what showbusiness is...?

For those wanting to enter the glamourous world of acting, let me burst your bubble: it's not glamourous. Even for someone as low down on the ladder as me knows that the glamourous side of the industry is only a very, very small percentage of it. Let's forget famous folk, because they are the vast, vast minority. In my experience, being an actor seems to be about 90% of looking for work (including networking, trawling through job specs, schlepping to auditions), and maybe 10% actually working - if you're lucky. never mind fame, you cannot do this for fame and expect it to just happen, unless you're the offspring of someone who's already done all the groundwork, and already opened all the doors. Even then, it still takes work.

So, as an ME sufferer, working-class, overweight, and over 40 - my options are limited as it is, and finding the jobs even harder. But.... as my other half kindly reminded me, i'm not one to give up, even if I feel like this year has been a bit of a mortuary, work-wise. my confidence is quivering, which contributes to the anxiety of actors, you start asking yourself - am I any good? can everyone see that i'm awful, but me?

rather than let this eat me alive, because, it can, it's time to take a look at myself and see where I can improve my confidence. I just want to act. the business side of show' i'm not so good at, and that is probably a large part of my problem. I think I need to re-hone my skills - that will bring confidence. I need to try harder to network (difficult, as i'm quite shy and reserved) - that will bring opportunity.

I decided a while ago that I wasn't going to do theatre any more, but, I miss it, and I think I need that. I need the practice, the creative outlet, and the immediacy of (hopefully) positive feedback.

I've started to maybe think about creating my own work.... hmm... I've been inspired by a particularly good show I saw at the Battersea Art Centre last week, "Ugly Chief" - a living and loving eulogy from artist Victoria Melody to her father, and involving her father. I was in floods of tears (when I wasn't laughing!), as I suppose it could have been the show I could have written for and with my own dad. Obviously the show was very personal, so the references would have been different, but the emotions are definitely universal. If you have a chance to see this show near you, do it - but take a couple of boxes of hankies with you.

Anyway... the rest of the year threatens to be quiet, so i'm going to start preparing for a busier 2018, and get my acting fitness up, and to hopefully be in theatre again - soon! I have had some new headshots, etc done, I am starting to sing again - at least, in a contemporary choir, at the moment (http://www.realvoices.co.uk/). We have our first show coming up on 11 December 2017, at St Pancras Church in Euston, London. Please try to come - all proceeds go to the Crisis charity.

so, in my experience, at least, showbusiness is mainly business and a little bit of show, and the amount of business you have to deal with to give yourself the best opportunity to show. the business of self-employment, the business of self-investment, of networking, of promotion, of sales, of competition, of constant improvement and growth.