Stop trying for bronze. You deserve to go for Gold.

Drama club has always been my favourite place. On Wednesday evenings in the 90s and early 00s I’d go from school to Greggs, then on to Highbury Roundhouse with a Belgian bun in hand for my weekly dose of being ‘stuck in a lift’.

Hot Tin Roof was the name of my drama club, Zip Zap Boing was the name of the game, and I loved it like nothing else. When school was rough, Hot Tin Roof provided a much needed space to self-express.

We moved around in circles like a shoal of fish, we ran across the room like octopuses, we sat on ‘park benches’ and created the most imaginative alternative Universes. It was all very silly. My memories of the wooden floor boards and mirrored walls, and that group of fantastic weirdos who are some of my best friends to this day, are absolutely worth their weight in gold.

We became accustomed to imaginatively making our own kind of magic. A creative practice of sorts. It became a release each week and a way to connect with the world as I see it, and myself.

This is me dressed up at Halloween, but it captures the essence of what I’m getting at.

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If we were to address the elephant in the my room here, I’d tell you that when I grew up and had to start deciding what I wanted to ‘be’, I applied to the top 4 drama schools in London, 4 times (aged 17, 18, 19 and 29). I got a couple of recalls but mainly the dream was trampled on in a number of letters (!) that basically said, “It’s a no from us, hun.” Every. Time.

There’s more to this story - feelings of rejection, losing faith in myself and grieving the loss of the naive playfulness of Hot Tin Roof - leading me to believe that going for Gold was perhaps, well, ridiculous. To go for bronze was instead what I should settle for, at least when it comes to the acting. The adults all seemed to think that it was a great ‘hobby’ anyway.

Going for bronze isn’t always a bad thing.

There are plenty of things in life that just don’t require the gold medal amount of effort. But what I’m interested in here is how dangerously fragile those true passions are when we’re told by external forces that it might not be the path for us. Surely that stuff that meant something to us as a kid, I mean truly meant something, is worth exploring in some capacity today?

To summarise briefly, after years of dabbling in amateur dramatics as a hobby and fitting rehearsals in around my 9-6pm job as a designer, in 2020 acting and I went on a little break. We gathered our thoughts, experienced life without each other (of course the pandemic was a factor) and then last spring we thankfully re-kindled the love affair.

Now, once a week on a Wednesday (delightful coincidence) I go to Antony Meindl’s acting classes in London (AMAW).

It’s a brush stroke in a larger portrait of my creative practice that I’ve been developing over the past year.

The class itself is very meta because it acts as my permission to be an actor; to step into a physical and mental space where I practice a craft that, as long as I have lived, has been the thing that brings me the most joy.

Sound a little dramatic? I hope so.

The class is challenging in its approach with a philosophy rooted in truth; of spirit, of body, of story. Bear with me here. It sounds intense, and when I tell my friends about ‘class last night’ I feel like I sound as if I’ve joined a cult (IYKYK).

How does it work?

First you do a Foundation course to understand whether this shit is for you, allowing you to become accustomed to the ways of working in the studio. Once you’ve done your foundation, you sign up on a month by month basis and are allocated a scene partner. (We always work in pairs.) We each bring a short scene that we’re interested in working on and after a quick 1-5mins discussion/read through we decide which scene we want to play with that month. The idea is that you do that same scene each week, with the same scene partner. The only rule is that there’s no prep allowed, there’s no blocking, there’s no directing, there’s no pre-empting how you’re going to say a line.

The simplest way to describe it is that it’s improv with a script telling the actors where the story needs to go, but beyond that, the opportunities are limitless.

Each week you do the same scene, but depending on the temperature of the room and your mood that day, the scene always plays out entirely differently.

At the start of class our coaches open with an inspiring sermon. (They don’t call it that, but that accurately reflects my experience of it.) These sermons are the highlight of my week. It might be a story, topic or theme that our coach has been mulling over throughout the week. They share it with the group in the context of our acting ‘work-out’ and we’re encouraged to keep it in mind while we play.

It’s my weekly Mass. It’s my Holy Communion. It’s my Christmas and Easter all in one.

This week’s call to action was to not be afraid to simply ‘try'. To throw stuff out there and see what sticks, without letting your anxious thoughts stop you in mid-air.

The definition of to try in the dictionary is ‘to make an attempt or effort to do something.’ Simple as that. Make the attempt. See what lands.

To try requires courage. It requires commitment. I think many of us are scared to try because we’re worried we’ll flip-flop flat on our faces. A natural fear, one which I feel on a regular basis. But in class, to try means to literally gift your scene partner with an offering. And that offering could change the course of the scene entirely.

I like to think of it like this; every time you try, you offer the world the opportunity to receive something new. Sure, they might block you, not understand you, not want you. But isn’t it much better to have been in the mixer, trying some shit out and potentially getting the Gold, than sitting at the sidelines thinking all you deserve is the safe, sterile bronze?

That was just this weeks lesson. 😂

The lesson beyond the lesson

The reason I wanted to write about AMAW is because when I started re-engaging with the creative practice of acting last summer, a gentle alchemy started to occur in my life. Amongst many things a health issue I’d been dealing with for a number of years dramatically improved, and a sense of purpose returned that had been hazy for a while.

Class is just play. There’s no casting directors or agents there. It’s not a way to ‘book’ jobs or win work, but what this class does give me feels pretty profound.

1. Community - like-minded people, but beyond that, people who reinforce to me that I can be an Actor, that I am in fact already an Actor, and that Gold is worth going for.

2. Space to Practice - The more I practice and the more I try, the more I gain experiences to add to my acting toolkit.

3. Self respect - The most unexpected reward. The fact that I’m honouring what makes me feel more connected to the world and myself builds a sense of confidence and energy in myself that feels new.

My question(s) to you…

What do you bloody love? What could you chat about at the pub for hours on end, chewing your mates ear off about, before they beg you to shut the fuck up? Can you do more of that thing? Can it become a non-negotiable in your life? Where can you defy gravity and push against the forces in your life that have been holding you down?

To put it another way, inspired by AMAW… where are you accepting the bronze in your life? And where can you softly, slowly, allow yourself to go for gold?