). In other words, we have really proved that the course works. . . .yet our students get nothing.

So you'd think that we'd be eligible for various bursaries for our students wouldn't you? Organisations that would really value vocational training eg Equity and Spotlight who together with SOLT offer some really decent bursaries, after all our students are permitted to join both organisations once they've graduated. . . but nope. They won't allow our students into that club as we don't offer a degree. So that money goes to the colleges that have access to DaDas, student loans, and benefactors who build them new theatres.

We have students at the moment desperately trying to fund their training with us, students who are really talented but don't have the good fortune to come from a wealthy background. The recent interview with Michael Sheen really nails this idea of luck and the injustice of who gets the luxury of choosing to study performing these days.

So where are the UK's Michael Geffen's? Where are the philanthropists that genuinely want to invest in people and not buildings with their names on it. How the hell are we ever to change this landscape? As ever . . . my DMs are open

The danger of not staying curious

 As regular readers will know I'm somewhat addicted to people watching on social media. Spotting the people that are forever hankering for 'likes' and 'followers', the ones that pop on once in a blue moon when they're bored, or are really miffed about something, the ones selling a lifestyle (but who are not, and never will be, influencers), the ones surfing around the popular opinions of the days, in our industry the 'likes' and support which are clearly networking, the genuine people that are bemused by all the hate that goes on, and over the course of the last year I've become fascinated by the people using the various platforms to share (knowingly or not) misinformation to people that are already struggling.  It's like my private town centre bench where I can watch the (cyber) world go by.

Here's the bit that I've never grasped though - the people that simply lie. Now the chances are that they lie in life too, but online the gift of anonymity allows those lies to be ever bigger and potentially more damaging.

In life, just like online, I can't abide liars. I understand the theory that the people lying could be crying out for help etc, but there's no excuse for trying to rob someone of their reputation, and these words online count for a lot more than people realise. In fact just this week I was banging on to my students about the importance of your reputation, and how we should all be fighting to protect 'ours'. 

As Trump proved so brilliantly (and alarmingly) using various social media platforms, say something enough times and with enough conviction and people will start to believe you. We all saw Trump say X at a press briefing one day, then swear that he didn't say it the next day. This gaslighting forces us to doubt ourselves.

Which leads me to the point of the blog - how bloody dangerous some of these people truly are, and leaves me questioning if they actually know what they're saying when they're saying it? Is the kick the fact that they've successfully stolen the most precious thing from us . . . our good name.

Recently I've been in the sad position of watching a friend get their name trashed online.  I was made aware of the situation when their partner contacted me asking me to speak to them as they were so distraught there were real concerns for their safety. Now this is one of those friends that I've known for decades, the type of friendship that has grown up and weathered a lot of dumb behaviour on both sides. Importantly the type of friend that you know would give you an alibi if you suddenly needed to 'bury the body'. So if they had done anything wrong, they 100% would feel safe enough with me to let me know.

In fact my first indication of my friend being so unwell was when I contacted them directly to find out what was going on, only to be sent a novel in return explaining the circumstances around the 'drama' that they were embroiled in. However in reality the situation was absurb. Somebody was trying to ruin the reputation of my friend's business. This person had posted an inflammatory and indeed libellous post up on a local community group's site. This post had descended into alleged stories of other people being unhappy with the service that my mate was providing too. Hell they were even posting photos of 'proof' of my mate's appalling trade. Here's the rub though. . . .all the pictures were fake, the people posting in agreement were not my friend's customers. My friend was devastated. 10 years to build up a successful business and one piece of malicious tittle tattle had descended into something much more sinister and potentially damaging. Here they were swearing blind to me that they didn't know the people posting - they were not their customers!

Of course, I've already been there and bought the T Shirt so I was pre-armed knowing quite how devastating the fake news was going to be. I tried to tell them to stay calm as this storm would be over within a few days, I noted (from experience) that this major news event in their life was probably barely registering a glance from the rest of the world. It doesn't matter though - your mind races, you think that everybody is talking about you, it just drives you bonkers.

