claytoncast

Even though my school days  are now nothing but a distant memory, this time of year always feels like a new beginning. September brings a new term with new hopes and new targets. I've just taken the whole of August off to work on my new book, and  other than one days corporate training in mid August, it's been a month of tracksuit bottoms and typing. Next week sees me get back to work. The suits will have to come out of the wardrobe. A trip to Amsterdam for a job, a two-day corporate training programme, and an Actors Centre board meeting, and a voice-over if I'm lucky. I'd like to think that the next year will be like a new term. Lots of new things to learn, and new experiences.  "I like to think I learn something new on every job" is a phrase that has probably become slightly hackneyed. Most of the jobs I do I'm given because I know how to do them. Yet I would hope that I learn something new about human nature, people, or which car park not to pa...

 lt's always difficult when I haven't blogged for a little while to work out what to talk about. Lots of things going on, yet are they things that might be of interest to other people? Well, it's August, and holiday time, and as I'm having a month off from work to buckle down and write my new book "The Working Actor", it would seem the appropriate time to take a little respite from giving advice, and to have a little indulgence. We just had what for me was a trip down memory lane. A weekend away in Stratford-upon-Avon to see two shows and catch up with several people who I know  in the company down there at the moment. Eliott Barnes Worrell has been mentioned by me before, as I had the great pleasure of mentoring him two years ago as winner of the Alan Bates bursary award at the Actors Centre. Joan Iyiola was a gorgeous National youth Theatre assistant director who worked with me in 2010 on a less than happy production and who has  stayed a firm friend an...

Some people think I'm a dreadful actor. And they are right. Mercifully some people think I'm rather good, and, of course, they are right too. The point here is that acting is never something that can be measured quantitatively. It's always going to be something that's subjective. We can sit side by side together in the theatre on the same night watching the same actor in the same play and we can have widely differing opinions. And that's great. But how does that work at the end of three years training and an investment of around £27,000 when you step out into the world?  Your drama school doesn't grade you. It can't. Even those drama training establishments which are now part of larger educational bodies and offer degree status mainly award the level of degree on the written work involved in the course, rather than the level of talent. That's why drama schools offer up their final year students in showcases knowing that some of these people are prob...