‘Like Skydiving without a Parachute’: How Class Origin Shapes Occupational Trajectories in British Acting

From reading the above article, I was able to comment and reflect on the following:

• There is much debate over who will be successful within theatre. Although talent may be one means of securing work. Modern day society shows that success within the British acting profession is dominated by those from privileged classes.
• Actors from working class backgrounds can be underrepresented within the performing arts profession.
• For those who are of a working class background and work within the industry, it can be argued that such actors/actresses have different social and economical needs in comparison to privileged backgrounds.
• Throughout my training it has been bought to my attention that although you may be talented, the audition alone can go down to how you look and sound! This article merely emphasises the notion of typecasting. It could be argued that those of a more privileged background, which can often be associated with the “upper class” and RP accent are more suitable to specific roles within theatre. However, one could also debate the exact opposite. Someone of a heightened spoken RP accent would not be any good within a musical such as “Made in Dagenham”, for example.
• I personally believe that the notion of the actor needing to be a “White, Middle Class, British Male are no longer the case. Modern contemporary theatre calls for a wide variety of casting. E.g. The Lion King, Aladdin etc.
• I personally find Julie Walters comment of “the way things are now there aren’t going to be any working class actors” (Hough, 2012, emphasis
  added; Plunkett, 2014) to be very one sided. This is from the perspective of a well known actress within the industry. However I do see the point that she is emphasising. You only need to look at who has currently been in the west end: Miranda, Craig Revel Horwood, Sir Ian McKellan etc. One could argue that the entertainments industry employ the privileged few to appeal to the target audience (or to put bums on seats!)

I personally found reading this article very interesting. Although it was Research based, it was interesting to read the different viewpoints within the scholarly article.

The article was also very interesting to read and gave me a good insight and greater understanding into dissertation style writing.