Good morning, good afternoon, good evening or goodnight, wherever you may be! I'm back!
I do hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year, I know I did! :)
So, 2013 started straight off with rehearsals. Yep, the evening of new years day found me back at Starlight HQ rehearsing for 'Fame'! I was slightly worried about how much I had missed due to being Bedford-bound roaring and howling like a Wild Thing for a few weeks, but luckily there wasn't too much to catch up with and by the time the performances arrived, I knew what I was doing for 90% of the show!
It was glorious to be back in a huge theatre again, even when we had a twelve hour rehearsal working with the set(!)
The two days of performances flew by, but we all had a fabulous time, partying in the dressing room between shows and stuffing our faces with chinese food! The show was good fun too! Despite having missed lots of rehearsals, I felt really sad at the end of every performance, it felt like it was all over before it had really begun. I even shed a few real tears at the end of the final performance during the funeral scene, so much so that I couldn't sing properly!
But just like that, it was all over and I'm back to my lazy ways of searching for jobs while snuggled in bed all day, and not getting dressed until mid-afternoon!
Speaking of job searching, I had my second job centre interview of the year yesterday. I've been going there for a while now, and so I'm being referred to the 'Work Programme', whatever that is.
I sat down with my 'advisor' and almost immediately I was asked if I had an agent. I replied 'No, not at the moment.' I was then asked why I didn't have an agent. I was slightly stunned by her questioning. She asked me in a manner that made me feel like I was stupid. It was as if she was saying that I wasn't a real actor because I don't have one. It didn't seem to matter that I've found all of my own acting work for the past five years, and many of my friends hardly get any work through their agent anyway.
She asked me how I was finding work to apply for. I told her that I am on various casting websites and that companies that I have worked for before have asked me to go back. Despite this, she still insisted on printing off a list of websites that would be helpful to me. I smiled politely and said and did what I had to do to get out of there as quickly as I could.
This afternoon I thought that I would take a look at this list to see if any would indeed be helpful. To be fair, the list did have some good websites on them, but they were already ones that I have my profile on and am a frequent user of.
And then I found some beauties. Sites like 'angelstages.com', 'istarnext.com' and 'famestreet.com'.
The names alone were enough to put me off but I had a browse just so that I could tell the lady that I had actually done what was asked of me, she could even ask me questions about it if she wished.
And there they were, all of the fame-hungry wannabes dressed in bikinis, with their duck-face photos taken in the mirror on their iPhones, inches of make-up on and even more inches of flesh on show. I wasn't entirely sure my headshot would fit in.
I kept with it and clicked on the 'jobs' pages. There it was, the first 'casting' at the top of the page: 'Contestants wanted for HUGE reality TV show'.
Is this what life has become for TV? Of course it is, I know that, I'm not stupid. Don't get me wrong, I love watching 'Strictly Come Dancing' and 'The Biggest Loser', but seeing the profile pictures of the people on the site, I could probably guess that it would be something along the lines of TOWIE, which I have NEVER watched and never will.
I was quite angry just looking at the site, and then my anger levels rose when I realised that the job centre actually want me to look at these sites in order to get work.
I moved away from everything for three years of my life to a completely different area of the country, not knowing a single person who would be there, spent thousands of pounds training to become an actor, have worked my arse off for the last five years to get a decent acting CV, and now you're pointing me in the direction of a website where the best 'jobs' on there are to become a reality TV star or to be in 'the next big girl group'?
You just have to look at me to know that I'm not a blonde bimbo type who will take her top off for five minutes of fame, so why on earth would I be interested in something like that? Last year, like thousands of others, I auditioned to be a part of the Paralympics Opening Ceremony. I got in, I knuckled down in rehearsals like everybody else and didn't even mention what I did for a living unless people asked me. I wanted to do something special with my life, and that performance is the best thing I have ever done in all of my 27 years. Yes, I might joke about how I was seen on TV, and laugh along when people make jokes about how I'm a 'celebrity', but it's not about that. I never in a million years thought that I would be shown on TV, I was there to do something that I love and that I want to do for the rest of my life.
So if people ask me if I want to be on television, my answer will be 'yes'. But I will not be seen on a reality TV show, I want to be in a high quality drama series thank you very much. I know I'm good at what I do, that's why people keep hiring me. So you can stick your ridiculous 'casting' websites where the sun doesn't shine, I'm going to carry on doing what I do, and I'll get there, agent or not.
Nxxx
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