Wednesday 5 January 2011

Working Professionally vs Working Academically

HELLO EVERYONE!

You may well have noticed that I have only recently added a blog and that this is one of my first posts...Since September I've been working professsionally on tour in Germany and then onto another project (in a play which opens this week) Starting this course is something that Ive always been enthusiastic about..however I found myself at the point where I wondered whether carrying on with it would be possible. I have found the balance of professional work and academic work exremley hard to master. I decided to blogg this as prioritising work and personal life is something that all performers or people in the industry will have to face at some point, there are ways over overcoming this and  it has taken me 3 months to realise this. After leaving my job on tour I got a job in a show with a 7 week rehearsal period (10 am - 7pm Monday to Friday). These were long strenuous dance rehearsals and after waking up two hours early to travel from South to East London and arriving home at about 9pm I would be exhausted when returning home. By the time I had showered, had dinner, written up all my notes for the day and packed my things for the next day it was 11pm and time to sleep o wake at 7am. I also work on the weekends as a make up artis in Harrods, I used to work more hours but had to stop because of rehearsals and working weekends is the only way of keeping my job which gives me a good/essential bit of pocket money! Before I knew it I had done 3 weeks of this routine without doing any Uni work. I find that being bound to a long contract in this industry does not facilitate other work, that may be just as important. The job comes first and literally takes over your life and this is the way that it will always be. The only way to get around this is by realising that there will never be enough hours in a day and that sometimes you will have to face work through to the middle of the night and only get 5 hours sleep, because your future and academic qualifications are something that you will gain and which will remain constant,  whereas a contract  in a West End musical will come and go .

As I've entered my week of tech rehearsing things became worse. Rehearsals are now 10am - 10pm with no extra pay. 12 hours of working which gave me even less time to do any uni work. I felt as a cast we were definatley all being over worked so I rang my agent and asked for some advice. My agent advised me that legally the company I am working for are not within their rights in asking us to work 12 hours a aday all week. By asking my agent and reviewing Equity guidelines I was able to lower the rehearsal time on a few days after having a meeting with the full cast and director. This higlighted the sheer  importance of knowing your rights as a performer, we are taken advantage of so easily as we love our craft so much, but we have to make a stand when things are not right, without having to worry about jeoopardising your relationship with someone who may be influential in your career in the future. If we all continue to do this we will find that people will find it harder to take advantage of our position as  performers.

My show opens at the end of the week for a month and a half. Therefore I will be performing every evening with my day times free. I have decided NOT to take on any extra jobs during the day or Sundays (my only day off) so I will have my daytimes free to complete all outstanding work  and also complete the upcoming work too so I do not fall behind. Financially this will be difficult for me as my outgoings will not correlate with my incomings..however I will have to comprimise this. I aim to make myself a strict budget for the month which will cause various little changes in my social life  shopping, eating out , how much i use my phone etc. It will be very hard but I will have to remember that this is just a temporary thing. I always found timetableing very childish as Im an extremley organised person and felt  like I can handle things without having to use a mode of organisation that i used when i was 17 doing my alevels! I have learned that there is nothing childish a bout physically writing up a plan with an allocated  time frame  where you can tick off things once youve completed them, the visual aid axtually  really helps.

So to round this up, once I get myself up to date and back on track PLAN myself a schedule, be clear about my PRIORITIES- then  i will be able to balance professional practise and the academic work a lot easier with less stress and just accept this as a way I will need to work in this industry whilst simultaneously  moving forwarded in my academic study.