The thing is when people lie about you online you have no choice but to let if play out. If you try to defend yourself the pile on gets higher. Your truth was not the first thing that people have heard, therefore the majority of people will assume that you're the one that's lying. We assume that nobody in this world of ours is malicious enough to just . . . well . . . lie. However they are, and we don't actually hear that much about it.

How many times have I read the smart comment of 'if they're lying. . . sue them'? Have you checked out the cost of a libel or slander case? They are notoriously hard to win . . . as the person that 'lied' is protected in law if 'they' believe their own story to be true. To prove that somebody maliciously lied takes a small fortune, so the large majority of people just suck it up and hope that it'll pass. 

My friend was devastated and beside themselves. It didn't matter how much 'common sense' and previous knowledge I threw at them, they couldn't see a way through the mess that these people were creating.  The chatter died down, but for my friend all that noise was still in their head. The paranoia gets to be very real. You assume that everybody is as obsessed with this story as you are.

Thankfully my friend realised that they were getting to be really ill because of it all and booked an appointment to see their GP and booked themselves into a therapist to chat it all through. Some 6 weeks later they're slowly getting back to themselves after a clinical and chemical intervention. 

What about the person that start all of this? Well they disappeared into the cyber universe taking all their lying minions with them too. I dare say that none of them have given it a second thought. 

In the current climate of "I believe the victims" we must attempt to do due diligence around stories shared so freely online. We must remember that we're only ever hearing one person's viewpoint with no context. I'd be the first in line to join the lynch mob for some of the stories that are coming out at the moment, and around 99% of the time I really do just 'believe' what I'm reading. . . but I also remind myself to try and keep some objectivity and curiosity around the fact that it might not be the whole truth. 

I followed the thread that libelled my friend - and it was very convincing. I'd be calling them asking if they'd heard of 'so and so' as their 'story' was really convincing. I kept to my own mantra of remaining curious - but with an increasing regularity the answer would come back - I swear they're just not customers of mine, swiftly followed by a long discussion where I witnessed my friend losing themselves.

I know that the person that's creating 'the list' in our industry is being really careful around this difficult subject - which probably explains why 'the list' is still being compiled. They're staying curious at all times. Please though . . . next time you read somebody's truth online, or hear their truth in the media, also keep in your mind that some people literally . . . lie.

Check in on your friend - trial by social media is harsh, the 'perpetrator' literally has no right of reply. You become the spectre at your reputation's wake. 

#time4change 5 Years On

TW: This blog discusses mental illness, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, anxiety, OCD plus a healthy dose of ignorance about all the above!

Last week I had the absolute pleasure of chatting to Hazel Leishman, one of my 2020 graduates, on an instalive as part of a series that The MTA's been running called "In Conversation". Mostly I just get to catch up with my graduates during these discussions. Sometimes the graduates have asked to use the platform to get certain messages out there eg Eva Bortalis a 2018 grad used it straight away after the George Floyd murder in order to air her views about the then growing BLM movement, or Paris Hoxton, also a 2018 grad who used it to raise awareness of living with bipolar. In fact we've had quite a few mental health awareness discussions, Sarah Hjort (2019) discussed living with anxiety and David Murphy (2017) had a hugely thought provoking chat about living with depression. In fact David's words have really stuck with me. When asked what were his early symptoms of depression his replied without hesitation - always looking happy. A stark reminder that we shouldn't assume that the depressed person who's at most risk, is the one rocking in a corner.

Last year when we started the series Hazel had commented that we should have somebody speaking about Eating Disorders as part of the series.  Now that's easier said than done as I would never ask somebody to speak about a mental illness, the impetus and request must always come from the 'guest'. At the time Hazel dallied with the idea of going 'live', but I actually stopped it, as I didn't feel that she was well enough to do it. Whilst she was clearly over the worse of her own experience at that time, I always feel that the best stories that would have the most positive outcome are the stories from the people that have truly got their illnesses under treatment, or in remission, or indeed cured. So we agreed to shelve it.  Cue Hazel coming back to me this year to tell me how well she had been doing and how she was about to launch a social media platform on which she was going to be open about her own EDs, with the aim of helping people that found themselves in the same position as she had found herself in, and so she was now ready to have the conversation.

