Tarana Burke began ‘me too’ with young Black women and girls from low wealth communities. She developed culturally-informed curriculum to discuss sexual violence within the Black community and in society at large. Similarly, the ‘me too’ movement seeks to support folks working within their communities to attend to the specific needs of their community/communities, i.e. supporting disabled trans survivors of color working to lead and craft events/toolkits/etc. with other disabled trans survivors. Together, they are uplifting and supporting each other to strengthen a global movement to interrupt sexual violence. (1)

In less than six months, because of the viral #metoo hashtag, a vital conversation about sexual violence has been thrust into the national dialogue. What started as local grassroots work has expanded to reach a global community of survivors from all walks of life and helped to de-stigmatize the act of surviving by highlighting the breadth and impact of a sexual violence worldwide.

Their work continues to focus on helping those who need it to find entry points for individual healing and galvanizing a broad base of survivors to disrupt the systems that allow for the global proliferation of sexual violence.

Their goal is also to reframe and expand the global conversation around sexual violence to speak to the needs of a broader spectrum of survivors. Young people, queer, trans, and disabled folks, Black women and girls, and all communities of color. They want perpetrators to be held accountable and we want strategies implemented to sustain long term, systemic change. (1)

Weinstein, 67, was convicted in New York City of third-degree rape and first-degree criminal sexual act.

He was cleared of the most serious count of predatory sexual assault but faces up to 25 years in prison.

He still faces charges in Los Angeles of assaulting two women in 2013.

At least 80 women had accused him of sexual misconduct stretching back decades, including actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman and Salma Hayek.

The allegations were at the centre of the #MeToo movement that inspired women to go public with misconduct allegations against powerful men.

The movie executive once enjoyed phenomenal success with Oscar winners such Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, The King's Speech and Shakespeare in Love.

Reports say he was taken to New York's Bellevue Hospital suffering from chest pains after the verdict was announced.

He was due to be moved to prison on Riker's Island to await sentencing on March 11.
The jury of seven men and five women reached their verdict on Monday morning, the fifth day of deliberations.

Weinstein - who denied all charges - was convicted of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006 and raping Jessica Mann, a former aspiring actress, in 2013. The judge ordered him sent to jail immediately.
But the jury acquitted him on two counts of predatory sexual assault, which carried a potential life sentence, and first-degree rape of Mann.

In the minutes after the verdict, Weinstein showed no emotion as he talked to his lead lawyer Donna Rotunno. He will be sentenced on 11 March.
The third-degree rape charge in New York is defined as engaging in sexual intercourse with a person who is incapable of consent, or under age 17, or who has not given consent for a reason other than the inability to consent.

Prosecutors portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who used his position of power in Hollywood to manipulate and attack women.

The defence team said sex between the movie executive and the accusers was consensual, and that the accusers used the relations to advance their careers. The allegations amounted to "regret renamed as rape", the defence said. Two of the accusers kept in contact with Weinstein and had sex with him after the alleged attacks, they pointed out.

How did we get here?

She testified that he backed her into a bedroom, held her down on the bed and forced himself on her.

Ms Mann said that she found herself in an "extremely degrading" relationship with him that did not involve intercourse until he raped her in a New York City hotel room in 2013.

She said he was a "Jekyll and Hyde" figure who could be charming in public but showed his dark side when they were alone.

Another one of Weinstein's accusers, Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra, told jurors he raped her in her apartment one night in the mid-1990s.

Weinstein accuser: 'No' was a trigger for him.

Her allegation was too old to be charged as a separate crime, but prosecutors used it in an attempt to demonstrate that the accused was a repeat sexual offender.

Following the verdict, Ms Sciorra said: "I spoke for myself and with the strength of the 80-plus victims of Harvey Weinstein in my heart."Three other also women testified they were lured to apparent work meetings with Weinstein, then sexually assaulted.

"The fight is not over," Ms Rotunno told reporters outside the courthouse. "Harvey is unbelievably strong. He took it like a man and he knows we will continue to fight for him and he knows that this is not over."

She said her client was disappointed, but "mentally tough".

Rose McGowan told the BBC's Newshour programme: "The little girl I was when I was hurt, she's ecstatic...This is a great day. The trash has been taken out."

The actress, who was an early Weinstein accuser, added: "The fact that we are white women and attractive and of some means and it still took this many of us to even get him to have one day in court - just tells you…how almost impossible it is to even be heard, period, let alone [get] any kind of conviction."

In my practice, I have seen firsthand the broadening and development of sexual harassment law. A recent client’s situation—modified slightly to remove identifying information—is illustrative of conduct that has come to be recognized as unlawful sexual harassment over the past twenty years. This case highlights the influence of the unfolding #MeToo and #TimesUp movements on employer responses to sexual harassment complaints.

Laura worked as a designer for an advertising agency, reporting directly to its creative director, Paul. Her team was comprised mostly of women. Paul, a gay man, regularly expressed misogynistic views about women. He used sexist slurs, mocked women’s appearances if he did not consider them beautiful or thin enough, and he denigrated their work. Laura felt sick to her stomach every time she had to interact with Paul. But as the primary earner for her family, she was too afraid of retaliation to speak up. She simply could not afford to lose her job. All of the other women working there appeared to quietly tolerate the abuse, and upper management was aware of Paul’s conduct but did nothing to stop it.

Over several months, Laura found that the stress and discomfort from being around Paul were affecting other aspects of her life. She did not have much of an appetite and lost about ten pounds. She suffered from insomnia for the first time in her life. She found herself snapping at her husband and children. And she dreaded going to work each morning. She went to her doctor, who diagnosed her with anxiety and put her on a medical leave for a few weeks. It was then that she decided to consult with counsel to see if what Paul was doing was illegal and if there was a way for her to get out of this predicament.

After she retained me, I sent a letter to the company, describing Paul’s conduct and their legal exposure. The company, in turn, provided the letter to their outside counsel. Outside counsel immediately recognized the problem and agreed that a negotiated exit from the company was in everyone’s best interest. Laura, with severance in hand (and a confidentiality agreement that contained a mutual nondisparagement provision), left to find her next job. I do not know whether Paul ever suffered any consequences for his actions.

The following year, Laura found another job at a similar company. Days into her new role, she was shocked to discover that her new supervisor, Rick, was not much of an improvement over Paul. He, too, was overtly hostile toward his female subordinates. He belittled and demeaned them and made sexist comments about women in general. Once again, Laura was filled with dread.

But, in the time between when Laura left her prior job and started the new one, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements had taken hold. This time, inspired by the movements, Laura decided that she would not suffer in silence. Over the course of a couple of weeks, she made sure to note down all the sexist comments and hostile behaviors that Rick directed at the women in the office. Laura then went to human resources at her new job and made a formal complaint, sharing these examples and listing out the names of the witnesses who were present each time.

The human resources department acted swiftly. It suspended Rick, conducted a thorough investigation, and despite his critical role at the company, ultimately terminated him. Laura felt empowered and vindicated, and the other women, who had tolerated Rick’s behavior for years, expressed their gratitude.

Twenty years ago, many courts would not have recognized Paul or Rick’s behaviors as creating a hostile work environment that would be actionable as sexual harassment. Neither man was acting out of sexual desire, and most of their comments were not of a sexual nature. Today, however, there is no dispute that such conduct, if proven, would be actionable.

Despite the law’s protections, however, sexual harassment persists. Fifty-eight percent of women surveyed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have experienced sex-based harassment. Workplaces at greater risk for sexual harassment include those with “high-value” employees, significant power disparities, younger employees, or homogenous workforces. They also include workplaces where employees do not conform to gendered norms, or focus on customer service or client satisfaction, and workplaces that encourage drinking, or are isolated and decentralized.

My own experiences bear this out. I have represented clients in all of these situations, including clients who were sexually harassed by company owners and managers (who had free rein to do as they saw fit without anyone to hold them accountable), clients who were among only a few women in male-dominated environments (across the salary spectrum—from surgeons to warehouse workers), clients who worked in companies where “bro culture” prevailed and drinking was encouraged, and clients whose supervisors were allowed to get away with nonsexual abuse because it was not seen as “sexual harassment.”

Compounding this dismal reality, most of this sexual harassment goes unreported. For example, one study found that gender-harassing conduct was almost never reported; unwanted physical touching formally reported only 8% of the time; and sexually coercive behavior reported by only 30% of women who experienced it. When harassment is reported, the consequences can be dire: an estimated 75% of employees who speak out against workplace mistreatment faced some form of retaliation. Reporting “at best does not make things worse and at worst leads to retaliation, minimization of complaints, and additional injury to the reporter.” I have seen retaliation that ranges from the overt—termination—to the more subtle and difficult-to-prove. It has taken the form of increased scrutiny, withdrawal of support, lower ratings on performance reviews, changes in assignments, changes in work schedules, and subtle aggressions that can undermine a person’s security and success. Given the likelihood of retaliation, it is no surprise that most people who are sexually harassed believe that the safest course of action is inaction.

Most sexual harassment cases that come my way have a retaliation component. Potential clients often contact me after trying to resolve the matter in their workplaces internally, only to have the situation deteriorate. The remainder do not have faith in their employer’s’ internal reporting processes, are too afraid to go through it on their own, or feel that the situation is irreparable and want out.

Once again, however, change is afoot. Even one year ago, Laura’s complaint at her new company may not have received the same response. This is especially true because of Rick’s high-level ’role at the company. Rarely have I seen companies terminate someone as high-ranking and valuable as Rick for such conduct. However, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have galvanized the public, leading people to speak out who would not have done so before, while motivating many employers to respond lest they face the consequences of inaction. These movements have created space and an appetite for the expansion of employee rights and protections." (3)

California first passed the predecessor to the FEHA in 1959. It prohibited discrimination in employment based on race, religion, color, national origin, and ancestry. Over the years, the FEHA has been expanded to protect employees from other forms of discrimination and harassment, including mistreatment based on age, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and military and veteran status. The FEHA expressly prohibits harassment based on protected categories, including sexual harassment, and has done so for decades.

Federal civil rights law operates differently. Unlike the FEHA, Title VII does not expressly address sexual harassment or any other type of workplace harassment. Rather, courts have interpreted Title VII’s prohibition on discriminating against any individual with respect to the “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,” as including harassment that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment.

The Supreme Court has laid out the elements necessary for a plaintiff to prevail on a claim for hostile work environment sexual harassment under Title VII:

1) He or she was a member of a protected group

2) He or she was subjected to unwelcome behavior

3) This behavior was “because of . . . sex”

4) The harassing conduct was “sufficiently severe or pervasive ‘to alter the conditions of [the victim’s] employment and create an abusive working environment"

5) The employer should bear responsibility for the harassing conduct.

California courts have adopted the same standards under the FEHA." (4)

The efforts are being backed by MPs including Luciana Berger, who chaired a meeting of the Performers’ Alliance All-Party Parliamentary Group on July 10, attended by performers, other entertainment unions, the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre.

In a blog for HuffPost to coincide with the session, Berger said: “We need new protections and new rights to be established. We value our arts and the contribution they make. We must value our artists too, and ensure no one’s mental health is affected by outdated and exploitative practices.”

Equity, the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and the Musicians’ Union will now work with the parliamentary group to further raise the profile of mental health as an issue that must be addressed within performing arts workplaces.

The union has already begun hosting mental health and well-being drop-in sessions at the Actors Centre in London, as part of a drive to offer more support for performers.

The parliamentary meeting was also attended by employers, such as the West End’s Dominion Theatre, which has started running a programme of in-house well-being sessions for its workforce.

Among those speaking were actor Tanya Moodie, who said: “In the entertainment industry we are experts at veneer. By that, I mean there seems to be a premium placed on appearing successful when we are not working – for example, the advice I was given early in my career was to act and dress like I didn’t need the job no matter how broke I was and how often I’d been rejected – and being grateful when we are working. This includes never being ‘off’ due to sickness, exhaustion, childcare issues or injury.”

“Clearly we’re all here today because there is no easy answer. The best we can do is weave more stitching into the safety nets within our network in the hope of preventing more of our beloved colleagues from falling through the gaps,” she added.

Moodie also suggested there should be easy signposts for people needing immediate help, such as a link on Equity’s homepage to the mental health charity Mind.

Last month, a free helpline to provide mental health and well-being support was set up for theatre professionals. It can be accessed 24 hours a day by phone or email.

In 2016, a spate of suicides in the sector prompted the launch of ArtsMinds, a website aimed at supporting people in the industry suffering from mental health issues. (31)

But before we get ahead of ourselves, and offend any more maths teachers, there’s something worth reflecting on. If you want a career in the arts – as an actor, say, to use one example – get ready.

You’ll pay the audition fees for drama school, just to be seen (if you can afford them that is. If not, good luck). You’ll prepare, perform your heart out, and be awarded a place. You’ll train hard for years, hoping to be spotted, and then… you’re out in the world. You’ll join the queue for auditions, trying to get work, saddled with debt, probably working other jobs to make ends meet. You’ll try to weather the knockbacks, waiting for an opportunity. You land a job, you perform every night and build a new family with your company. Twelve weeks later – it’s over. You’re unemployed, and it starts again. Searching for the next job. Who knows the next time that someone will say yes to you?  

