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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 18, 2022 9:35:25 GMT
What a horrible thing to say. Not really. In most other walks of life, such melodrama and antics simply don't happen. So bored of folk playing out their lives in public. No, it’s a vile comment. Plenty of people moan about their jobs. Plenty of freelancers across a range of industries and jobs publicly voice complaints about bad clients or widespread bad practice in terms of how freelancers are treated. Very very normal and commonplace. Comparing freelancers to employees is illogical, and it’s naive to think this kind of melodrama doesn’t happen in other industries. Besides like it or not, the performing arts is a different from other industries. I’ve noticed a tendency both on this forum and elsewhere to act as though the performing arts is exactly like working in an office and should be held to corporate office standards, which is just weird, naive and out of touch. Are people in office jobs told they have to have social media profiles? That their promotion rests on how many social media followers they have? That they are obligated to build up a “public persona” and reveal things about their personal lives in order to develop a persona and build up a fan base? Are office workers offered money to talk about their love lives in the press? Are office workers pressured into discussing their personal lives in public, or pressured into going along with fake feuds as a PR stunt? People saying actors will make themselves unhireable from this simply have no clue how the industry works. Besides, criticise their online behaviour all you like. Making personal attacks like “vacuous” and claiming “no one cares what they have to say” (which is pretty hypocritical when there are so many pages of people debating what they have to say pretty intensely) is just unnecessarily rude and personal. If you dislike actors and the performing art world why are you even on a theatre forum?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 18, 2022 8:41:37 GMT
What a horrible thing to say.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 16, 2022 14:11:24 GMT
I don’t think anyone is arguing that they shouldn’t be updated. I think all those archives want desperately for that to happen. Just that it’s incredibly expensive and time consuming and not practical with their current infrastructure. And that it’s low priority when they’re struggling to survive and do their actual job of maintaining the archives and facilitating academic and theatrical research.
People seem to think they can just bung a tape in a machine, press a button that says “Put this on the internet” and watch the money roll in.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 16, 2022 13:23:06 GMT
DVD is not the same as digital (within this specific context; obviously DVD stands for Digital Video Disc). You generally can’t stream a DVD online without first transferring the contents of a DVD to a computer, removing any coding or restrictions built into the DVD files (admittedly it’s very unlikely an archival theatre recording would have that), then converting and encoding the files into whatever specific video format the streaming software uses, then uploading those files.
There’s little value in converting VHS tapes to physical DVDs, for various reasons. The best solution is to convert both VHS and DVD to digital video files then upload them all to cloud storage (storing them on manual hard drives is an option but dependant on the drives not being lost or damaged, and of course nobody can access them without physically going and getting the drive out of a cupboard). But it’s just really expensive and time consuming, needs better IT infrastructure than most archives have, and cloud storage is not free for the amount of space such a project would need.
In terms of potential audience income and how much they’d have to charge to break even vs risk of damaging brand by overcharging (the original subject of this thread), all this has been well calculated. Most archival recordings don’t have famous actors in them, and the popularity of bootlegging means illegal copies of for example David Tennant’s pre-fame RSC productions are already available online for free. Even specially filmed stage productions like the Tennant/Tate Much Ado don’t make much.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 15, 2022 20:10:52 GMT
Geez… I don’t mean to be critical but do people genuinely think it’s a simple as “bunging a VHS tape in”?
An archival project of that nature would take thousands of man hours, from organisations that are already severely understaffed and struggling to do the bare minimum on the money they have. Say at a bare minimum you need to hire three new people just to digitise, organise and upload tapes - where is the money going to come from to pay their salaries? The time spent in the hiring process?
We’re also talking thousands of GB of data, which requires powerful computers with a lot of ram and a lot of processing power, not to mention they’d probably need external data storage. I know having done it myself that converting from DVD to an uploadable file format takes time and at least a small amount of technical knowledge. Such a thing would certainly require a substantial upgrade to their entire IT systems.
People who run theatre archives for a living and know exactly what’s involved have done the calculations and spent far more time and energy than anyone here crunching the numbers, and it’s just not financially viable to do something that would require a substantial financial investment and be so labour intensive. Do you think these companies haven’t spent weeks if not months exploring whether these options are viable? That they don’t know exactly what the cost/reward breakdown is? The market for archival recordings is essentially nil, except possible for rare historical works - realistically very few people are going to be willing to pay to see a random production of Romeo and Juliet from 1997 filmed from a single camera at the back of the auditorium. They’d have to charge a prohibitive amount to even come close to meeting the costs
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 15, 2022 0:43:25 GMT
Okay so the stage as you look at it from the front has a sofa on the left, and a kitchen on the right.