So little is known about Eating Disorders, the misconceptions around how they start are legendary, Hazel went straight into myth busting mode, naming from the outset that the majority of EDs come from a place of needing to be in control. In fact they're very similar to OCD insomuch as control is often the major contributing factor.  For sure other things can trigger them, but the widely perceived logic that people just want to look smaller is often miles off the mark (yet I guess easier for people to try and make sense of loved ones starving themselves to death, or binging, or . . . well . . you know the rest). EDs, like OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia are often the ugly side of mental illnesses that people don't really like talking about - they've never made the popular list.

Even after the recent high profile death of Nikki Grahame this insidious illness still managed to hide in plain sight. As a few posts started to go online about the ludicrous situation that people suffering with EDs had to be essentially 'ill enough' to even start treatment (and by 'ill enough' please understand that sometimes that translates to 'too ill to treat effectively) within a few days it had crept away again to a few niche posts. 

Then fast forward to this week and on another social media platform I watched one of those autobiographical "A Day in the Life of a dance/drama/music Student' videos. I always find it interesting to see a day from the students' perspective. What I didn't expect in this specific "A Day in the life of  Dance Student" was this sentence "then we went to get weighed".  In fact I watched the video several times thinking that I must have misheard it.  Then I read the comments. Lots of people had also questioned this part of their 'average day' - even more alarmingly the people posing the question of WTF were "reassured" that this was part of this particular college's strategy to PREVENT eating disorders!! By regularly monitoring the students' weight they could spot an issue before it arose.

I immediately did my usual twitter rant to find out if everybody knew about this practice, but as per usual those posts never really 'take off' and promote the discussion that's actually needed. I mean interestingly pop up a post about wanting to see more 'normal' shaped people in roles and they go viral in a heartbeat, as of course 'self interest' will always prompt a viral response. 

Heigh ho, the post did prompt a few interesting private messages though. So did you know that some colleges and some work places (specifically cruise companies) will make students/casts sign a contract which essentially ties them into a specific weight (give or take a few pounds)? That's right you did read that correctly - people are made to sign a contract to keep them within a certain weight parameter. Let's not discuss hormonal weight flux, or muscle mass etc, let's just pop people on a scale to see how they're doing.  Believe it or not - this is meant to be helping mental health in the workplace or during training. I'm going to chose not to share some of the techniques and secrets that were shared with me that people did in order to get around some of these conditions, as I know that people with EDs are clever sods who are always on the look out for a get around - however let's just say that you should never undermine the intelligence & creativity of a person in the middle of an ED, those illnesses are bloody crafty.

Let's quickly recap back to Hazel's opening gambit - EDs are usually about control. Notice the bloody massive issue here?

However that's not all I've learned recently. I've also discovered that certain cruise companies are STILL not issuing contracts to people who have named that they're on anti-depressants.  I mean it makes sense doesn't it? People that are on a treatment for depression should not be permitted to work in the middle of the ocean.  Far, far better to essentially force people to either lie, or indeed (and I've witnessed this myself) make people chose between a treatment or a job. I mean - that's never named, but I've known people that have chosen to come off a treatment dose that is helping them in order to fulfil a contract on a cruise ship. The thinking being that work, sun and sea will essentially do the work of the medicine, failing to understand that vitamin D helps all of us feel a bit happier, but for many people they require a much more robust chemical treatment in order to recover from a mental illness. Those same people wonder why they're in their dream job, in a luxurious part of the world, having a mental health crisis. 

So next time you're reading all the positive posts about people being more open about mental health and mental illness these days, next time you're celebrating the 50th person you know becoming a Mental Health first aider, please know that at a very basic level, during training and during jobs, our industry has a hell of a long way to go in order to get on top of this epidemic. 

Next time you see the "It's OK not to be OK" mantra that's become so popular, or the "My DMs are open" invitation to chat to an understanding mate, what would be better is if we actually dealt with mental illness (not just look at mental health, it always has to be both, and) at a grass roots level, because you know what's better than being OK? Being well or being in recovery.