There’s more. Added to this lifestyle of instability and uncertainty, there's the fact your pay is low or maybe even non-existent, the unsociable hours mean you’ve barely seen your friends, family or partner, and someone's written a tweet saying that they never thought that Hedda Gabbler was that shrieky, and to be honest, a bit fat. 

The conditions that come with working in the arts, be that as an actor, musician, writer, or anything inbetween, can be precarious and very stressful. Do we reflect enough on the huge burden this can place on somebody’s mental health? One in four people in the UK will experience mental health issues at some point their life; we must be alert to the fact that the nature of some of these industries may have their own impact.

Cal Strode from the Mental Health Foundation said that “conditions in the arts and entertainment industry can often undermine workers’ mental health and wellbeing, with insecure contracts, low rate of pay and anti-social working hours. Further compounding harsh working conditions, performing artists are often asked to work for free, or ‘for exposure’. Maintaining a healthy sense of self can be difficult if your work, passion and skills are consistently devalued in this way.”

He continued: “A 2015 report by Victoria University in Australia found that performing arts workers experience symptoms of anxiety ten times higher than the general population, and depression symptoms five times higher, saying that these statistics can be directly attributed to financial insecurity and poor working conditions.”

The possibility for mental health to be adversely affected by the conditions working in the industry was recently recognised when the charity ArtsMinds was set up. After a number of suicides in the industry, Equity, The Stage, Spotlight and the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine collaborated to create a resource and a space for those seeking support for mental health issues. 

“Depression and other mental health problems have always been issues for those who work in our industries,” said Malcolm Sinclair, actor and president of Equity. “The stress of short term contracts, irregular work, frequent rejection and the basic pressure to perform can all make life extremely difficult. The great advance is that people now talk about it rather than hiding it away like a guilty secret. It is after all an illness like any other and needs to be treated.” 

“ArtsMinds is leading the fight and Equity is proud to support it; in fact, it’s an obligation to our members that we do so,” he said. “Resources must be in place for those in need to quickly find support. When called upon, the Union immediately responded. There is a lot of working to be done.”

Speaking to a number of different people working within the arts industry, it was clear that mental health struggles were common. Whilst everyone’s story was different, all had one thing in common: they were unsure about what support was available for them. 

One actress who wished to remain anonymous told me that she suffered from depression for a period of time at drama school. She was keen to stress that she didn’t attribute this to the course, but is now able to see the difficulty in applying yourself as an actor can be when you are experiencing mental health problems.

“Your tool is yourself and your self is confused and lost. No other form of professional training is based so heavily on self-examination,” she said. “Every time I received feedback on what I was doing I took it as an extreme criticism, rather than the simple observation that it was. It was as if I had a tape player in my head that converted what anybody said to me into the words ‘you’re horrible, you’re awful, you’re rubbish, I don’t like you.’”

She said that with support from the school and her family, as well as a course of SSRIs she began to successfully recover. One of her coping mechanisms has been having structure and staying busy – “and herein lies the problem as a professional actor. The career so often doesn’t lend itself to structure and busy-ness.”

She says that her self-worth drops when she isn’t using the skills and talents she believes are her strongest attributes, which made a recent year without work particularly hard. “When there is nowhere to channel that energy I guess it gets converted into anxiety or dread. God, the dread. And yes, you can send countless emails and go to the theatre and take classes and pitch projects but believe me after even a few months of rejection it feels as though you are simply throwing all that energy into a blackhole. You become drained and disillusioned. You feel entirely powerless.” 

Hearing ‘no’ after an audition had never been a problem before, because “after five years of decent work, I believed the yes was always going to come, but this year I lost that belief. And each no crushed me.”

Some attitudes don’t contribute to feeling able to admit you’re finding it tough. “It is believed that these feelings are par for the course; ‘you knew what you were signing up for’. ‘But you’ve worked loads, it’s someone else’s turn’. ‘That’s showbiz’. ‘Come back to me when it’s been two years, love’. These are real responses from friends,” she says. “But the struggle isn’t just a cliche when it is in fact your reality. There should be more room for people to discuss the difficulties of this industry without fear of their feelings being dismissed or belittled.” 

She cites the Honest Actor blog and podcasts as the best example of an outlet for being able to talk in this way, but “in terms of accessible help, counselling, support? If that exists, I haven’t come across it.” 

Whilst working as an actress, she had another job to support herself, “but my status with them has always been informal, and in January they said they couldn’t keep me on and that final safety net of continuity was pulled from under me.”

Although she was still able to work for them intermittently, “I was in no position to negotiate any terms – I have worked for them on and off for five years and never received any holiday pay – because I was still desperately clinging to the hope that an acting job would come and keeping my position flexible made that hope real. To switch to a contract with set hours that I couldn’t slot auditions into would have felt like a nail in the coffin for my career.” 

Taking on a low-paid acting role recently meant she had to go through “a period of about six weeks of working seven days a week in order to be able to afford to do the play. But honestly, compared to the anxiety and dread I felt for the 10 or so months leading up to it, the stress of balancing the books in order to do what I love was easy; it was actually a welcome concern. It gave me a purpose and structure and finally a channel and release for all that anxious energy.”

Loz Garratt is a musician who has experienced struggles with depression. He says that “the nature of freelance work is precarious anyway, and with something as unsuccessfully unionised as music, the unpredictability of scheduled work has definitely sometimes made things worse for me.”

Lots of time sitting around during the day and anti-social hours aren’t conducive to a positive mental state, he says, along with the attitudes of other people towards his work. “I think sometimes your sense of self can get a bit battered by feeling that what you do is dismissed by a lot of people for not being real. They associate people who play music for a living as ‘wasters’ – and there is a feeling that whilst people love and enjoy live music, theatre or art, they don’t see it as a full-time career or think we deserve to be paid well for it.” 

Conditions around touring were hard work – Garratt says that being away from his support network was difficult, and it put a strain on his relationship. “It was just generally fairly overwhelming. Lack of sleep, sometimes not being able to eat well and a sense of claustrophobia are very common while touring.” 

He lists exercise and meditation as some of his biggests coping mechanisms, and also being able to be upfront with his bandmates. “I can recognise now when I need a bit of time to myself to reset, and I’m open about that. I find it also takes the pressure off me to be ‘on form’.”

Having therapy “definitely helped me see not to wrap my personality up in what I do and realise they are separate things. Nowadays I feel my sense of self-worth is spread a little wider,” he says. “I know that I could really stack a huge gig or have a huge argument with someone in a rehearsal for example and I’m still a fundamentally good human being, and that whilst I love music, it’s not the be all and end all.” 

Conversations are starting to take place about mental health in the industry, but “it’s definitely still the elephant in the room,” he says. “There’s huge alcoholism in the classical music and West End scenes which I’m convinced is largely due to numb anxiety, or as a coping mechanism for being depressed.”

“I also think it’s still such a male dominated industry, and that presents its own problems. Part of the reason that it took me so long to seek help was that I had a typically ‘male’ mindset of ‘I should be able to sort this out myself’, and I would largely consider myself to be unburdened of feeling the pressures to fall into my gender stereotype!”

Annie Siddons, who recently took her show How Not to Live in Suburbia to the Edinburgh Fringe, adds that the highs and lows of working in the arts can take their toll.

“The highs are incredibly high,” she says, from feeling you’ve touched people to getting full houses and good reviews,” which is one of the reasons people stick it out. The lows are very low. For all the factors already mentioned, the fact you’re completely the driver of your own work, that you work very long hours doing about six people’s jobs, that you can feel very unsupported by any kind of infrastructure.” 

Some areas – live art, comedy, cabaret and spoken word – can be open spaces for conversations around mental health. “But theatre can be pretty macho and gung ho, because the show must go on mentality is predicated on overriding how you’re feeling, temporarily, to do your job, and that’s important,” Siddons says. There’s also an issue with the structure of traditional rehearsals: “it’s a Victorian, male, capitalist model – the long hours culture and the short rehearsal periods.”

Jonathan Antoine, an opera singer who came second in the 2012 series of Britain’s Got Talent, had a breakdown whilst at school, from which point he started to have therapy. Whilst exceptionally grateful for the strong support network he has had, he says “I do not, however, believe the creative industries are conducive to a positive mental state.”

He says that it can become easy to get downtrodden when you don’t get the response you want for your work, and cites his experiences with reality TV as part of the problem too. “I have a strong core fanbase but the overwhelming popularity (74 million YouTube views and counting) that came with Britain’s Got Talent didn’t last,” he says. “In an industry where a new artist cannot shift records even with YouTube and live TV metrics like that, it is very, very easy to beat yourself up and feel that a lack of success is your own fault.”

Performance-maker Sophie Winter, who has had anxiety for the past 15 years, says that being in the arts can be really isolating. Without formal structures like a HR department, “you have to rely on friends and family, and that’s a bit tough because sometimes they might not get it,” she says.

“I think some people see working in the arts as a bit of a ‘hobby’ because it’s a job that we also happen to love. This drives me absolutely nuts: working this hard for this many hours is definitely not a hobby – it’s work, and yes I don’t often get paid for the time I put in, but that definitely does not mean that it’s a hobby,” she adds. 

Winter also points to the financial constraints of working in the arts industry. “Applying for funding is becoming increasingly more difficult as well – the pot of money from the Arts Council is depleting,” she says. “It’s just a given now that you often end up putting your own money into creating work, or you don’t put it on at all. And then it’s a huge gamble, as you might not get that money back. The long hours, lack of money and lack of support make being in the arts a precarious business which definitely leads to a strain on my own mental health.” 

What solutions are out there for those struggling with mental health issues as they navigate a career in the arts? All those I spoke to were in agreement that a policy of openness needed to be in place in companies and venues so that anyone was able to feel comfortable talking about it if they were finding it hard. Some suggested that orchestras or theatres should have a counsellor available, and then wondered if this might already be the case – either way, they were unclear about what options were actually available. A charity like ArtsMinds, providing a concrete structure specific to the industry for those who need help, may then be the first of its kind; how needed it is. (6)

John Not a huge amount of highs for me, work wise…

Beryl Completion and fruition of personal projects that have been on the go for ages were my highs.

Peter I think my high is that producers and directors are starting to listen to Equity and PIPA (Parents and carers in Performing Arts) about making schedules more family friendly. They’re listening. Will they deliver?

Annie Fulfilling a goal to do stand-up, for me.

John Being allowed to come back to the temp job I had left was a big thumbs up for me.

Emily I feel like I’ve been really lucky this year, with many more highs than lows. I’ve been abroad with my theatre company, worked at some great regional theatres and met some really lovely people!

Vivian High: getting some great validation and praise for work I’ve done or been involved in. Low: realising it makes no bloody difference with some casting directors. See – I can bring casting directors into every topic.

Beryl One real low was a confidence plummet I experienced during a rehearsal.

Vivian Low: realising that acting wasn’t doing it for me the way it used to. That I was feeling… dissatisfied and looking for more. High: realising that acting, like any important relationship in my life, evolves and that I was stuck. I was changing, my palate was changing, and my desire to communicate was changing. Is that a bit wanky? It’s true, though.

Jon Not wanky at all. I think we spend a lot of time thinking about our careers and not enough examining our relationship with the job.

John Preach, Vivian.

Emily Not wanky, no. It’s so important to think about.

Jon That Sam Neill thing about: “If you define yourself solely as an actor, what are you when you’re not working?”

Beryl Yup.

Jon Although it should be mentioned that Sam Neill was the lead in Jurassic Park, so…

Beryl How to live as an artist, eh?

Jon Not entirely joking about that, either – it’s easier to have a calm relationship with the profession when you don’t have to spend your non-acting time earning a tenner an hour.

Peter You’ve got to have other things in your life.

John Yes, my low has certainly been the amount of soul searching regarding my relationship with acting.

Peter I know it’s boring, but the low has to be Brexit. The end of free movement is a disaster for our industry.

Jon Yes, although a high is that it hasn’t happened yet!

Emily Oh my gosh, Brexit – where to even start with that fuck-up?

Beryl Politically, it’s been fraught!

Emily A low is the way ethnic minorities have been treated. Someone found my email address and sent some absolute hatred, but the high of that was that lots of people came out in support of the whole thing.

Vivian That’s awful. I’m so sorry.

John That’s really rough.

Emily Yeah, it was mad actually.

Jon Dreadful. We fool ourselves that there aren’t people like that in our industry, but I’m afraid there are.

Beryl Low: the fact that this shit is happening and the rise of the far right. Sorry, I know it’s not specific to our industry but I am genuinely fearful.

Vivian Yep.

Emily Yeah 100%.

Peter The way some MPs (particularly women) are treated is terrible.

Jon And, within the industry, there are still mistakes being made. I can think of theatre shows this year which, however well-meaning, really screwed up when it came to their relationships with disability, gender and ethnicity.

Vivian Highs: Being able to call out this behaviour. The fact that people will be believed. The emergence of #MeToo. The fact that problems are being identified and shared. So, hopefully not suffering in silence.

Jon I’ve found discussions of #MeToo in men’s dressing rooms really encouraging. I’m sure there are people in the industry who think it’s a load of nonsense or a witch hunt or whatever, but they’re absolutely not emboldened to speak, even in male-only spaces. (caveat – in my experience.)

Vivian A locker-room convo I’d be happy to hear!

Jon Just yesterday, one of my colleagues was questioning his own behaviour and asking our advice.

Vivian Brilliant.