If you’re facing the stage (regardless of which level) you can see everything.
If you’re in the side seats you’re sitting at a 90° angle to the stage. If you’re right next to the stage then maybe it’s okay. Seats further from the stage, you won’t be able to see what’s on the same side as you. So if you’re sitting on the left you won’t see the sofa. If you’re sitting on the right you won’t see the kitchen. The further away from the stage, the less you can see. I was in N22 in the Circle (right hand side as you’re facing the stage) and didn’t know there even was a kitchen.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 14, 2022 18:19:31 GMT
It’s different for a each production since the costs are different and of course the potential income is different. Some productions are very expensive to broadcast due to things like music rights. I was involved a little in NT at Home and each play had different legal issues that had to be cleared and some took longer than others. Older archival productions aren’t of sufficient quality to stream, and some much older ones only exist on VHS which would need to be manually digitised. Increasingly theatres are filming shows for streaming or cinema broadcast so they’re pre-empting those problems. Though rights are often sticky because contracts tend to cover a specific number of showings or a specific time period a live stream will be available for. Even the NT Lives that had already been broadcast in cinemas, they still had to go back and renegotiate rights to re-broadcast as part of NT at Home because the original contracts didn’t cover that. They should digitise everything or they'll lose it - VHS probably won't last. I think particularly with disability activism finally starting to break through into the mainstream, theatremakers (if they're left-leaning) will have to start making things more physically accessible including by offering a streamed option if they want to carry on claiming they're 'inclusive'. It’s money though. There’s loads of stuff theatres should do that they want desperately to do, but can’t afford. Digitising old archives is low priority. So many theatres are struggling. I know of three theatres that have had to cancel their studio programming entirely, another that has made 75% of their staff redundant, a prominent new writing theatre that has had to halt new commissions entirely. Because they just have no money. Archives are often separate. The RSC archive is held by the Birthright Trust which is basically about four people in a dusty room, with a couple of TVs that look like they were purchased in 1987. Digitising their entire archive means someone manually taking a VHS tape out of its sleeve, putting it whatever machine (which they’d need to buy or rent specially), waiting for it to digitise, then uploading and organising the file. If their computers even have enough ram to begin with. Imagine having to do that for 100 tapes. By hand. It’s less to do with the cost of streaming technology is but paying someone to manually do all that work. If it’s a current production they have to find the money to hire camera operators, editors, people to do the sound mix for broadcast, and either take some seats off sale or stage a non-sold performance just for filming. That’s without even getting into stuff like music rights which have to be negotiated separately. (To give an example, ‘This House’ wasn’t included in the NT at Home screenings until the second batch, despite the creatives waiving their fees, because negotiations with David Bowie’s estate over the use of Five Years took weeks, and that was during lockdown where people were pulling together to make the At Home project a success.) And of course paying the actors and writers for the screen rights to their work, which may or may not be in the original contract but certainly isn’t free for commercial streaming or screening. I don’t know about Cock specifically (other than that EH protect their rights to that play fiercely) and it’s surprising they haven’t done a cinema broadcast at least. Bush and YV film all their shows for streaming as a matter of course. RSC and NT film some stuff for cinema and everything for archive. It’s becoming more widespread.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 14, 2022 9:43:23 GMT
It’s different for a each production since the costs are different and of course the potential income is different. Some productions are very expensive to broadcast due to things like music rights. I was involved a little in NT at Home and each play had different legal issues that had to be cleared and some took longer than others. Older archival productions aren’t of sufficient quality to stream, and some much older ones only exist on VHS which would need to be manually digitised. Increasingly theatres are filming shows for streaming or cinema broadcast so they’re pre-empting those problems. Though rights are often sticky because contracts tend to cover a specific number of showings or a specific time period a live stream will be available for. Even the NT Lives that had already been broadcast in cinemas, they still had to go back and renegotiate rights to re-broadcast as part of NT at Home because the original contracts didn’t cover that.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 13, 2022 10:18:14 GMT
I agree. Horrifically misogynist from the opening line (which is literally “I’m not like other girls”) to the amount of time the main character spends prancing around bragging about how special and unique she is because she eats food and talks about farting, you know, not like those other girls! You know the famous speech in “Gone Girl” about Cool Girls? Jude is unashamedly and unironically a Cool Girl. Which is obnoxious and boring but whatever. However, her perception of herself as a tough Not Like Other Girls causes her to do something I don’t believe any teenage girl would do. (TW for rape.) Her brother tells her he made a deal with his friends - who are portrayed very sympathetically, to arrange for her to be gang raped in exchange for them protecting him from bullies, but he’s decided to move to Florida to live with their grandmother who tells him if he comes to stay he can go to the beach every day, because he can’t go through with it. The sister immediately decides to go along with the plot to gang rape her and asks her brother to drug her prior to the rape, because she’s tough and it’s empowering for her to secretly consent without their knowledge.
