SUSAN ELKIN visited TheatreCraft at the Royal Opera House to join hundreds of young people investigating ‘other’ career opportunities in the theatre
It’s dead easy – if you’re eight or eleven or fourteen, say – to catch the theatre bug. You see adults, and occasionally children apparently having a ball on stage and suddenly you want, desperately want, to join them. So you worry and annoy your teachers and parents by pestering about classes, summer schools and vocational courses – anything that could be a route to feet on boards.
TheatreCraft ROH – Apprenticeships. Photo Alex Rumford
It is much less easy to understand how live theatre really works and to get your juvenile head round the fact that for every one performing on stage there are, if it’s a big show, another nine tucked away out of sight backstage or having been involved in the creation of the piece. Theatre can’t happen without stage managers, crew, dressers, lighting and sound operators, flymen (or women), designers, writers, directors, producers, front of house and many many more too numerous to list exhaustively here. It’s an iceberg industry. And the good news is that there are hundreds of well paid, relatively reliable jobs in theatre beyond and behind performing.
So how do we get this message across to young people? Enter TheatreCraft the annual careers fair entirely devoted to “beyond the stage” opportunities. This year’s event, the tenth so far, was held at Royal Opera House on November 20 and over a thousand 16-25 year olds sailed enthusiastically in through the doors, some in school and college groups but many as information seeking individuals. Since its first event, TheatreCraft has admitted over 7,500 young people who have chatted to 300 different exhibitors and attended 500 workshops and 950 one-to-one sessions. The statistics are impressive.
At the 2015 event in November, I spoke to Robyn Bennett and Lewis Mullins, both fairly recent graduates in Drama and Theatre from Royal Holloway college and both passionate about wanting to work in theatre. “I’m working as an agent’s assistant at the moment which is giving me terrific insights into the industry” says Robyn. She aims eventually to produce work of her own. “Learning and participation is my area” says Lewis who is currently on an internship with Point Theatre in Southampton and very mindful that education departments are now crucial to many theatres and companies so jobs are available. Both were at TheatreCraft in search of information, contacts and opportunities.
Or take the group of Royal Opera House apprentices who were manning a stand nearby. Training on the job in areas such as armoury, costume and scenic construction, they were full of enthusiasm for being paid (very modestly) to learn on the job from the country’s top experts as opposed to sitting in classrooms shelling out fees. They are based either at the ROH itself or at its spacious and impressive production workshops at Purfleet in Essex.
National Youth Theatre, whose top tier 2015 16-strong rep company wowed West End audiences with three plays last term, has 7,000 members. Of these about 800 are not performers. They learn other theatrical skills such as stage management through working with NYT. I spoke to two of the outgoing rep company members who were keen to stress the breadth of what NYT offers beyond acting opportunities and training.
TheatreCraft Royal Opera House. Photo Alex Rumford
And while I was busy chatting to exhibitors in two big spaces, going on elsewhere in the building were informative seminars run by a huge range of theatre practitioners. Among many options were Zoe Briggs on theatre management and admin, James Quaife on theatre producing, Rob Barham on armoury, Jo Caird on theatre journalism and James Seabright on theatre producing. There were 65 different workshops on offer during the day – which have to be pre-booked and for which a modest fee is charged. Admission to the exhibitor area is free. At the same time 32 experts were on hand for pre-booked individual advice sessions.
As an information gathering event TheatreCraft is impressively eclectic. Congratulations to TRH Masterclass, Mousetrap Theatre Projects, Royal Opera House, Society of London Theatre and Creative and Cultural Skills who, with sponsors, have worked so hard to develop it into the event it now is.
It would make sense to take 16+ groups – drama classes and so on – whose passion for theatre is bubbling nicely – to TheatreCraft and to put it in your diary as an annual event. It is also a good place for teachers to gather information which they can feed back to younger groups too. You certainly do not have to perform in order to be an important cog in the theatre making machine.
TheatreCraft 11 will be held in autumn 2016 date tbc. www.theatrecraft.org @TheatreCraft
So You Want to Work in Theatre by Susan Elkin (Nick Hern Books, 2013)
All About Theatre by Marina McIntyre/National Theatre (Walker Books 2015)