Peter And of course, some men experience sexual harassment too.

Jon A few more highs to finish on?

Emily I did my first TV job. I loved it.

Beryl I worked with new tech in theatre, which was exciting.

Jon Ooh, same. The show I’m in uses projections for the set and it’s beautiful.

Beryl Virtual reality is also quite something.

John I’m getting a feature film project off the ground. Exciting and scary.

Peter That despite everything some brilliant work is being done. There’s been some terrific TV this year.

Annie I’ve worked solely in projects I believe in and have begun creating my own work and owning my voice. That’s a massive high for me.

Vivian The Equity diary has arrived.

Annie Massive high! One perk of being an Equity member.

Emily I love hearing these.

Jon And God bless us, every one! (7)

Yet despite the glamour of Glyndebourne or Glastonbury, behind the scenes things can be tough, demanding, and challenging to good mental health. The realities of working in the arts, as a performer or one of the myriad supporting roles, are well understood to present challenges to wellbeing. Most performers have sporadic patterns of employment – sudden bursts of frenetic activity, followed by fallow periods filled with endless applications, auditions or second jobs. Performers lack job security, and cannot plan far ahead. They often work away from home, sometimes for months at a time.

Performers put their heart and soul into their art, and can be subject to highly personal attacks and criticism. The tone and language of reviews, or commentary on social media, can be bruising and severe. Everyone is a critic. All of this adds to the stress and anxiety suffered by people in the performing arts. This can extend beyond the traditional forms of ‘writers’ block’ or ‘stage fright’ and include severe mental illness. Risk of suicide is elevated in the performing arts: 69% higher for women than the average, and 20% higher for men. Those working in the music industry, for example, are three times more likely to experience depression.

There has been some progress in recent years. Industry bodies have come together to support people in the arts through ArtsMinds, which helps people access the right advice and support. This year, the Theatre Helpline was established to provide 24/7 confidential advice on everything from money worries to bullying. This follows a similar scheme, Help Musicians UK, formed in the music industry. The National Theatre provides confidential in-house counselling, and the Dominion Theatre hosts a free fortnightly event called Wellbeing for the Arts to empower actors to tackle stress and anxiety.

The role of the trade unions is essential here. Unions such as Equity, the Musicians’ Union, and the Writers’ Guild are vital in scrutinising employers in the performance arts, putting pressure on them to look after the people in their care, and to drive out bullying, harassment and exploitation. Conditions in the arts may be sub-standard for many, but without the unions, they would be a thousand times worse. This is a sector which sometimes sees sexual harassment, workplace bullying, and a constant demand to work for less money, or even for free. There are many cases where performers have to pay promoters to get on the stage, rather than the other way around. Unions are a vital bulwark against this kind of unfair practice.   

There is more to be done. Today, I chaired a roundtable in Parliament with performance arts unions, and artists with a range of lived experiences of mental ill-health. We discussed how we can work together to drive out bad practice, and protect the mental health of everyone working in the arts. We need new protections and new rights to be established. We value our arts, and the contribution they make. We must value our artists too, and ensure no-one’s mental health is affected by outdated and exploitative practices.

(15)

So that your entire life consists of incredible highs to self questioning lows.

From the simple and easy to deal with convention example, to auditioning for a great job that you think you really suit and then it goes to someone else, to making the final call backs and at the last minute someone else (often the person who turned the job down before it was offered to you) steps in and signs the deal, to getting onto a job then having your character die early, to getting into a show/movie and funding falling through at the last moment, or worse yet it runs for one season or filming starts then something (anything) happens and the job is put on hold.... forever, you get the dream starring role in the dream big budget movie and some idiot smashes his car into you a week before, breaks your leg and you cannot do the movie, or any combination of the above and/or many career disasters not mentioned - like a one in a million (Doctors actual words) viral infection that ruins your Pro-wrestling career right at the cusp of something big.

Up and down, up and down, up and down. It's a rollercoaster. Financially, emotionally and socially.

It gets wearing after a time. Some people are able to deal with it, some find it more difficult, many can't do it and drop out of the film industry. Add in that Actors are often emotional types anyway (I believe) and the rollercoaster ride can get "interesting".

We've all seen some well know actor crack under the pressure in the gossip magazines - they are strong people to get where they are, it takes a lot to cause them to get to that embarrassing point.

Even when you are doing well and working often, you have the same effect but in a different capacity.

After a while an airport is an airport, a hotel room is just another 4 walls and it's like being the new kid at school every time you get a job. You leave your friends and/or family behind for months at a time and are out of touch, sometimes really out of touch.' (21)

Less than an hour before the first preview of Paul Simon's Broadway musical, "The Capeman," a small bomb was dropped on Stephen Lee Anderson. An actor he was understudying had lost his voice. And Anderson, who also was playing the role of Virgil, was being asked to play both roles that night.

It seemed impossible. At one point only a 30-second interval existed to change costumes and shift into the second role. Still, the actor formed a battle plan. He and the crew worked out the details of his quick-change, and also concealed lines of dialogue inside his personal props, such as a newspaper and a Bible.

Anderson pulled it off—and continued to for several nights thereafter. But the fast planning and steel-plated nerves it took didn't come naturally. Concentration has always been a problem for him. Fortunately, while studying at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London many years earlier, Anderson had been helped to find ways to enhance his powers of focus.

"I had a teacher there who said, 'I want you to do more chess, and I want you to read mystery books.... They could see that my energy was so high that I had a hard time settling down and concentrating. Same with my stiffness. I was very stiff, so they took me out of ballet and put me into jazz—more free movement—and into a swimming program."

At the end of his time at Webber Douglas, his vocal instructor, Patsy Rodenburg, told him that he needed to get into a rep company. Anderson eventually joined the Denver Center Theatre Company, and considers that "rep" stint to be his real training. He learned a great deal watching seasoned actors prepare for a role. For instance, he noticed that many of these veterans could easily feed him his own lines whenever he "went up."

"They knew that text—they knew that scene. Not just their own lines, but what was coming at them. That's something, as a young actor, I had to learn."

In addition to his work with classical text analysis and "basic Stanislavski" scene study, Anderson has polished his vocal and movement techniques over the years. He's continued to loosen up physically, too, through yoga and tai chi study. His early training as a singer has also been helpful. And taking on a teaching role for a time at the Denver Conservatory helped him internally reinforce the techniques he was mastering.

Anderson believes he was wise not to rush too soon to Manhattan: "I had worked over a decade or so in the regional theatre before I even got to New York. I think that's the main thing that really helped me."

In New York, he has appeared in straight plays as well as musicals, both on and Off-Broadway, including "The Kentucky Cycle," "Footloose," and, most recently, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."

But one of the roles he's proudest of was that of the loquacious Inquisitor in Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan," back in Denver. For that role, he put all the articulation, breathing, and projection exercises he'd worked on to expert use.

"I was very proud that I got through that, 'cause that was a lot of words.... I felt I did the best I could at that given moment."

Still, Anderson would like the chance to repeat this role, say 15 or 20 years from now, when he has fine-tuned his technique even further.

Lynn Cohen—Find Your Objective

Veteran actress Lynn Cohen contends that "any good actor worth his salt never stops training"—a credo that she has lived by. Initially, Cohen studied at Northwestern University with the legendary Alvina Krause, a Strasberg-Meisner disciple, who was "strong in technique and Method." Later, she honed her craft further with the New York City-based Michael Howard (who was Actors Studio-trained). More recently, she studied with world-renowned voice teacher Patsy Rodenburg, who has worked with such notables as Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes.

Cohen maintains that the major virtue of training—and the more eclectic the training the better—is that it gives the actor options. "Training puts you in a position to make stronger choices and feel confident about them. Perhaps, even more important, training allows for freedom and flexibility. And that's very important if you are working with inexperienced actors or a director who is not very good, or even one who is very good, but has a different approach than the one you are used to."

Most of Cohen's training has emphasized the idea that the best way to achieve truth in a scene is for the actor to find his objective—e.g., what do I want from the other character and then how do I go about getting it? And Cohen emphasizes that she will always go back to that approach, especially when in doubt.

Within that framework, however, there are varying schools of thought, Cohen acknowledges. "Some teachers talk about the importance of finding the character's inner life, including what he or she may have had for breakfast. My feeling is, if it helps, use it. The goal is to make the scene work when nothing is working, and that's where training comes in—whether it's knowing how to recall an emotion or determining what the character had for breakfast."

Cohen is perhaps best known for her recurring role as the crazy Ukrainian on the TV show "Sex and the City." Among her voluminous credits are André Gregory's film, "Vanya on 42nd Street"; the world premiere of Arthur Laurents' play, "My Good Name," at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor; and the current workshop of a musical version of the film, "Dirty Dancing."

One of her more successful moments on stage, she recalls, stemmed from an accident that the director liked so much he wanted to see it incorporated into the performance. "I was playing Paulina in 'The Seagull.' In this version, the doctor Paulina is in love with is on a swing. I come charging in towards him and, this particular time, I crashed into the swing. He fell off the swing and toppled on top of me and it worked—and that's what we had to repeat, nightly. It was a physical bit of business, but it had to become organic, and my training helped."

Training also kicks in when the going gets rough and concentration is called for in order to negotiate the unanticipated rugged patches. "I was working on a soap with a particularly cruel director who doesn't like actors," Cohen recalls. "When a young actor asked him a question, he snapped, 'When you are the new kid on the block, you do not ask questions.' The young actor froze and so did the rest of us.

"I decided the only way to get through this was to listen very carefully to the director, find out exactly what he wanted, and then reproduce it without further discussion. Although I still addressed the questions of what do I want in the scene and how do I get it, I was able to focus and reproduce technically—thanks to my training—what the director was looking for."

Kathleen Early—Accepting the Givens

Recently, Kathleen Early wrote a thank-you note to Susan Shaughnessy, one of her professors at the University of Oklahoma. Shaughnessy's course, "Departures from Realism," included text analysis and scene study of playwrights ranging from Brecht to Ionesco. Students learned to look at any play, however abstract or absurd, on its own terms—to accept the givens in any particular dramatic world.

This training turned out to be peculiarly useful for the Texas-born Early, who this season performed the character of Girl in Off-Broadway's "The Play About the Baby" by Edward Albee. Early credits Shaughnessy for helping her become freer to experiment during rehearsals and to opt for unusual, unexpected choices in a scene. She recalls playing Viola Spolin theatre games in this class, and practicing relaxation and focus exercises. Some of the techniques Early picked up then helped her make the transition from the cocoon-ish atmosphere of educational theatre to the workaday world of professional acting:

"In educational theatre, we would always get together as a group before a show, and we'd always warm up together and we'd always make the connection. There was something wonderful about that—that environment. In a professional environment, a lot of people go out and smoke a cigarette for their warm-up.... So you start figuring out what you have to do in order to carry that over. Can I connect with the actors in another way before the show, without having to do an 'exercise'?"

Early apprenticed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, did both regional work around the country and showcases in NYC, and toured for TheatreWorks/USA. But "The Play About the Baby" proved a breakthrough role. The show provided both highs and lows. As the young couple toyed with and psychologically battered by an older man and woman, Early and David Burtka (Boy) were put in an extremely vulnerable position. They were emotionally (and physically) naked during much of the play. But going through the wringer varied from performance to performance.

"There are times when I feel that it's not up to par," Early remarked, shortly before the play closed. "Every once in a while real tears aren't there. You feel the tears—your body feels the tears—but for some reason they don't come out. It's almost enough to make you cry, the fact that they're not there! There was actually a period of time that was really hard. You get frustrated and think, gosh, what if it never happens again. What if I've lost it?"

Practicing some of the listening exercises she's learned helped Early get back in touch with the emotional reality of the moment. But off-the-wall distractions didn't help. One night, at a point in the play when Early was facing full front, an audience member got the notion to wave at her. "There are tears streaming down your face, and there's somebody cocking their head to the side and waving, like, 'Did she see me?' Yes, I see you! That hurts!"

The highs in "The Play About the Baby" outnumbered the lows, however. Working with Brian Murray (Man) and Marian Seldes (Woman) was a joyful experience and helped make Early's own performances soar. Seldes' ability to avoid judging an audience, even one that seemed fidgety or inattentive, especially impressed Early.

"I feel like I've had a class every day for the past nine months," she says.

Robert H. Fowler—Using Today's Reality

Robert H. Fowler is currently appearing on Broadway in the ensemble of "The Producers," a very demanding show. Those lucky enough to have seen it may remember Fowler as Officer O'Houlihan. If you caught the public television special, "Recording The Producers," you may have seen his turn as an unhappy accountant singing "Old Man River." Like any Broadway musical, "The Producers" has a relentless performance schedule, and requires performers to show up daily in top form and good voice. Technique is essential to surviving the run.

Fowler studies a technique known as "transformation acting" with teacher Sande Shurin. "Her technique allows me to acknowledge everything that's going on, and turn it over to the role. It keeps me present in the scene. It helps me to create the world of the play, but allows for daily differences. It allows me to bring what's going on today into the scene," says Fowler.

How does that work? In practice, it's about accepting today's given reality—the lousy commute, the head cold, the joyful news—and let your character have that kind of day within the given circumstances of the play. Some techniques offer the actor tools to block out or rise above these daily distractions. On the contrary, the transformational acting technique Fowler depends on offers actors a way to fold these daily events and the feelings they produce right into the role. It's an alternative to the more self-contained techniques that aim to eliminate or insulate the actor's feelings from the character's feelings.

