All My Sons

The hurried, excited emails or phone calls from graduates, letting us all know about work secured, are the best part of my day. Yesterday, Richard Holt, another Postgrad, but this time from 2008, facebook messaged me that he was heading to the Vaudeville to star in the West End transfer of Tom Morris’ Swallows and Amazons. News like that still sends a sear of pride through me, even though I’ve only known Rick as a Graduate – he was off before I started here.

I rushed to update the website, and less formally, with many a ‘woohoo’, our social networks. The intricate, small-scale victories mean even more. Samantha Frost had a baby soon after graduating from our three-year course in 2008, and we hadn’t heard much from her. Recently she got in touch, quite shyly, to ask for some general career advice. I’d just been trained in operating the Radio Studio (I’ve got an idea about podcasts for next term) and offered to record a voicereel together. She came in over the summer, we headed to the Studio, and I had one of the most inspiring afternoons I’ve had in a long time.

It seems the usual trajectory is for people to move away from the instability of acting once they’ve got a family to think about, but for Sam it’s been a galvanizer. I remember her pointing down to her imaginary toddler saying, “Now I want to make him proud of me; now I’ve got more of a reason than I ever had before”. A few weeks later she got in touch to say she’d got an unpaid part in a new play opening in Guildford and then coming to London, after responding to a casting up on the ALRA Student Intranet. Now she’s got something to invite agents to, and something fresh for her CV. She was over the moon. So was I.