Life and Times of a new graduate working in theatre

So this is it, my first blog entry. Hello to all. I should introduce myself. I am a huge theatre enthusiast, I love it. I love the creativity of it and the drama that you just don’t get on screen. Since graduating last year I have been lucky enough to make a living by hanging on the coat tails of the creative types who make theatre happen. I am currently a theatre journalist and part time critic, as well as an aspiring playwright. Very aspiring, I have yet to get past act one with any play I have put pen to paper for.

In theatre terms I am a newbie. So is it really possible to make a living and a lifestyle out of loving theatre? Well, I aim to find out. If it is possible, I will let you know how. So far I make fairly scrubby wages pulling a full time job and doing a bit of critic work on the side. It’s not great, but it ain’t bad either. Most of my friends sold their souls within months of leaving Uni and bought into the utopian dream that we were all going to get out there and change the world. ‘Who wants to be in banking?’ we cried on graduation day, only to watch as one by one the pressure started getting to us and idealistic students were sucked into the vortex of figures, suits and ‘professional attitudes’ known as the city.

Well, all this seems to have happened to everyone but me. Actually there is me and one particularly courageous friend who wants to make it as an ASM so badly that she is sleeping on friends sofas while she slaves away for free doing what she loves. Courageous, bold, and, agreed upon over copious amounts of wine with other wage slaves, pretty foolish. ‘Doesn’t she need her own space? It’s very well now, but what happens when she is thirty and still kipping on our floors with no real office experience, it won’t be so funny then will it?’ How did this happen to us? How have we gone from care free arts students to finger wagging depressives who shrug our shoulders on a Sunday night and say, ‘it’s the way the world works, we just have to get used to it I suppose’. So is she right, are my friends in the city right, can I make a living from writing about theatre? Well, I don’t know yet. I guess we will all have to wait and see.