Auditioning with this technique has been the acid test. At no other time does an actor more want to be at his cheerful, relaxed best. Life does not always cooperate. "I had an audition for 'Aida,' " says Fowler, "and it had been a very rough day. I got in there to sing, but I'd forgotten the words! Or so I thought. But I knew the song, so I just started, and the words were there. It felt like a conversation, where I didn't know what I was going to say next. Like it was my song, and I was making it up on the spot. When I finished, the person behind the desk told me they'd heard that song five times that day, and that was the first time they 'got it.' It changed the way I audition. Sometimes I try too hard at auditions. This taught me that I can be with whatever is happening."

Fowler also likes the way his technique helps him to interact with his fellow actors, who may or may not be using anything like the transformational acting methods he uses. "I know it gives them something to work with, as well as giving me something to go on. It makes me more present, as we have to connect to continue. Otherwise, we'd be in two different plays. It helps me listen and makes me want to play ball."

That's the best thing any technique can do.

Arthur French—Make Your Own Decisions

A nimble character actor, Arthur French has played in everything from "The River Niger" to works by Wole Soyinka, LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), and Charles Fuller to the Working Theater's recent "Free Market" this past June. The winner of a 1997 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance describes his training as solid, yet flexible enough to always provide a foundation for his characters.

French's training was never burdened by youthful, starry-eyed images of fame, however. In fact, he came to his interest in performing long after entering adulthood. "I worked for the department of social services," he says. "One day, I'm sitting in front of the TV and looking at the people, and I began thinking, 'Well, I can do that.' But it still took a long time before I really committed to it. When I finally left my job [after succeeding Douglas Turner Ward in 'The River Niger' on Broadway], I would have had quite a career ahead of me."

First, French was a moonlight student of Peggy Feury "who was doing what Strasberg was doing—people like Lily Tomlin and Martin Landau studied with her. But the names never meant anything to me; that wasn't what was interesting to me. The biggest advantage I had was that I knew I knew nothing at the time."

Having initially entered the business without ego or expectation, French made himself available for various non-acting jobs, a wise-before-his-years choice that endowed him with even more perspective on his craft. "I did all the stuff people didn't want to do—I would build sets, I would stage manage. This way, I got more a full sense of what [theatre] is all about."

Soon, however, he began working with the American Community Theatre in Harlem "doing plays, and being thrilled when I got my five dollars." From there, he landed a role Off-Broadway in a play called "Raisin' Hell in the Son" at the Provincetown Playhouse and "much to my to shock and surprise, I was now a professional actor [thanks to an Off-Broadway contract]. I mean, I never thought of it!"

That play, like others written and produced during the civil rights movement and upheavals of the '60s and '70s, provided French with another kind of training, he says. As a Negro Ensemble Company actor, for example, French and his colleagues "worked on new plays with new things to say—and you couldn't separate what was happening on stage from what was happening in the country. You learned to communicate ideas."

Over the years, more roles arrived—from "Death of a Salesman" with George C. Scott to Melvin van Peebles' "Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death"—and French continued using his Strasberg-heavy training. "You come up with your own 'method' of doing things, whether the situation is something close or something you have to research or something you understand through 'private moments,' " he says. "A role is something to approach internally."

French currently teaches a scene study class at HB Studio, completing, in a sense, the circle of his journey. "I try to get my students to make their own decisions," he says. "I ask them to figure out what do they want, what are you trying to accomplish—to try, more than anything, to let them make their own decisions. They have to think things through." Ever avuncular, when French says that he encourages his students to "be hard on themselves," his tone is constructive, warm, and guiding. "I ask them, 'Why are you making the choice that you're making?' When you say 'I love you,' do you mean 'I hate you,' and when you say 'I hate you,' do you mean 'I love you'?"

Anita Hollander—Internalizing Discipline

Anita Hollander blends techniques she studied at Carnegie Mellon University, at the London Academy of Musical and Dramatic Arts, and with individual teachers. She finds the physical aspects of performing—the study of movement and development of the body as an instrument, particularly through the Alexander Technique and tai chi—to be as important as working on one's approach to character development.

Hollander says she would feel this way even if she didn't face unusual circumstances. She lost a leg to cancer during her early years of performing. Nevertheless, she has performed—even danced—with and without her artificial leg, in musical productions and straight plays in New York, regionally, and in Europe, and has many broadcasting credits. She has worked with Joanne Akalaitis, Philip Glass, Al Carmines, John Rubinstein, Joseph Chaikin, and Ruth Malaczech, among others, and created the title role in the world premiere of "Gretty Good Time" at the Kennedy Center. She also presented her one-woman show, "Still Standing," at the White House and Off-Broadway.

In terms of character development, Hollander notes that the American and British approaches differ. Here, the tendency is to look into the character first. "I create a road map: Who am I? What do I want? What is my obstacle?" In Britain, "The word comes first. The playwright is more honored. You study the script, then find how your character fits into it." She combines both approaches.

The Alexander Technique—which focuses on re-training one's breathing habits—has proven important for Hollander in strengthening vocal production, physical alignment and control, grace, and balance. Tai chi supplements this. Her teachers, Judith Liebowitz, who had polio, and Troop Mathews, who also had one leg, were particularly helpful in pointing out ways the Alexander Technique could prove helpful.

Hollander has also studied the Linklater Technique and Cicely Berry's approach, both of which focus on using the full body in voice production. "It's important for actors to see what works for them and to find the best teachers of those approaches," she says. "Training can prove invaluable.

"You internalize discipline," she says, "That strengthens every performance. There are nights I've given a great performance and others where I haven't, but even on the weaker nights the discipline of hard practice and firm grounding in technique carries you through."

She laughs upon recalling the most extreme example she ever experienced of this phenomenon. "I once fell asleep on stage, during a performance of 'Death and the Maiden' at the Summerfun Theatre in Montclair, N.J. I think my working on technique so hard during rehearsals kept one part of my mind alert to my cue. I snapped awake and carried on."

While this was one of those freak moments that make for good dinner party stories, Hollander feels that more ordinary versions of this sort of thing happen to performers all the time. "If you have worked hard to perfect your craft and every aspect of the character the script, and the show, it will carry you through." Of course, there are many good nights when the hard work involved does far more than "carry you through." "It all pays off the times when it all goes right," she says. "Exploring, staying open to approaches that work for you, and disciplining yourself to develop those will lead you to give performances you'll enjoy and be proud of."

Kim Hunter—Keep Growing

Long before winning the 1951 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for "A Streetcar Named Desire," legendary actress Kim Hunter was a Florida high school student studying acting in the apartment of Charmine Lantass Camine.

One of the first of the Actors Studio actors, it was here that Hunter acquired the basics of her craft. From Camine, she learned "overall acting technique—voice and body, even fencing—and the point was that one trains every part of one's self to be able to do what one wants with it. All characters are different, and as an actor you're frequently going to be asked to do a lot of things you wouldn't ordinarily be prepared to do. You have to know how to use your interior, with the tools you have available."

Arriving in California, Hunter became affiliated with the Pasadena Playhouse, putting her craft to work in productions of "The Women" and "Arsenic and Old Lace" (the latter with Raymond Burr) and then segueing into films. That change of medium posed some obstacles to Hunter; all that stage training left her unsure how to act in two-dimensions.

"My first film, 'The Seventh Victim,' was the director's first film also—we were both new to what we were doing. It was very odd to adjust to—the silence drove me crazy, plus you don't rehearse. To have absolutely no sound was very weird."

"It then became clear," Hunter says, "that in film you deal with things more realistically. When you're talking to whomever, it's as if you're in the room talking to them, not on stage projecting to the balcony, yet you still have to reach your audience." Learning to adjust her technique to accommodate the peculiarities of film thus comprised a second phase to her training.

Coming to New York, Hunter then gravitated toward the newly founded Actors Studio, where her all of her training ultimately coalesced. "The Actors Studio was formed as a safe place for actors to work, to explore what they do, to fall on your face, to learn, to not be perfect all the time," Hunter says. Also, then as now, the training is rather less pedagogical than personal. "The idea is you find the part, you choose the scene, then you do it. Then you explain your intentions, and the actors watching give their response as to whether they felt you accomplished what you set out to do."

Finally, the focus would shift to the "moderator," who in Hunter's time was typically her favorite director, Elia Kazan. "I found he would get to know you personally as well as he could, and in all sorts of areas," Hunter says. "So whenever he wanted something in particular—emotionally or whatever—he knew what button to push. It was always private—he never did that in front of anybody. His aim—as teacher as well as director—was to fulfill the play."

Her five years spent at the Actors Studio worked for Hunter because "one is constantly trying to grow, so I always took lessons, voice, and went to dance class—to keep my body functioning as well as I could."

Her extensive training had particular application to a production Hunter prefers to keep nameless that she did Off-Broadway at the Theatre de Lys, now the Lucille Lortel. "There were two of us in it, and I had to play the bitch of all time. I found her and I did her, but it wasn't easy. We all have things we hate and don't approve of, and much of the time we don't express this in our lives, so to do it on stage is very exciting—and remember, it's the training that allows you to do it. Always remember that you learn by doing—you should never forget that."

Larry Keith—Looking at Life with an Actor's Eye

Veteran stage and film actor Larry Keith recalls when he was a young performer in the '60s, understudying Henry Higgins in Broadway's "My Fair Lady."

"I learned about how you preserve yourself vocally," Keith remembers. "That guy's never offstage. He has seven songs, and he drives with energy. You had to have your voice placed properly so you could survive. And you didn't have a mike."

So what did Keith do?

"What every actor knows how to do," he responds. "You use the facial mask and vocal resonance. You keep out of the throat and off the chords and keep the focus forward…how you get the voice to sound so it will carry."

Keith—who's currently playing on Broadway as Herr Schultz in "Cabaret"—indicated that his experience has proved that it's not so important looking at a high moment or low moment in his acting career. The value rises from understanding how you meet all challenges through philosophy and preparation.

"I haven't had as much formal training as others," he confides. "I went to the American Theatre Wing and studied after I got out of the service: acting, body movement, voice; I started as a singer. So, vocally, I had pretty good command of my instrument as a beginning actor. I took voice lessons, voice production lessons, voice projection lessons. I took a Shakespeare class with Phillip Burton, Richard's adopted father."

He remembers with particular fondness learning from Bobby Lewis of the Group Theatre. "He was a wonderful teacher and a wonderful man."

Still, Keith emphasizes, "Much of what I learned, I learned by doing: what worked and what didn't; how to break down a part. Really basic stuff: asking myself, 'Who am I in this role? What do I want? How will I go about getting it?' All the questions that begin the analysis.

"A lot of characters I respond to intuitively," he continues. "When it works intuitively, you don't need a technique. You need that when things don't work intuitively; when you want things to make sense, and it helps you get organized."

The key, Keith believes, comes from "a place of understanding and truth inside you. To a young actor, the more life experiences you have, the better. The more you know and read, the better."

That means learning about music, art, literature, and studying everything with "an actor's eye."

"Any terrific actor I've ever seen, I've found to be extremely well-educated in more fields than acting," he reports. "That's the life force you use to fill the vessel that's the actor. You've got to look at life with the actor's eye. Sometimes, when having trouble solving a part, you may find it out there: an experience you never expected. Maybe somebody's behavior at a party, and you say, 'Oh, yeah! That's it!' You never know where it's going to come from."

So this veteran actor advises the young performer to meet challenges by remembering the basics: "Keep physically fit," he prompts. "Be prepared; keep your acting skills sharp; and take responsibility."

When on stage, learn how to use and focus your energy "so it's at your command when you need it."

And always remember that on stage you're involved in collaboration: "Listen," he insists. "Be in the moment. Don't go to the next moment until the moment you're in is finished. And don't play the end of the play until you get there."

Michael McElroy—Working from Physicality

Michael McElroy, currently playing the title character in "Blue" Off-Broadway at the Gramercy Theatre, studied at Carnegie Mellon University, where the philosophy was to expose students to a range of techniques—Stanislavski, Meisner, many others—and to encourage drama students to combine the aspects that suited them and then work out one's own approach. "What I find works best for me," he says, "is to go from the outside in, by which I mean working on a character's physicality first. My teacher, Mel Shapiro, was a major influence on me in developing this approach.

McElroy explains, "In portraying Blue, for instance, my character is an African-American singer who came up in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. There was a certain style of movement, a way of moving his hands, of dressing. Once I have the outward movements down, I find that the words just come out of my mouth naturally, the way that character would say them. I feel as if I've become that person.

Many aspects of his character in the musical, "Violet," which he performed at Playwrights Horizons, were based in large part on McElroy. "I know that from playwrights Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley. But the character's actual life was very different from mine. He was a serviceman, and he lived in the racist atmosphere of the South in the 1960s, so he was a much more guarded person than I am. I tend to move quickly, doing many things at once, talking rapidly. What I concentrated on most intensely here was moving more slowly—getting up from a chair more slowly, speaking more slowly. This was hard work, but I felt that the more I mastered that aspect of the character, the more I became him. It worked very well."