I guess it’s sort of an interesting question about consent, that she does explicitly verbally consent so technically it’s not rape but the young men don’t know that. They clearly intend to gang rape her unconscious body regardless. I actually did find the play boring as it’s almost entirely reported speech, very little happens onstage, it’s just actors telling each other what has happened in the past. The animal death a dog is killed, and the brother has a terminally ill pet rat who meets a sticky end is unnecessary. A deeply unpleasant play. People walked out during the interval on press night, and I noticed a few people refuse to clap at the end which I’ve never seen before at a press night. I don’t generally look at content warnings but I notice the CW on the website are woefully inadequate. They don’t mention the animal murder at all which is a CW many people would need, and pass off the fact the entire play is about a gang rape (with a very graphic reported rape scene taking up much of the second half) as “reference to sexual assault.” That’s like content warning Titus Adronicus by saying “reference to baking.”
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 11, 2022 13:13:00 GMT
I respect all opinions, but the majority of people I’ve seen who are outraged about this are people working in theatre, including very well known playwrights and industry leaders. There are famous playwrights who insist that a significant percentage of tickets (not 4) are reasonably priced, or who insist that producers cap tickets at a certain top price.
It’s not a case of audience members being upset because they don’t understand how the industry works and actual industry people defending it because most of what I’ve witnessed is the opposite.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 10, 2022 19:00:34 GMT
The Old Vic production was 3 hours 45 minutes when I saw it and with a 1930 start! The Ivo Van Hove production on Broadway was 2:45. And it had a wolf in it. A real wolf? I mean it is Ivo.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 10, 2022 18:03:09 GMT
Isn’t the daily lottery literally like 4 tickets or something? There were raised eyebrows but not this outrage when all tickets (except the tiny handful of lottery or super advanced tickets) were £100 or £125. It’s a small cast play that’s relatively inexpensive to produce. They’d still make money hand over fist pricing tickets at £125, and that’s still crazy expensive. Why inflate tickets to such an obscene degree during a time when British theatre is struggling so much financially, so many theatres have had to cancel commissions and productions or cancel or reduce their studio shows, and the UK as a whole is in a financial crisis. It’s just so out of touch and like they just don’t care about their image or anything except greed.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 10, 2022 11:47:54 GMT
God the casting on this is exquisite.
Hopefully Turner can behave herself a bit better than the last time she directed for the NT.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 8, 2022 1:14:49 GMT
Clearly racism within theatre is a problem if theatres run the risk of potentially having to deal with hate mail, ban audience members, and issue public statements whenever they cast actors of colour in these roles. And is it only an insignificant minority? The furore over a black Anne Boleyn was huge. National newspapers wrote articles complaining about the RSC casting black actors.
Study history. These tropes are not new. These tactics and arguments are age-old, as are the fears they represent. Unless someone is a minority they have no idea how widespread and deeply entrenched systemic privilege, entitlement, and the conscious or subconscious belief that minorities are inherently not as good/clever/talented as able bodied white people.. Spend a few years seeing how frequently people assume a person who looks like you can’t possibly have landed a job or role or uni place or scholarship via talent but only due to positive discrimination and maybe you’d think differently.
Look at the comments here. People read one director!s opinion about casting disabled actors and instead of concluding “great this will result in more talented disabled actors finally getting a chance to audition and demonstrate their talent” they conclude “this may result in people who can’t act being handed roles just because they’re disabled.” Why would you even think such a thing, unless consciously or subconsciously you just don’t see disabled people as equals and as just as talented as non-disabled actors? Do people really think there’s such a shortage of talented disabled actors?
