Jennifer McEvoy
I was delighted to be asked to write something here as part of marking of 10 years of Ardent Theatre Company.
Recently I heard Adrian Dunbar on Radio 4 talking about how he started out as a young actor in Northern Ireland and discussing how much harder it is now for young actors from outside London to make the contacts and get started. It immediately made me think of the wonderful work Ardent does with the Ardent 8 project in giving talented young actors a real taste of the life of a working actor and the chance to make the necessary contacts.
When I started out it was in weekly rep, almost a thing of the past now. But back then, in the early sixties almost all reasonably sized towns had their own rep theatre. We put on a new show every week, with just one week’s rehearsal, rehearsing the next play during the day whilst performing the current show in the evening. When it was a Shakespeare we had the luxury of two weeks rehearsal! Later we went to fortnightly - two weeks rehearsal for every production. At first it almost felt like too much time! It was a wonderful training ground. It was the 1960s, there were new voices coming to the fore - actors from working class backgrounds. Actors with all sorts of accents! It was exciting!
Back then, when I started work I was extremely lucky in having a family home in London. But for many years I didn’t live in London. I spent a decade from the 1970s to 80s bringing up my children in Devon. Even then it was thought to be a fatal move for an actor. Leaving London? But that’s where it all happens! So I never told my agent. She thought I lived with my mother in South-West London. Back in those days before mobile phones she, strangely never seemed to find it odd that whenever she called about an audition, my mum always answered that I had just ‘popped out to the shops’! My mum would then phone me in Devon and then I called my agent back while quickly sorting out childcare and a train to London. For ten years my agent never knew I was 170 miles from London in the middle of Dartmoor.
Of course I don’t want to be harking back to a golden age of an idyllic past, but it does seem harder than ever to survive as a young actor and not have to give up before you have begun. If you are living out of London, then jumping on a train for an audition is completely unaffordable now. And although of course diversity in theatre has transformed over the years, so much for the better, the fact that it is so hard to afford to live as an actor cuts many great talents out of the running.
In 1966 my parents started The Globe Players. They wanted to share their love of theatre, and particularly of Shakespeare, with all young people. Over the last 58 years the company has taken on various forms and has employed hundreds of young actors, touring schools and playing to thousands of young people, many of whom will have had our visit as their first and perhaps only experience of theatre.
Theatre has always been such an important part of my life. My siblings and I are the fourth generation of actors, my daughter the fifth and now my granddaughter looks like becoming a possible sixth! While I in no way feel that everyone should be quite so obsessed, I am very aware of the huge value of theatre, especially to young people today. And seeing teenagers engaged and enthused watching Shakespeare performed in their school halls always gives me enormous joy.
My brother Michael and I were interviewed by Ardent Theatre Company about the first 50 years of The Globe Players as part of their Conversation programme in 2017.
Many years ago (I won’t say how many in case he doesn’t want me to!) we were very lucky and happy to be able to offer Ardent’s Creative Director Mark Sands his first acting job. He joined The Globe Players. He played an excellent Bob Cratchit in our production of A Christmas Carol. Mark is one of the many hundreds of actors we have set off on that journey in theatre. The fact that we are able to give young actors that first experience of professional theatre is one of the things that has kept us fighting to carry on through the tough times (and times have been very tough over the years). Like Ardent we have always prided ourselves on paying an equity wage.
Ardent’s vision and mission are of vital importance, now equally, or even more so than when they set out a decade ago. The current conversation about accessibility to the Arts for working class performers, writers, directors and creators of all kinds has highlighted this. Projects like Ardent 8 really shouldn’t be as necessary as they are but as things stand they offer a vital, life-changing opportunity to a new group of young performers every year. The value of this to the performers and to the creative world they are coming in to cannot be overestimated. Here’s to the next ten years!
Jenny is a founder member and the Artistic Director of The Globe Players. When not performing, directing, costuming or loading, unloading and driving vans, she has also found time in her 62 year acting career to perform all over the world, including with The National Theatre, the RSC, in the West End and on television.