McElroy, who has also been seen on screen in "Stonewall," on TV in "Spin City" and "All My Children," and in regional theatre in "Angels in America: Parts I & II," is a strong believer in the importance of training, study, and discipline. He feels fortunate to have studied at Shaker Heights High School in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, which focused on the performing arts and gave him a strong sense of the importance of technique even before he got to Carnegie Mellon.

"Every actor has nights when it's technique and training that get you through. You can't just get up there and give a good performance steadily, night after night, week after week. When I was in 'Rent,' we'd do two shows a day, three days in a row, and then two more evenings with two days off. Inevitably, there are times you're feeling ill—I performed when I had respiratory infections—or you're upset about something that happened to you that day. Sometimes you're in a production where you don't get along well with the person you're playing off of. It's strong technique, a thorough preparation of your work on the character and his movements that gets you through it without the audience being aware of any of these things. I would tell any beginning actor not to minimize for a minute the importance of working hard on one's technique and applying it to your work on the character you're portraying. That will carry you through."

Crista Moore—Staying in the Moment

For Crista Moore, acting training (whatever the school) is most useful in navigating "those moments when you feel like an alien on stage, especially in a long run where there's the added danger of becoming stale." She makes the observation that these problems can occur even in a role for which you are well suited. She cites her gig as Louise in "Gypsy," opposite Tyne Daly as Mama Rose, as the classic case in point.

"I really did relate to the material, in particular that emotionally heavy dressing room scene, where Louise declares her independence. It's the showdown between Louise and her mother and it's a wrenching encounter. But there were nights when I was exhausted or sick." She pauses. "Generally, after six months in a show, you may have to find something new to fuel the fires. What was working before no longer is.

"Acting training," she continues, "helps you concentrate, relax, not get distracted, and not push. My training, in particular, has helped me be in the moment on stage and listen. For me, that's always been the key."

Moore was twice nominated for a Tony Award for her work in "Gypsy" and "Big," and will soon be seen on screen in Todd Solondz's still-untitled new film. She played the title role in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" at New York City Opera, appeared Off-Broadway in "Birds of Paradise" and "Rags," and regionally at Geva in "My Fair Lady" and Alan Ayckbourn's "House and Garden," at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in "Substance of Fire," and at the Cleveland Play House in Molnar's "The Guardsman." Her primary acting teacher has been Fred Kareman, with whom she has studied for 12 years. "His approach is Meisner-based. He does not emphasize objectives—what do I want in a scene? Instead, he focuses on listening and answering truthfully. Keeping you in the moment.

"But the actor's major goal, from his point of view, is serving the author's intent. Kareman believes the actor uses his imagination to do any part, whether or not he relates to it personally. That's not to say the actor doesn't personalize the role in order to make it truthful. But the actor's truth must relate to the material."

She offers an example. "If the character is devastated because she has lost her boyfriend and the actress can't relate to that experience, but can relate to the anguish accompanying losing a job, she substitutes that experience."

She has also studied acting with Alan Langdon, who taught at Circle in the Square and was a champion of finding objectives in a scene. "Besides understanding what other actors are talking about, learning about 'finding objectives' is useful when I'm working on classics and the material and language may be a little removed."

Nonetheless, Moore stresses, whatever technique or combination of techniques an actor uses, he always puts his own stamp on it in order to make it workable, to make it his own. "Most actors have techniques that are eclectic."

The place where training is most useful, she asserts, is in the face of those characters "you simply don't understand and/or have limited time to figure it all out. When you're working on TV, for example. There are added problems on TV because so much time is spent just sitting around, waiting. It's so exhausting and so easy to forget your lines. That's when acting training really helps you focus."

Donna Murphy—Make It Work for You

"I heard of Stella Adler from somebody from my hometown, Topsfield, Mass.," says Donna Murphy, the two-time Tony winner who began singing at a single-digit age and commenced professional training at just 18. All along, she says, "I knew I wanted to pursue a life in theatre—but I also knew I needed training."

In coming to New York to study with Stella Adler, Murphy says that it wasn't just training that she acquired—she faced one of the biggest challenges of her life.

"Studying with Stella was stupendous and life-changing," Murphy says, "because New York is a complicated place to be for an 18-year-old who's star struck and ready to grab any opportunity to be on stage. She was very intimidating, and saw things in a black-and-white way in terms of what was art, what's the responsibility of being an artist. She felt the actor's work is an ongoing re-negotiation with yourself, that every choice is of great importance, that you need to commit and invest in choices. She used to say, 'Your talent is in your choice,' which is true."

So fond and fervent are her recollections of Adler—legendary for reducing her students to tears—that one might assume the star of such musicals as "Passion" and the revival of "The King and I" remains a confirmed Adler acolyte. Yet because singing was clearly as large a part of her life and ambition as dramatic acting, Murphy had to reconcile various approaches to accommodate her goals, a process she often found bedeviling. Between her freshman and sophomore year, she experienced an "epiphany," realizing that while she had "the capacity" to understand Adler's instruction, she "wasn't ready to go there." Learning how to hear her views and make them work for her was among her first and highest hurdles.

"There was a core of Stella's work having to do with teaching you about your own responsibility to become a certain kind of human being—one aware of the size of issues in the world, an artist who becomes a kind of sponge for humanity. Again, that's a lot for an 18-year-old, and I first found myself a bit paralyzed in studying with her. I thought, 'If I can't be great, then I don't want to do it at all'—and that confusion kept me from taking some risks.

"Then I realized I wanted to know how to go beyond what I thought I might know about a scene. It was a wakeup call: learning how to listen, take extensive notes, dare to fail. I learned the importance of being really awake, really being passionate about being interested in what you're doing, and to get past what you think you're supposed to be interested in."

A self-confessed "research queen" who relishes delving into character—a rarity, perhaps, among some musical theatre performers—Murphy doesn't teach, but she does suggest students be patient while training. More important, she says, is to know that "you're in a new environment" and to check the desire "to show what talent you have" with having everything you thought you knew about your talent "questioned and deconstructed."

James Murtaugh—Use a Variety of Techniques

After spending the last 35 years working as a union actor with the kind of regular work that many other performers envy, James Murtaugh still relies on the training he got as a college student (and from a variety of acting teachers he has studied with since he left college, including Gene Frankel, George Morrison, Milton Katselas, and Wynn Handman). Perhaps that is why he is a recognizable face to theatregoers, television viewers, and such respected dramatists as Alan Ayckbourn, Richard Nelson, and Brian Friel.

On television, Murtaugh plays recurring roles on both "100 Centre Street" and "Ed," and in the last year has guest starred on "The Sopranos," "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit," and the forthcoming HBO film of "The Laramie Project." On top of that schedule, he also finds time to participate in an average of five staged readings each year with The Actors Company Theatre, maintain his membership in Ensemble Studio Theatre, and serve on the board of the Players Club.

Murtaugh talked about how he continues to use a variety of exercises he has picked up over the years—some of which come in handy before he gets the job, and some after he gets it.

"Before you go into an audition, you definitely need to relax," he says. "There's such pressure during an audition; it can be terrifying and it can immobilize you. You must keep your muscles relaxed or you'll be overwhelmed and won't be able to audition properly. I do Feldenkreuz relaxation exercises for that, which I learned a long time ago."

Then, once he gets cast, Murtaugh says he uses a variety of techniques.

While he was acting in one long-running Off-Broadway hit, he says he found himself relying on his training more than once. "In any long run, there are things that stop working for the actor, motivations that don't work as well as they did," he said. "During the run of 'Other People's Money,' when something started to not work for me, I could rely on my training to help me find new motivations and keep the show fresh."

Other moments that called for solid grounding came less expectedly in the run, and were the sort of thing that can drive an inexperienced actor to distraction.

"There was one performance," he recalls, "when one of the other actors was having stomach problems. Suddenly she just left the stage in the middle of the scene, because she had to. The rest of us couldn't leave or end the scene until she came back, but, fortunately, we were all grounded and had experience doing improv, so we just, well, vamped.

"We talked, and we talked, and she came back, and we finished the scene. I don't think the audience ever knew."

Christianne Tisdale—The 10 Distinctions

Christianne Tisdale has performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally. She spent four years at Yale as an undergraduate, but only one in the famous Yale graduate acting program before beginning her career. Finding herself launched as a professional was a mixed blessing. "There I was in 'Beauty and the Beast' with no technique. Just me," says Tisdale, who played Belle. Since then, she has built a flexible and enduring foundation beneath "just me" that has served her well.

Tisdale studies with Sande Shurin, using what Tisdale calls the "10 distinctions" as the steel and cement of that foundation. "The 10 are presencing (or what's sometimes called emotional body), situation, livingness, character, psyche, stylistic and cultural truths, interior monologue, turning points and transitions, intention/action, and taking risks," Tisdale says. As a list, it may not convey much, but as a system of acting it has saved Tisdale more than once. "I was a standby in 'Triumph of Love,' and I got thrown on in previews for Susan Egan. She played four different characters and was always on stage. I kept a piece of paper in the quick-change area (I had lots of costume changes), and on it I wrote the situation, the intention, and the livingness for that scene. It worked so well." Her colleagues, Betty Buckley and F. Murray Abraham, gave Tisdale high praise after the performance, happy to be working with a standby they could rely on to perform.

More than just a tool to keep an actor oriented, the "10 distinctions" have rescued Tisdale in building a character. "I did a beautiful musical called 'Fermat's Last Tango,' a part written for me [by composer Joshua Rosenblum and author Joanne Sydney Lessner]. I played two roles: a kinky television news reporter, and Euclid. The father of geometry—that Euclid. I could not get a key into that character. It was two weeks into a four-week rehearsal process, we were opening in New York, and I had nothing. I'm trying, and it's not working, it's not working, it's not working. I went back to the first distinction, 'emotional body,' and I surrendered. I gave up. And then this little obnoxious character comes out and starts making shapes: Look! I'm a triangle! Look! I'm a rhomboid! Which is a tough one, if you've never tried it. And that became my physical body, Euclid's search for the perfect shape. Oddly, I got more TV auditions out of that, doing this huge physical comedy, than I've gotten doing delicate, fine work!"

A far cry from "just me" and yet still very much herself, Tisdale continues to train in the "10 distinctions" technique and to enjoy her time in the studio. She has yet to find a limitation in it. "I've done four new musicals in a row, and it comes in just as handy doing that as it does doing Shakespeare." Every actor wants a toolkit like that.

Until recently, however, little attention had been paid to the relationship between acting and mental health. One of the reasons Thomas wrote her solo play Dust, an unflinching look at one young woman’s suicide, was because she was frustrated with reductive understandings of mental health. She recalls her own experience of depression: “I was very, very ill, but also completely able to get out of bed every day and go to work and do my job, and I think that’s a blessing and a curse. I just thought, ‘We’re not talking about this.'"

Thomas is not alone in feeling this way. In 2015, a survey by the Stage, Equity and Spotlight found that one in five people working in entertainment have actively sought help for their mental health – but this figure may well underestimate the true extent of the problems in the sector. Respondents to the survey, the majority of whom worked in theatre, identified issues such as performance anxiety, mood swings and depression. When asked about the state of their mental health, 46% described it as either poor or average.

One of the outcomes of this research was ArtsMinds, an information hub for people working in the creative industries. It’s part of a recent surge of interest in mental health and wellbeing in the arts. In September, London’s Park theatre announced a partnership with the mental health charity Mind to help its performers. A number of companies, theatres, drama schools and agents have signed up to the mental health charter for the performing arts.

TALK is a network set up by actors Christian Edwards and Harry Long and based at the Actors Centre. The premise is simple: actors and other theatre professionals meet up regularly to share experiences and support one another. It came out of Edwards’s own mental health struggles. “I think the first way to move on and start feeling better about things is just by talking, meeting others, and not going through it alone,” he says. “We wanted people to be able to compare notes with other actors in a frank way,” adds Long.

Research into the connection between acting and mental health is scant – a gap that actor Alice Brockway’s PhD on the subject is setting out to address. The goal is to come up with a set of best practice recommendations for working with actors with mental illnesses, while Brockway’s website Playing Sane is a space to talk frankly about these issues.

Anecdotally, at least, there seems to be a connection between the pressures of the profession and conditions such as depression and anxiety. “I think part of the thing about being in contact with your emotions as an actor is that we’re more susceptible to them taking over,” suggests Edwards. Thomas observes something similar, noting how common acting techniques can encourage harmful thought processes. “Anyone can think about something sad that happened when they were younger and have a good cry, but can you switch it off? Can you go into the next scene and be completely OK?” She thinks drama schools should teach actors how to step away from extreme emotional states, as well as how to access those emotions in the first place.

“Also, the profession in and of itself is very brutal,” points out Thomas. Unstable, insecure employment, long hours, unforgiving audition processes and the constant pressure to be at your best can all take their toll. “People spend a lot of time projecting their best selves, because that’s what the industry demands,” says Long. While emotions are important on stage, behind the scenes there’s a need to appear confident and capable. “Our job is to be vulnerable in front of an audience, but you’re not supposed to be vulnerable in any other way,” says Brockway. Part of the problem, she suggests, is that in a saturated profession, actors can be seen as somewhat disposable: “Why deal with it if there’s just another actor in the background anyway?” Edwards agrees: “We don’t want to appear like we have a vulnerability that will mean that we’re not as reliable as somebody else, because there are just so many of us.”