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 7, 2022 18:59:26 GMT
That is simply not true. Just because a performance is critically acclaimed doesn’t mean that racism magically vanishes. There have been plenty of angry comments on this forum from people who object (often using the same arguments being given here) to seeing a minority actor on stage, as well as plenty of hate and racism online and in the national press.
Just today the producers of Grease had to issue a public statement because they and their cast had received so much racial abuse over casting non-white actors in roles that are purely a work of fiction (ie not real historical people) but simply were originated in the movie by white actors. The Orange Tree theatre received racially abusive letters and actually had to ban one audience member after they cast a black actor in an historical play.
It’s very easy for white people to ignore or downplay racism but that indicates an agenda at worst, subconscious bias at best.
Make no mistake, demanding the continuation of a bigoted system that ensures minorities are oppressed is not in the slightest bit “liberal”. Positive discrimination is essential to even start to level the playing field.
Acting is a harsh industry and a thousand factors go into the decisions what actors the CD is told to look for, wording of casting breakdowns, and decisions on shortlisting. Giving a CD a specific criteria and telling them to only consider actors who meet the criteria for the casting breakdown is a standard part of casting that every show does, it’s not “banning.”
Realistically, ringfencing minority roles for minority actors is the ONLY way to even begin to do the work needed to overturn decades of systemic discrimination. Disabled actors face far higher barriers than able-bodied actors to even enter the industry, and a lot of CDs and producers won’t even consider disabled actors for roles not specifically written as being disabled. That’s without even going into the huge wars that disabled people have to fight to get basic access needs met (read some of the literature from the recent UHC launch or read personal experiences from actual disabled creatives who regularly are put in positions where they’re forced to crawl due to lack of wheelchair access, forced to go hours without liquids due to no toilet access, or turn up to auditions having spend hours of prep and are turned away because the prodco forgot to book an accessible audition suite and even the biggest audition venues in London aren’t accessible). This happens all the time even on productions specifically looking to cast disabled roles. Look at Jack Thorne’s statement about his own personal experiences that whenever he writes something with disabled characters, he’s given a fraction of his usual budget and often has to make those TV series through fringe programming. There’s no reason for such a huge disparity except for bigotry. And when one of the most famous and successful TV screenwriters working today is saying how bad anti-disabled bigotry is, what do you think it’s like for regular non-famous disabled actors?
Anyone who was truly liberal would be getting upset about the thousand occurrences of extremely talented disabled actors being “banned” from auditioning for roles they would be amazing in, purely because of bigotry. Yet no one cares about that.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 7, 2022 17:09:55 GMT
It’s not “dragging race into it” it’s pointing out that the arguments being made to support maintaining a bigoted system that historically has excluded disabled actors are the exact same arguments that are made whenever anyone brings up race in casting.
There’s still tremendous anger and rage whenever an actor is cast in a traditionally white role, like Hamlet or a role playing a real life historical figure. Look at the extreme fury incited by a black woman playing Anne Boleyn.
It’s very obviously just sheer racism, since whenever anyone had the audacity to suggest that maybe minorities should play minority roles people screech “IT’S ACTING/best actor who auditions should get the job/it’s acting not a documentary/theatre isn’t supposed to be completely historically accurate/well the script isn’t historically accurate anyway so why should the casting be.” Yet the second an actor who is a minority takes a role playing a character who’s not a minority, all those arguments get chucked out the window and suddenly people become very very concerned about theatre/TV being scrupulously historically accurate and suddenly the concept of “best actor who auditions should get the job” just magically no longer applies. It’s absolute unadulterated hatred of minorities and the hypocrisy sickens me.
No one thinks only Jewish actors should play Jewish characters, and the whole “Jewface” thing (which I was personally involved in) has been exploited and twisted by people with an agenda. The argument over Jewish representation was only ever about saying that plays that are overtly about Judaism and Jewish culture should have at least some Jews working on the show, regardless of whether that’s amongst the cast or behind the scenes. No one would ever tolerate a play about Islam being made by a 100% non-Muslim cast and creative team.
We are currently in a situation where extremely talented disabled actors are overlooked and not even able to audition for many roles yet mediocre or down right sh*tty actors are cast all the time purely because they have privilege. This is currently actively happening, yet people don’t care but would rather worry about the hypothetical possibility that a minority might potentially get something you feel they might not deserve.