This and that

 As BAFTA still feign surprise at the Noel Clarke allegations, I'm struck by the dilemma that we all seem to find ourselves in. . . we all know the names but none of us can do anything with the information. It's not as if people aren't trying, take the recent list put up outside various theatres. A bold move which of course couldn't be shared anywhere publicly for fear of libel action or fear of hindering a police investigation - and so it continues.

I was struck by the dilemma a few times this week as I've watched quite a few of 'those' people rather brazenly posting online about what they're up to, or contributing to other conversations. Like most of us in the industry I've watched them go from job to job with (seemingly) no repercussions from past actions. I literally shudder when I see some of the things that 'they're' involved with as they raise serious safeguarding concerns, yet somehow we're helpless to stop them.

There's so much noise at the moment thanks to the Guardian article and everybody seems determined to make a change - but is such a systemic change even possible? Take 'that agent' that everybody discusses with disdain, the one that's never named, but as soon as a post goes out discussing them, everybody knows who it's referring to. Why does 'that agent' still secure clients? Surely enough people know about their reputation to warn performers off them. Well interestingly seemingly not - as they're still invited to drama college productions with a view to representing the most vulnerable in our industry - the graduates. CDs still use them, even though they might have named privately that they don't actually like dealing with them. Hands are tied and the cycle continues.

Or let's take 'that creative' that we all know. The stories and anecdotes increase every year, every so often somebody will hint heavily at them online, we all think that everybody knows . . . yet they still get the gig don't they?  'That producer' or 'that production company' will keep using them even though they've witnessed the fallout.  Even more interesting is if you speak to the powers that be about this person's reputation - they simply shrug their shoulders and keep hiring 'them'. 

The particularly interesting thing here is that some of the people that are shouting for these people to be named & shamed actually know the names themselves and STILL use them. Hoping I guess that 'they'll' be OK in their production. So some of the people trying to incite change are confusingly the people that are facilitating the toxicity that we all want removed from the industry thereby perpetuating the cycle. What a bizarre industry we work in

Or what about 'that actor' that we all know - the one that is high maintenance, who treats everybody else in the company like they're sh*t? Well. . . everybody except the director or the producer possibly. How do they go from show to show creating the most toxic atmosphere? We all know 'them'. . . just like the CDs do, and the production companies - but 'they' still get hired. Their bums on seat value is higher than the welfare of the company. Regardless of how loud the shout for change is, I guess theatre is a commercial venture so it'll be profit above people.. So in fairness to these toxic individuals who walk amongst us in plain sight why would they change? Are they actually receiving any feedback? 

All students love 'that teacher' that will socialise with them as they're just too cool for skool aren't they? It's the sign of an adult education environment when you can have a boozy evening with the 'teacher'.  Where's the boundary between professionalism and personal? As we've heard quite a lot recently, these blurred boundaries can very often turn into something much more sinister. Yet still, it continues.

All of us can make poor choices, all of us can make mistakes, but we all also have the possibility to change and evolve, but how can anybody do that if they're neither receiving the feedback plus continuing to secure the jobs? What impetus is there for self-reflection and change? Surely we want to create a safe environment where this feedback can be given and heard. For people to have the opportunity to do the work on themselves. The chances are that they're not 'happy' either, and their own trauma is coming out sideways perpetuating abusive cycles.  If the actions are criminal then we should be an industry where people are encouraged and supported to report incidents to the Police, not the industry that likes to sweep it under the carpet and pretend that it didn't happen.

Do we talk about 'that' casting director who seems to have missed the fact that the casting couch is yesterday's news? We all know 'them', as the Principal of a drama college I warn my graduates about 'them'. Are we to believe that 'we' all know 'them' but the production companies that hire them are simply not aware of their reputation? 

It truly feels like a Catch 22 situation. Throw in an added caveat that as small a percentage as there is, some people will also lie about their experiences. So we also have to proceed with caution on hearing and acting on rumours. That said it shouldn't take 20 people coming forward about an individual for serious questions and investigations to take place.

Catch 22 appears to be the mantra of the industry though as I wrote about quite recently here. It's really hard to see a way out of the environment that has dominated certain areas of the industry for decades. Today the focus is on Noel Clarke, however, he is definitely not alone. It's time to widen that spotlight and reform the industry.