Brockway points the finger at established yet emotionally damaging rehearsal practices. “Many of these methods, they’re donkey’s years old, they haven’t been updated in any way in line with what we now know about psychology and about how the brain works,” she says. There is also that enduring idea that great actors are supposed to struggle. “I get very upset with this notion of having to suffer for your art,” says Thomas. “They’re called plays; I don’t know why we don’t play.”

While the industry now feels more open to dialogue around mental health, there’s a danger that it’s all talk and no action. Employers, ultimately, are the ones who need to make a commitment to change. “It’s very important that producers and theatre companies and other people working in the business are now being more open and saying we support people with mental health problems,” says Edwards. Thomas proposes that all theatres should have in-house therapy available for actors, following a model that the National Theatre is beginning to pioneer. “I think also maybe there need to be guidelines around what we should and shouldn’t ask or say,” adds Thomas.

Everyone I speak to agrees that there’s still a long way to go. “The shifts are so, so minuscule, but there are shifts there,” says Thomas. “We eventually have to get to that place where we can say ‘How are you today?’ and not feel squeamish about the answer, or not feel frightened about having to give an answer.” (24)

Research over many years has acknowledged that those drawn to working in the arts tend to be highly vulnerable to depression and anxiety. However, there are contributing factors to the strikingly high levels of anxiety and stress specific to the acting community. These include the deep emotions they are often required to access and express when playing a role and the strong identification they can form with their characters.

I recently conducted research into the stresses incurred by acting students at the country’s leading drama schools. Most of the acting teachers I interviewed acknowledged that their students did not take the time and space to separate themselves from their roles. This resulted in emotional hangovers, which often caused extreme moods and difficulties in their personal lives.

Although it became clear that more still needs to be done to safeguard these acting students’ wellbeing, mental health issues in the arts – along with other stressful workplace environments – are fortunately now being given more significance. Many performing arts schools and companies are actively seeking to address their artists’ mental health and wellbeing concerns.

Getting into character is not just as simple as “putting on” or “taking off” a role. Performing arts scholar Mark Seton argues that playing a character is a complex process that cannot be separated from the life of the actor.

Sometimes actors are unable to let go of the emotions associated with their characters. This boundary blurring can result in them carrying the role into everyday life – with negative effects.

One acting teacher described how a gentle, polite male student became rude and aggressive during the time he played one of the men involved in a re-enactment of the Anita Cobby murder. The teacher had to point out to him that “seepage” seemed to be taking place between him and the character.

Actors frequently tap into their personal histories to evoke the emotions required to play a role. This can be traumatic if it triggers deep issues or elicits difficult experiences and memories.

One drama school director disclosed that he had to be very careful when choosing plays if they involved domestic violence or sexual assaults because he was aware some of his students had lived through these experiences. It could be emotionally dangerous for them to act out such scenes.

The 2015 Australian Actors’ Wellbeing Study found that almost 40% of actors surveyed had difficulty shaking off intense emotional and/or physical roles.

Although strategies have been developed to help actors detach from the roles they play – to de-role – in my experience and in my research, actors or acting students rarely use these practices. It has long been acknowledged that heading to the bar for a drink after a performance is the traditional way for actors to unwind after performances. The 2015 study found that, perhaps unsurprisingly in light of this fact, actors’ alcohol consumption was high.

There are many ways to warm down from a performance. Actors can participate in a brief feedback session with cast members. This can involve sharing how the performance has gone as well as other procedures such as deep breathing, visualisations or physical releases.

Other de-roling suggestions include ritualistically disrobing in order to consciously let go of the costume and the character by leaving them both on the rack. Any post-performance sense of closure that actors can create is helpful if it assists them in leaving their characters in the dressing room.

It could involve the use of a symbolic talisman that is carried only when playing the role and left backstage, or the singing of a little tune that represents to them a sense of completion. Whatever works!

The teachers I interviewed maintained that more needed to be done to help acting students better differentiate between the theatre space and the space outside the stage door. This would reinforce healthier work habits, which could eventually transfer into the profession.

The 2015 study resulted in the establishment of an Actors Equity Wellness Committee. Its aim is to educate the industry about mental health and wellbeing while providing resources for those who may be at risk.

More performing arts companies are employing psychologists. The Australian Ballet and contemporary dance company CO3 have resident psychologists to assist with dancers’ mental wellbeing.

Theatre productions are more frequently using the services of psychologists – particularly if the subject matter is dark or difficult and likely to trigger psychological or emotional reactions in the actors. Cases in point are recent productions of Sarah Kane’s 4.45 Psychosis, an exploration of mental illness, and a dance-theatre production, Good Little Soldier, which dealt with the family of a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD.

Drama schools tend to rely on their instructors and affiliated university counselling services to help students with mental health issues. Sydney drama school NIDA has had a resident counsellor one day per week for many years – and he is always booked out. My research suggests that specialised counselling services are an essential backup for students in all areas of the performing arts.

In the future artists will hopefully suffer a little less for their art in order to provide audiences with their best work. (25)

I’m someone who will openly tell you that depression and anxiety have been a struggle for me pretty much my whole life one way or another. And it’s something that so many people also go through, and don’t talk to each other about much either. I remember a particular experience when someone not very close to me asking me was asking where I was heading to when bumping into them on the street. I was on my way to see my therapist for an appointment later at night. 

I thought in my head “I can’t tell him I’m going to a doctor, it’s too late, “do I need to tell them I’m on my way to ‘therappppyy???’ I found myself lying saying I was going somewhere I wasn’t, because I thought I’d be opening up a can of worms if I revealed I was going to see a therapist. As if it was this Big Bad thing, but it’s not. As if he would think I have all these issues since I see a therapist, when I don’t really see myself as a wreck or anything, I just have a little less serotonin then the average person. It’s just as normal as being physically sick with a cold and needing to be checked in with the doctor and tune some things and settle some things. And I’m glad I recognize now that it’s not something I need to be embarrassed about our ashamed of! 

It’s literally as simple as you needing aspirin when you have a headache, if you are struggling with anxiety and mental health issues, it is totally acceptable to be taking medications that can help you. Talk to your doctor and be open to those possibilities because they are nothing to be ashamed of. 

Mental health is so important, and self care is so important. Self awareness to know that it’s okay to ask for help is important. And please, ask for help. I’ve done it, and it is worth it— there are people out there to relate to and share stories with. You just have to reach out, keep striving. Winston Churchill said, “if you’re going through Hell, keep going.”. There are solutions! And everyone is worth it to keep striving and just keep loving!! 

And that’s what make theatre so amazing, and it’s why people like you and me love it. We see us. It’s a healing experience that takes us out of our everyday lives and for just a few hours takes us elsewhere. It’s something we all appreciate and love about theatre. I am so excited to be joining Onstage Blog as a contributing writer, and I would like to contribute my time on here to connecting and telling stories that are important.' (26)

Researchers from the University's School of Psychology conducted in-depth interviews with a group of 20 Australian professional actors, after realising that little had been done to understand the psychological experience of the acting profession in this country.

The results are now published online ahead of print in the journal Australian Psychologist.

"There are many positives associated with acting, such as feelings of personal growth and a sense of purpose in the actors' work. Many of them see it as a 'calling' and couldn't imagine doing anything else professionally; they feel driven to do it," says lead author Alison Robb, who has been conducting this research as part of her PhD in Psychology at the University of Adelaide.

"However, we also found that actors are highly vulnerable to depression and symptoms of anxiety.

"Their mental wellbeing is threatened in a range of ways, such as: a lack of autonomy in their profession, lack of control over their employment and general working environment, complex interpersonal relationships, a high level of self-criticism, a high level of criticism by family and friends for their choice of profession, and a heavy drinking culture.

"Actors also report experiencing vicarious trauma through their acting experiences – they are so emotionally, intellectually and physically engaged in their roles that it can be difficult to switch off. Some report having nightmares and intrusive thoughts related to their roles," she says.

Ms Robb – who herself is a former theatre director – says acting has a false reputation of being a glamorous profession.

"Many professional actors find themselves out of work for long periods of time. This creates a high level of instability in their lives, adding to feelings of anxiety," she says.

"They usually have no control over whether or not they get a particular role. If they aren't successful, they can feel demoralised and humiliated. When they do find work, it's often for very little money."

Ms Robb says these findings are relevant to both the acting profession and to psychologists.

"Quite opposite to the Hollywood stereotype of the attention-seeking, neurotic actor who is always in therapy, our research has found that Australian actors are extremely unlikely to seek help for the problems they're experiencing.

"As clinicians, psychologists need to think about how to apply their services to people with particular needs. Actors are such a group, and our recommendation is that psychologists find a way to reach out to them in a meaningful way," she says. (27)

Alice Brockway was inspired to set up Playing Sane by her experience of working in theatre, where she says mental health problems are widespread.

Launch of the website follows an article in the The Stage that highlighted how performers in the sector are battling with anxiety.
As well as setting up the website, Brockway is undertaking a PhD to conduct research into mental health specifically in actors, with the goal of creating a set of best-practice guidelines for the industry.

Playing Sane will include signposting to support for actors and regular articles from mental health professionals as well as actors and creatives who have experienced issues such as eating disorders.

Brockway, who sits on the NW committee of charity Rethink Mental Illness, argues that there is little mental health information geared specifically towards actors. She hopes to provide guidance on how specific aspects of an actor’s job may impact on mental health, including the audition and rehearsal process, and the process of embodying difficult emotions when playing a character.

She said: “After engaging with some work the Royal Exchange in Manchester was doing on actors with disabilities, I realised that mental health in actors has been grossly neglected from all sides and decided to do something about it.

“Actors trade in emotions, yet we don’t have any best-practice guidelines and there is little support for people dealing with mental illness.”

She added: “As we have such a prevalence of these problems, we just can’t justify ignoring them.”

Alongside the website, Brockway also aims to undertake research into the specific aspects of an actor’s job that affect mental health, looking in detail at the audition process, rehearsals, and the way actors are given feedback.

She said: “We know a lot about the broader issues actors face, such as financial instability, but in terms of the real detail, we don’t know a lot.

“Part of the problem is that actors don’t want to talk about it. There’s an unspoken understanding that if you are seen as ill or difficult or problematic in any way, that you just won’t work.”

Brockway is launching a public funding campaign to go towards the future running of the website, with the aim of eventually developing the venture into a charity and holding workshops and talks.

The Stage is a partner on website ArtsMinds, which aims to provide support to performers suffering from mental health issues. Artsminds.co.uk (28)

As the number of people with long-term conditions increases and with an ageing population who may experience high levels of physical inactivity and social isolation, innovative and effective treatments are needed, more than ever!

The arts seem to have an important role to play in this – through offering help, promoting well-being and creating a space for social connection.

We’ve looked at the added value of the arts and how they can keep us happy and in good mental health:

Do you recognise a feeling of joy that you can get when taking part in cultural activities such as music, museums, dance groups and theatre?

Getting involved with the arts can have powerful and lasting effects on health. It can help to protect against a range of mental health conditions, help manage mental ill health and support recovery.

"Arts and creativity are an important part of the programmes we run at the Mental Health Foundation, art can be a different and fun way to express and talk about emotion." Jolie Goodman, Programmes Manager for Empowerment and Later life.

Engaging in the arts seems to be growing in popularity as a way to improve your wellbeing. Participating in the arts can enable people to deal with a wide range of mental ill health conditions and psychological distress.

The best part is that it helps people to improve their mental health through creativity. Making art is helping many people express themselves, without having to use words.

The arts also help at a community level. As we age, we might face isolation through a loss of social connections, such as friends, family and workplace - as well as other limitations such as decreasing physical health.

Through getting involved in arts programmes, people in later life can rebuild their social connections and extend existing support in their communities. Getting in touch with others helps in alleviating loneliness and isolation. This is also true for care homes, where arts activities can help increase social interactions between residents and residents and staff which can improve mood and wellbeing.

At the Mental Health Foundation, we are starting a new project. Creating Communities is an 18 months project funded by the Mercers Trust. We are facilitating peer groups in partnership with Anchor Hanover Housing using creativity and access to the outdoors to improve wellbeing and social connectedness for tenants in different types of later life housing scheme. In terms of creativity we will use paintings that people may be familiar with to begin conversations about emotion and build on these.We will help participants to use different materials to produce artwork that is relevant to them. Even if they don’t think of themselves as creative, we want to create an environment that encourages them to have fun and be playful. It may be that people are interested in bringing their memories to life.

More and more people now appreciate that the arts and culture can play a valuable role in helping people who have mental health problems.

As we’ve noted: engaging in arts, social activities and interaction within our communities can help with major challenges such as ageing and loneliness. It can help to boost confidence and make us feel more engaged and resilient. Besides these benefits, art engagement also alleviates anxiety, depression and stress.

Since it can be used as a non-medical approach to preventing mental health problems it could help save money in the health service and social care.

Making art can enable people to take greater responsibility of their own health and wellbeing by helping maintain levels of independency and curiosity and improve the quality of life by bringing greater joy. (29)

A report by Victoria University, Working in the Entertainment Industry, released in August 2015, investigated the mental health of professionals working in this sector.

It suggested that mental health problems are widespread and have more to do with insecure and harsh working conditions than romantic ideas of misunderstood genius or workers’ existing illnesses.

With the release in December last year of reports from the Productivity Commission and the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, industrial relations look set to become a focus of the political agenda in 2016.