Honestly this is all based on the unconscious bias of assuming that minorities are inherently less talented or able, and the age-old fear that minorities exploit identity politics to steal things that belong to white able-bodied people by right. When actually the opposite is true. The barriers to becoming an actor if you’re disabled are so high, only the very best and most talented disabled actors would ever be in a position to even get an audition for the RSC.
Nonsense, I’ve seen far more RIII’s starring non-celebs than those starring celebs.
Deciding that one actor fits a role better than another is not “banning” all the actors who were unsuccessful. If someone wanted to create a vehicle for a specific actor they’d choose a play that fits that actor.
Jeremy Herrin was firm in only auditioning disabled actors for his upcoming West End production of Glass Menagerie. People need to accept that it’s not 1950 anymore.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 6, 2022 21:34:03 GMT
If the role is ring-fenced for a disabled actor the play will be produced even less often than it is now. The Almeida and Arcola only produced it as a star vehicle for Fiennes and Hick, if they were barred from the part then the play wouldn’t have been staged at all so it’s not as simple as them “taking” the role from a disabled actor. The play will just drop out of the repertoire except at the RSC and Globe every decade or so. You could say that about any play that has a lead role not a white able-bodied man. You could say that about any play that has a black lead, or even a female protagonist. Theatres still reject phenomenal plays for those very reasons today. Richard III’s one of the most popular and frequently performed Shakespeare plays and has existed for over 400 years. It’s on all the bloody time. The idea that it’s just going to vanish and never be produced again because some bigots hate seeing anyone not an able-bodied white man getting to play leads is ridiculous. Besides why should we pander to what bigots want? Hicks is a wonderful actor but he’s hardly a household name. He made his career and his name by playing those Shakespearean roles, rather than being a famous actor who was cast in those roles because of his fame. If Hicks can make his name by playing those roles why can’t a disabled actor do the same? Cast more disabled actors and as a result we’ll have more disabled actors who are famous enough to have star vehicles created for them. Why don’t they deserve the same opportunities as any other actor? That’s pretty much what the social model of disability is, and while personally I find SMOD problematic in some respects it’s the prevailing model in the UK and certainly omnipresent in the theatre industry. I honestly don’t know a single disabled actor who doesn’t at least partly subscribe to SMOD. People have really weird ideas about what disability is.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 6, 2022 19:04:35 GMT
Completely, totally disagree. As a disabled person I consider able bodied actors playing disabled characters to be utterly abhorrent and bigoted. It’s literally no difference from white actors blacking up to play Othello.
Obviously disabled actors need to be cast in more non-disabled roles (which is actually something the RSC is good on) but disabled actors face such huge discrimination and are often not allowed to even audition for roles that aren’t explicitly stated as being disabled. Considering how widespread anti-disabled bigotry is in the industry beginning from drama school on, why can’t privileged majority actors who already have the whole spectrum of roles potentially available to them not give up literally one single role to a minority actor? It’s so selfish to think that you’re entitled to ALL the roles just because you’re white, or able-bodied or whatever, when minorities have to fight just to be considered for the >1% of roles actually written for them.
Arthur is at least somewhat involved in disability activism and is part of the disabled actor network (as I am) and he just starred in a BBC drama about disability activism. It’s pretty clear just from looking at his social media feed that disability activism and disability representation is not unimportant to him. I’ve never met a disabled actor who didn’t care about this stuff.
I’ve been on this forum long enough to know that unfortunately there are a lot of people in theatre who feel threatened by the sheer existence of minority actors (there have been some unpleasant comments here in the past over casting black actors which have exploited many of the same arguments - that casting minorities is just political correctness, that acting should be acting, that the best actor should get the role - funnily enough no one ever has a problem with mediocre actors getting cast because of their privileged background - without any understanding of how deeply entrenched bias is in this industry).
If we lived in a perfect bias-free world where a disabled actor or a black actor is just as likely to be considered for Hamlet as anyone else, there would be no need for this. But we don’t.
“Start training now all disabled actors-you can play R111”
Yeah why shouldn’t they?? There are tons of wonderful highly trained disabled actors who can and should play tons of roles. Casting a disabled actor as RIII doesn’t say disabled actors can only play RIII, it’s a way of giving a disabled actor a showcase and a break for them to display their acting skills which then hopefully lead to being cast in non-disabled roles.
