I have two sides to me: one artistic and one scientific. I’ve always had this. At college I studied sciences – physics, maths, computing – whilst before this I attended a theatre school. At university I read computer science but spent a lot of time at the radio station and some time with the theatre group. Now in work I am a photographer but make a considerable amount of my living from web development. I’ve always tried to balance these sides out, but it’s tough.
I guess it means something that when it’s a choice between theatre and anything else theatre always wins. This has always been the case, and when I dropped out of university I think I must have realised it (at least subconsciously, although at the time I thought I was just looking for something totally different from what I had been doing) – I applied to take a course at RADA. I didn’t get in, they said I lacked industry experience (which seems odd given they’re job is to teach people things they’ll need to get into the industry!). I think this knocked me back into thinking it was a silly idea (I’ll admit it was a bit of a long shot anyway) and I got on and made the life I live now.
In the last year these thoughts have crept up on me a bit. I blame Tiffany – through her I’m experiencing working in theatre. She tells me about her days and what she’s had to deal with, we go to shows together and sit there commenting on things we’ve spotted, and we’ve even sat there reading the same script talking about how we see the scene being set.
And you know what? I love it.
Part of me wishes I didn’t. I want to go and be involved, I want to spend my day’s like Tiffany does surrounded by it, working on it, making it all come together. But I can’t just do that. I can’t just drop what I have and do that, it doesn’t work like that.
I spoke to Tiffany today on the phone and she said that, one day, we’ll both be working in the West End, and we’ll finish our shows and head to the clubs where only those working in London theatre can go, together. It’s fantasy, it’ll never happen… and yet she tells me it can, that I just have to get myself together and make it happen. Perhaps she’s right, but I don’t think I know how to go about it. Or maybe I don’t think I can go about it.
Either way, for the next 4 days, I’m in that world. It may only on the very outer fringe, but I’m involved, and I’m going to put everything I can into it. Because this is what I really, really want to do.
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