It is therefore worth considering if there are any lessons about mental health that can be learned from this most “flexible” of work places.

Working in the Entertainment Industry was written by researchers Dr Julie van den Eynde, Professor Adrian Fisher and Associate Professor Christopher Sonn. It was commissioned and funded by Entertainment Assist, which supports the mental health of workers in the entertainment industry.

The report identified performing artists of all kinds, performing arts support workers and broadcast, film and recording media operators. A comprehensive survey combined questionnaires, demographic data and open-ended explanations to build a nationwide picture of the industry.

The report reveals that these workers suffer from the effects of uncertain employment, low pay, shift work and the need to be willing and able to work at all times and under all conditions.

The sector’s employees have three-times the level of sleep disorders than the general population. This causes serious flow-on effects on their relationships with family and friends.

Arts workers also experience symptoms of anxiety ten-times higher than the general population, and depression symptoms five-times higher.

They have higher rates of suicidal ideation, planning and attempts than the general population, and their use and misuse of drugs and alcohol are significantly greater.

These are shocking statistics which, as with studies of other industries, can be directly attributed to financial insecurity and poor working conditions.

In addition to this, workers in the entertainment industry contend with some unique experiences, the most bizarre of which is being asked to work for free.

In 2013 Kylie Minogue’s production company advertised for dancers to appear in her latest music video for the reward of “exposure”. When the story hit the news the company responded quickly and offered monetary payment.

This high-profile incident may well have been the genuine mistake the company said it was, but it struck a nerve because it is sadly by no means an isolated one.

All workers in the entertainment industry, but particularly artists, are frequently asked to work for no payment. I was recently invited to present an interactive art installation for a whole day in another city for the “in-kind support” of “exposure” to festival goers.

It is difficult for people to maintain a healthy sense of self when they are consistently told their labour and skills are worth, quite literally, nothing.

Over the past couple of decades, artists and others in the entertainment industry have increasingly operated as small businesses, negotiating their own pay and conditions independently of the MEAA union.

But this deregulated market place has clearly failed. David Throsby and Anita Zednik’s research on artists’ incomes shows that wages were static in real terms from 2000/1 to 2007/8, with the negative income gap with other Australian workers growing. Working in the Entertainment Industry confirms this trend.

While wages languish in the entertainment industry, the arts have been rebranded as the Creative Industries, and variations on that theme. For example, the Victoria Ministry for the Arts, formerly known as Arts Victoria, is now called Creative Victoria.

This worthy attempt to highlight the immense contribution that the arts make to our economy and cultural lives is unfortunately not matched by commensurate support for the people who are the engine room of this public good.

Artist David Pledger has called for a strike by artists to highlight their mostly underpaid contribution to society, but this is difficult to realise in a deregulated, fragmented sector where everyone is an independent contractor who cannot afford to turn down work.

It is common to hear artists ruefully acknowledge that no-one is forcing them to work in this industry. This “freedom” to take or leave chronic underpayment is reflected in a sharp decline in the number of entertainment workers over the age of 30.

When the normal things in life that cost money come up, such as buying a house or raising children, years of training and experience are abandoned. To remain in the entertainment industry requires a personal accommodation with poverty and destructive working conditions.

Public discussion of the Working in the Entertainment Industry report has largely focused on how people in the sector can best cope with the poor mental health outcomes that stem from their work, most importantly by acknowledging the problem and seeking help.

Similarly, the recent conference Making time: arts and self-care workshopped a practical list of coping strategies for frazzled arts workers.

While these responses are useful and valid, it is striking that more has not been made of the need to change the causes of this human resources problem.

Accepting that damaging industrial conditions in the entertainment sector is a given is like offering overburdened office workers colouring books to practice mindfulness instead of allowing them to go home on time without fear of seeming uncommitted to their jobs.

Conditions in the entertainment industry actively undermine workers’ autonomy and security and contribute to very poor mental outcomes.

The current federal government would do well to consider this before it replicates such conditions in other workplaces. (32)

Operatic soprano Greta Bradman was 19 years old when she started to self-harm. Intense bullying through high school had coincided with her parents’ divorce. She felt isolated and started skipping school. A year earlier her grandfather, cricket star and national hero Sir Donald Bradman, had died.

Donald Bradman and his grand daughter were close – their relationship has been chronicled in a double episode of Australian Story – and he had instilled in her a love of classical music. Greta saw singing as “a kind of solace” for her pain, and she was accepted into the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide. But that overwhelming sense of self-loathing stayed with her, and she began trying to destroy the one thing that brought her joy: her voice.

“I wanted to take away the possibility of singing as a career,” she says. She describes it as needing to punish herself – for missing school, for being “completely worthless”, for having the audacity to wrap her identity up in art.

“It was a combination of wanting to hurt my voice and to get that sense of relief that can come from self-harm. But it’s a completely maladaptive coping strategy, which took me further and further down the cycle of self-loathing ... It was bound up in me as an artist – not really knowing how to go about it, and not feeling like I could necessarily succeed, but at the same time being terrified of the prospect of success.”

Eventually, Greta climbed out of the cycle. She stopped self-harming when she was 23 and became pregnant with her first child. Today, her voice well and truly intact, she is one of Australia’s leading sopranos, with a radio show on ABC Classic FM, an upcoming principal role as Mimì in La Bohème at the Sydney Opera House, and a plaque on the Adelaide Festival Centre’s walk of fame.

She also practices pro bono as a provisional psychologist, with a masters in clinical psychology. Bradman has combined both passions to consult on a major new industry-first initiative from Arts Centre Melbourne – the Arts Wellbeing Collective – to help others in the creative arts who have struggled in similar ways.

The collective, which launched on Thursday, is unprecedented – if not around the world, then certainly in Australia. It comprises close to 90 Victorian arts and culture organisations, including Melbourne festival, Melbourne Theatre Company, Victorian Opera and Regional Arts Victoria, who have come together with a common aim: to improve mental health and wellbeing for Victorian performing arts workers – those on stage and in front of the camera, as well as those working behind the scenes.

Developed in consultation with prominent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, and drawing from the practice of positive psychology, the program, in its pilot phase, will feature a series of workshops and a dedicated website filled with resources tailored to the mental health needs of the performing arts sector – a sector which recent research has shown is in crisis.

In 2016, a major report was released by Victoria University and Entertainment Assist following an extensive study of entertainment industry workers.

The report – which focused on performing artists and composers, performing arts support workers and broadcasting and media equipment operators – was alarming. Levels of moderate to severe anxiety in the performing arts industry were 10 times higher than the general population; levels of depression in industry workers were up to five times higher; and workers were four to five times more likely to plan to commit suicide, and twice as likely to attempt it.

As Bradman explains, the performing arts industry comprises a unique cocktail of working conditions that, without the right levels of support, can prove deadly.

“As a performer, you’re working when everyone else is working, and then you’re working when everyone else is having fun,” she says. “The work hours are unique, and on top of that you’ve got the lack of work security, and the financial pressures.”

An Australia Council report released in 2010 found more than half the country’s artists were making less than $10,000 a year from their creative pursuits, regardless of the hours they put in. Many of those hours come in shifts, Bradman says, which come with their own set of risks – from obesity and cardiovascular disease through to sleep problems and other mental health issues.

There are social factors too, including an imperative to socialise and network at events that revolve around alcohol and drug consumption. “Looking at future work possibilities and career progression can be somewhat tied to that too,” Bradman says.

And all that’s to say nothing of work instability, and what it can do to one’s mental health. “For performing artists, and also for people backstage, you might go through a phase of getting a lot of work, and then all of the sudden the work drops off. That can have a big impact on your sense of identity.”

The extreme highs and lows of the work itself compound the issues. “I’ve experienced this myself,” Bradman says. “You have these immense highs of being part of a family, a community, that comes together for this incredible project – particularly if it’s a long project, like a musical, an opera, a long run of a dance. You’re so close to the people, and you’re all so bound up in it – and chemically, from a neuropsychological and psychological perspective, there is so much going on in those relationships ... but it’s all bound up within that world of the show, and suddenly the show ends and it’s gone.

“There’s a huge sense of grief and loss that can come from that – and a sense of needing to renegotiate your identity.”

While Bradman fundamentally disagrees with the myth of the “struggling artist”, which romanticises mental health issues as a creative boon, she says there is something intrinsic to the arts that can make artists and workers particularly at risk.

“To be [an artist] we have to be vulnerable, we have to give of ourselves, hugely, we have to allow ourselves to feel an array of emotions – some of them good, some of them really difficult,” she says. That’s why it’s particularly important that arts workers can access resources and support tailored to their industry – a gap the Arts Wellbeing Collective is hoping to fill.

“What we do [as arts workers] is so bound up with who we are. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, it’s just a way that a lot of us identify,” Bradman says. “We have to negotiate what that means, so that in the quieter times – in those times when there’s not as much work – we don’t equate a lack of achievement with a lack of self-worth, or an uncertainty about our direction.”

For Simon J Green, it started with scratching. He had been running an independent film company for eight years – a creative investment with huge financial strain, long hours and high responsibility – when his wife noticed him absent-mindedly digging paths across his forearms. “As soon as she mentioned it, I realised I’d been scratching my legs, too. I pulled up my pant legs and we both gasped at the ragged, bloody strips I’d torn in myself.”

Green, who is based in Melbourne, was experiencing “extreme levels of stress and depression” combined with long working hours and a lack of sleep, which meant every small problem took on extreme proportions. It’s a spiralling feeling that many performing arts workers identify with.

“Taking on staff, and the pressure of keeping them both paid and creatively satisfied, weighed on me more than I realised,” he said. “Combined with managing [my] cystic fibrosis, and trying but failing to meet my own creative needs, I’d spun out of control to the point I was literally tearing myself up.”

There was another factor too, Green says: a lack of perceived value. “People don’t think our work is worth much, which puts pressure on us to make more for less.”

This is an issue Bradman raises too, which she is looking into with a new, broader survey which soft-launched in January. “Culturally, and particularly in the current climate, [there are questions] over the perceived value of the arts, not only within the performing arts community but the broader community.”

In 2015, the Abbott government slashed funding from the Australia Council – cuts which were handed down, for the most part, to the small-to-medium arts sector. In May 2016, the artistic directors of major theatre companies penned an open letter calling it an “unprecedented assault” on the arts, and individual artists were among the biggest losers.

“When funding is shifting and changing, and there is so much uncertainty, that can really play into one’s sense of where one is going in life, and one’s sense of self-worth,” Bradman says.

The issue of worth came up in the Entertainment Assist report too. “Performers working for free is a huge issue in our industry. It devalues our skills and puts us out of work,” said one participant. “[We need] more government support and to realise the importance of the arts,” said another.

In the film industry, Green says, that devaluation has specific repercussions. “There’s a real scarcity mindset that seems to undermine collaboration – a sense of a zero-sum game of work available, which isn’t true. I think it comes from that feeling that we aren’t really valued by society at large; from all of us being told at school, ‘Don’t be an artist, you’ll never make a living, be something else’, to the tired joke (that we perpetuate) that an arts degree is useless.

“Performing artists are twice as likely to attempt suicide, and depression is five times higher than the general population. That’s a horrifying statistic,” he says. “Clearly there’s a problem, but no one really cares. If it were a different industry – say, manufacturing – there’d be a national discussion.”

Green remembers when the report came out, alongside an article on how little money is made by actors who are considered famous in Australia. “The comments sections were full of people saying, ‘Boo hoo, get a real job, they chose that life.’ With all this, how can the arts not be fatiguing our mental health."

Although the report, and the Arts Wellbeing Collective which has sprung from it, are focused on the performing side, mental health issues in the arts are by no means confined to that. Mental suffering has a long and storied history with visual art, for instance, and a recent callout for arts workers who had experienced mental health flare-ups drew mostly anecdotes from writers, who spoke of anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and recent, heartbreaking suicides among their community.

Developed by a performing arts company, the focus of the Arts Wellbeing Collective reflects its origins. Upcoming workshops are titled “the Green Room”, “Centre Stage” and “the Show Must Go On”. But Bradman hopes the resources made available will be of use across the industry and beyond, and has aspirations for expansion.

“There is absolutely nothing to preclude it from being broadened out, if it’s successful,” she says. “I think it’s really important to be slowly, slowly about it, to let it build up and evolve, to let this year really inform the shape that it takes in the next.”

Above all, she hopes it achieves a top-down recognition of mental health issues, removing stigma, generating conversation and increasing support: “A real sense of committing, on the part of the organisations, to a nonjudgmental, open and supportive relationship when it comes to mental health in the arts,” she says. (30)

To me, some of the most fascinating contrasts are those found in creative performers- those who are constantly on stage and in the public eye.

Out of Csikszentmihaly's list of 10 complex personality traits of creative people, which were based on interviews with a wide variety of creative people, I think these three are the most relevant to creative performers:

1) "Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest. They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm...This does not mean that creative people are hyperactive, always "on." In fact, they rest often and sleep a lot. The important thing is that they control their energy; it's not ruled by the calendar, the dock, an external schedule. When necessary, they can focus it like a laser beam; when not, creative types immediately recharge their batteries. They consider the rhythym of activity followed by ideleness or reflection very important for the success of their work."

2) "Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. We're usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliability measured. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously."