*Hard luck,Slinger,Fiennes,Goodman,McKellen,McArdle-dont want the likes of you here.* Yeah God forbid posh white able-bodied men only have 99% of roles available to them.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 6, 2022 10:10:23 GMT
I was stage left/house right and would say that’s also the wrong side, as the entire kitchen is invisible. There was a lot of laughter during scenes set in the kitchen that I assume must have physical comedy but they were completely invisible to anyone on that side. Half my my row was standing up and leaning all the way over the rail to try to see and still couldn’t see a thing.
Honestly don’t see this play at all unless it’s a seat directly facing the stage, both sides have zero visibility for significant parts of the action.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 4, 2022 22:08:10 GMT
I don’t know if I’m getting crotchety in my old age but I thought this was dire. I have a whatever they opposite of a penchant is for what I call Eastenders plays - plays that revolve entirely around the characters’ domestic lives, written in aggressively naturalistic “innit” dialogue. But this was really boring. It’s extremely and acutely well-observed and anyone who’s ever been through a breakup will feel a pang of recognition. But the indeterminable angry/remorseful/wistful back and forth conversations you have during a breakup just aren’t that interesting to watch. It also just all felt incredibly subdued and (apart from one notable moment) unemotional compared to the average breakup.
There are some great lines, but I don’t see why audiences laugh themselves hoarse at lines like “We have lunch at Pret every Friday. Sometimes Yo Sushi (audience laughter) But you don’t like sushi. (Gales of laughter) Well I thought I’d try it.” (Audience wets itself.) What am I missing here?
The directing was bland and for some reason Findlay had made the decision to place what little action there is in the far upstate right corner, where the actors were completely invisible to anyone sitting on the right hand side.
The acting is good but the actors seem to be acting in completely different plays. Claire Rushbrook plays her character as though she’s in Hedda Gabler, while Daniel Ryan seems to think he’s in a sitcom. Maybe Eldridge worried he’d lose the audience if he didn’t break up the gloom and monotony with plenty of jokes but Ryan’s one-liners felt so overtly performed at the audience it broke up the realism of the scene.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 4, 2022 21:11:20 GMT
I forgot to post before but having expected to hate it, oh God I completely fell in love with it! Dreamy…
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 3, 2022 18:45:58 GMT
Unfortunately creative professionals are often seen as not having a 'proper' job by the masses, like what we do is just fun and not hard work - Just look at some of the top Daily Mail comments if you want proof of that! Very true, and I’m sorry that happened to you. There’s also the weird assumption that a lot of people seem to make that all working actors are being paid squillions!
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 2, 2022 21:59:54 GMT
I would absolutely watch Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Musical as long as they keep the dorky poetry readings and the aggressively 90s pastel colour schemes.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 2, 2022 15:29:45 GMT
Whilst I appreciate the hurt and pain caused, especially for those making their West End/professional debuts, I do hope that none of these come to regret comments/videos made in response to this because they've been caught up in the madness of it all. I'm just not sure that someone at the start of their career, with no "clout", shaming their former (potential-)employer looks good. Sure, be angry... but they also need to remember that people like Strallen and Fletcher can afford to be this public about their outrage. They'll likely pick up fans because of it, sure, but what about potential future employers? I’m coming at this from an industry pov, not a fan pov: no, I really don’t think this will potentially harm their careers or make potential employers wary. They have a ton of support within the industry (and ALW, despite his vast success, is very much not liked on a personal level) and most people in the industry - which includes potential employers - have a huge amount of sympathy for the mostly unknown actors who have been so negatively affected by this. As far as I’ve seen no one has done anything crazy, no one’s furiously ranting, or threatening to go and egg ALW’s house or anything. The actors are expressing their disappointment in mature but realistic ways. Obviously we can’t generalise but that isn’t likely to be something potential employers would consider a black mark, because the theatre industry has very different norms and standards from other industries. Sometimes reading this forum, I get the sense posters think the theatre industry should work exactly the same and according to the same norms and standards as their office or whatever, but theatre really is a world unto itself.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on May 1, 2022 20:16:25 GMT
Agreed, it’s depressing how grotty the RSC feels compared to its heyday.
On the other hand, Stratford is looking pretty good. There’s a bougie coffee shop right by the station now! (Doesn’t take much to impress me.)
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