3) "Creative people's openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. Most would agree with Rabinow's words: 'Inventors have a low threshold of pain. Things bother them.' A badly designed machine causes pain to an inventive engineer, just as the creative writer is hurt when reading bad prose. Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable."

These three seeming contradictions- energy/rest, extroversion/introversion, and openness/sensitivity- are not separate phenomena but are intimately related to one another and along with other traits form the core of the creative performer's personality. (33)

I think the most obvious advantage of the arts is that it can help with social interactions. Through performing, children can build confidence and self-esteem. They will also learn how to present oneself in a manner that is acceptable. A study where some students participated in a performing arts program for a year displayed improvement in their self-confidence, socialization skills, and teamwork.They also tended to feel a sense of belonging. Through performing with others, children are able to build lasting friendships with those who are going through similar experiences. It is always nice to have someone who knows what you are going through. Another aspect is interpersonal skills such as compassion and empathy. The children can learn and experience empathy through the characters they play. In my opinion, empathy is difficult to experience because it means being able to understand what another is feeling. This can be difficult for some, but through acting and even singing and dancing the performers are able to understand the emotions they may be portraying. The social skills learned through performing arts are quite immense.

Children in performing arts benefit greatly in their academics. Studies have shown that those who participate in the arts achieve better in reading, maths, and writing. Countries with the highest rankings in maths and science, such as Japan, Hungary and the Netherlands, have mandatory arts and music education as part of their school curriculum. Another study showed that in the United States the more arts classes one takes, the higher their SAT score is. This is very interesting, because in the states, a lot of the funding for performing art classes has been cut, which is very unfortunate. I think that performing arts is very important and just researching the benefits is enough to convince me of the benefit it has on children. Participating in performing arts improves listening skills. Because there is so much direction in the various arts, those who participate in them are better at following directions. This makes the academic experience better and more efficient because they are not wasting time.

Being mentally healthy is important. Recently mental health has been a popular topic, which it should be as it is an important issue many people deal with every day. 1 in 10 children have a diagnosable mental health disorder. The arts may give children an outlet to let out the emotions they are feeling. It can also give one confidence as previously discussed. They will have the confidence to stand up to a bully or the confidence to be themselves and not worry what others think of them. The national institute of mental health explains that some mental illnesses can be affected by a prolonged state of being stressed. The arts can help minimize this stress. For example, problem solving skills are gained. Various things can go wrong during a performance, rather than getting stressed or upset, the performers must be able to think on their feet and work together to minimize the mistake. This is beneficial in the real world as the children will be less likely to freak out over something that has gone wrong, rather they will be able to use the skills they have learned to solve the issue. There are so many ways the arts can help reduce stress. Of course, this is only one aspect of mental health, but it shows how something so little can help with it.

The performing arts are very important and should be a more crucial part of society today. I know there are many skeptics out there who believe that the performing arts are not beneficial. But, the facts are there to prove that performing arts have many advantages. Many studies and research have been done to prove this. People should recognize the benefits that dancing, singing, and acting have on children and what they will be able to achieve because of it. The arts really do assist children in everyday life and prepares them for the real world. (34)

So, what does the term mean to artists making work, and to the organisations that might support or programme them? "I love the term 'emerging'," says performer, writer and producer Stephanie Martin of Clamour Theatre Company. She points out that 'emerging' is a process rather than a binary distinction between one thing and another. "It gives a sense of movement; we're already doing it and it's a process that has begun and is slow but steady and strong." As a 31-year-old, she also finds the term 'early-career' helpful.

Several artists use the term to demonstrate they are still developing their practice. Playwright Charlotte Josephine thinks "it means 'new', and that brings with it an excitement that your work will be fresh and vibrant. It also can bring with it a level of allowance, like the audience will forgive you because this is your first show and you're, hopefully, all heart and no finesse."

Rebecca Low, a writer and director working with TwentySomething in Dundee, agrees: "It suggests experimentation, something a bit rough around the edges – maybe not quite fully formed. I think it's also a way for the artist themselves to hedge their bets a bit. It suggests a tentativeness."

"It suggests experimentation"

Though the term can help to access opportunities, many people spoke about its problems. Rowan Rutter, producer at Hull Truck Theatre, says: "I don't use it to describe myself, and try to avoid using it in describing others. An artist is an artist. A producer is a producer. Let the work speak for itself."

"The main issue is the extent to which people perceive emerging artists' work as less accomplished or valuable," says Sam George of Clown Funeral Theatre Company. "Certain theatres will not programme work that is seen as emerging." He thinks it might help if more venues were to show emerging and established work alongside each other without openly distinguishing between them.

Rutter is less equivocal: "Stop using the term. Just call people what they are. Let their work and their ideas and their integrity speak for itself. And never presume that anyone is the finished article or that it is a linear journey."

The term also carries with it a risk of exploitation. Young and emerging artists are likely to be less savvy and more desperate for exposure, which makes them vulnerable to unscrupulous 'opportunities' that end up costing them money.

Incoming Festival makes an absolute commitment that no-one will be poorer for being involved – we pay our assistant and all the companies receive a performance fee plus half of their box office. And the New Diorama, our host venue, invests heavily in artists through all its activity. Artistic Director David Byrne says: "Only offering 50% of the box office or a few hundred pound seed commission just isn't going to cut it. Often young artists are left in crippling debt just for staging shows in London."

"Never presume that anyone is the finished article"

Age is another issue. Our festival deliberately doesn't put any age limits on our programming. That said, almost all of the companies that apply are made up of young theatremakers, perhaps because older artists feel less comfortable with the label.

Producer Tobi Kyeremateng says: "Emerging shouldn't be synonymous with youth. I think this can stop older people wanting to start new things, or can cut them off from opportunities as most learning opportunities are aimed at 'emerging' artists but are capped by age. It suggests you must have everything together by a certain age, and if you don't, there's no support for you. "It's a valid point: very few careers are solid by the time you are 25 or 26, which is the cut-off point for many schemes for 'young' artists.

"We've made it much harder to begin a creative life later, in terms of the support available," says producer and writer Lauren Mooney in The Stage. "It's part of a wider cultural problem, not just in theatre but in the arts more generally – there's a slight deification of youth that has to do with the attractive myth of just bashing your first novel out at 21 and realising you're a genius."

And the lack of support can be scary. Laura Kressly, writing for The Play's The Thing, states: "Housing, particularly in London, is a primary issue for working artists. Why should any working adult have to live with their parents in a perpetually infantilised state in order to pursue a career? It's now depressingly commonplace for young people to be living at home into their 30s if they work in low-paying fields."

"Emerging shouldn't be synonymous with youth"

This income trap especially applies to older emerging artists, who perhaps have more financial commitments, and to parents, often women, who are returning to work after a break. The costs of childcare are prohibitive, and much arts work demands long and inflexible hours. Encouraging young, early career and emerging artists to fight for higher wages and push for better splits is all very well, but venues and producers often hold all the power. A take-it-or-leave-it approach abounds, as those who try to negotiate better rates can easily be replaced by another group desperate for the 'opportunity'.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, and many venues actively champion and support artists at all stages of their careers. New Diorama doesn't limit any of its opportunities by age: "We're looking for groups who are hungry to share their work with new audiences, take their theatre on tour around the UK and even internationally," says Byrne.

Does that mean emerging artists should aspire to work internationally? "Yes, with a caveat," answers Steven Brett, Theatre and Dance Programme Manager at the British Council. "Bear in mind that developing your own voice is tricky enough without adding the impact of working in a different cultural context. If opportunities come up, consider them carefully. Are you going to be looked after and nurtured, or are you going into a bear pit?" He has two tips: find an experienced industry professional to advise you and start by looking for opportunities alongside international emerging artists.

"Are you going into a bear pit?"

"At the British Council, most of our support for emerging artists is about helping them prepare for international work in the long term," Brett continues. "We mentor artists, we offer bursaries to attend international networking events and we run initiatives like the Artist Development Programme, alongside the Edinburgh Showcase." And over the past few years, the Artists' International Development Fund, run in partnership with Arts Council England, has helped hundreds of early and mid-career artists gain international experiences.

Rhum and Clay will be part of the British Council's Edinburgh Showcase for the first time this year – and wants to use the opportunity to take its work abroad. "We have been a company for six years now," Artistic Director Matt Wells tells me. "It is at this stage that a lot of companies just fade into nothing. I think what has enabled us to continue is a mixture of sheer bloody mindedness, and the support of partners such as New Diorama. I should also mention HOME in Manchester and their T2 programme, which is specially aimed at mid-career artists."

If you can find the support, at what point do you 'emerge' as an artist? Director Dan Hutton thinks "to be established means two things: that people are aware of you and your work, and you have relationships and offers coming in, and on a practical level it's your primary source of income, or at least something you see as a job, not just something you do. There's a shift between 'this is what I want to be doing' and 'this is what I am doing.'"

"When we're no longer emerging, we might be left in unknown territory"

"I think as more companies use the term emerging for longer periods of time, we are getting further away from finding a good position for the middle range artists," says Rianna Dearden of Lost Watch Theatre Company. "We ride the emerging wave for as many years as we can because there are more opportunities and a nice cushy title, but I'm not sure how useful it is. When we're no longer emerging, we might be left in unknown territory, very suddenly, and on our own."

There are power structures at play, suggests Brian Logan, Artistic Director at Camden People's Theatre (CPT): "There's certainly a perception that there's more support available for emerging artists than for established artists, and some artists have expressed frustration that their careers are necessarily retarded in the 'emerging' stage because that's the only way to get support. There are also issues with the terminology of 'artist development', much of which implies that the artists are lucky to be receiving the generous support of paternalistic venues."

We can still do better, thinks Tamsin Drury, Director of HAB and WORD of Warning in Manchester. She says: "There's a problem with our scheme-based ecology. It's hard to generalise, but it's about working out what people need at different stages, basically more money, allowing them to be more ambitious, offering opportunities to get work seen more consistently... Unless a piece of work gets picked up and shown, people are unlikely to move beyond that 'emerging' tag and continue a trajectory. That's the way the world is."

"Artists starting out during the first ten years need more investment"

Working together may be one way forward. CPT is part of STAMP, a new network of theatres in London that seeks to improve support for artists. And Venues North is a group of venues across the north of England helping new and emerging artists to get their work seen more widely.

Byrne and his team at New Diorama are also trying to change the status quo. He explains: "Artists starting out during the first ten years need more investment, not less. They don't have a huge reputation and lots of funders, so their on-stage work really needs to pay. To combat the negative connotations around the word 'emerging', we're working to change the rules of how artists are championed at the start of their careers."

Perhaps it's time to reclaim the term. As Low says: "Surely as artists, if we're doing things right, we're always learning, always renewing, always having our eyes opened to new ideas, always emerging." (35)

This leads him to ask: "Is art a living that people should be able to support themselves on – and thus, the poverty that attends to it is a social justice problem – or is art a luxury and the people who work on it hobbyists?" It's a good question and one that is particularly acute in theatrical terms. After all, theatre is a much harder thing to commodify than many other art forms because its value derives from its liveness, and cannot be reproduced and sold ad infinitum. Therefore the capacity for turning a profit and sustaining a living is even more limited. As the Flux Theatre Ensemble blog points out, monetary worth is never a good way of judging the true value of theatre.

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The Chicago-based blogger Don Hall, has a very simple answer to this dilemma. He says, rather loudly: "YOU AREN'T GOING TO MAKE A LIVING AS AN ARTIST IN THEATRE. You can make a living as an artist in commercial voiceover, on camera industrials and commercials, in film or as a teacher, but the only people at 95% of the theatres in Chicago making a living in the theatre are administrative people – not the artists." So in order to make good work, you have to resign yourself to the fact that doing it ain't going to feed you.

Yet perhaps there's an upside to all of this. Blogger and playwright RVC Bard says she is leaning towards Don Hall's position: "And it's not because of little things like reality, probability and so on. It's because not making a living off theatre makes my work better – because real people live in the real world and, as a theatre artist, that's where my focus needs to be. Even if I do something completely surreal and fantastical, the core will be about life as it is lived today. I can't get that if I'm a sort of secular monk who can't be bothered with the lives and concerns of laypeople."

Now it is true, as Guy Yedwab points out in a follow-up post, that maintaining two jobs can cut both ways: just as it can put you in greater touch with the "real world", it can also leave you with very little time to focus on that world. But either way, Bard is surely right to point out the importance of not disappearing completely into the tiny bubble of theatreland.

Anyway, as the global economy continues to falter, the idea of job security in many fields is looking increasingly unlikely. Adam Thurman at Mission Paradox writes: "We are all going to have to work harder then ever to carve a career path for ourselves. So you might as well do what you love." Now this doesn't mean, he says, that you should "get all stupid on me and quit your day job to devote your time to sculpting or writing the next great novel. It's hard to do great art and dodge eviction notices at the same time. But you might as well try to see if you can integrate your art into your life. Maybe it gets to the point where you make a living from it, maybe not."

And perhaps that is the key point: it is perfectly possible to pursue one's creative ambitions in tandem with a bit of mundane wage-slavery. After all, Einstein did some of his best stuff while he was working as a patent clerk. (36)

Now you're probably confused as to why anyone would want to act after discovering those cons. Fortunately, acting can be extremely enriching and rewarding for those who are absolutely passionate.

Pros:

Think about it. (38)