This year, she was determined to find her first gig as an assistant director to a professional London show, a vital rite of passage for any young director.
“I wanted to do it within the first year, year and a half [after graduating], because otherwise, you worry people are going to ask, ‘Why haven’t you done that yet?’”
But of course, with no plays this year there has been nothing to assist on. She’s resorted to sending cold emails to directors who might have shows coming on at the end of this year or early in 2022. But she isn’t particularly optimistic.
“They don’t even know if their shows are going to go on. And if you’re looking for an assistant director now, in the unstable climate of trying to put on a play, you’re so much less likely to take a chance on someone.”
Her frustration is palpable. “I have so much energy at this point in my life when I’ve just finished my degree and I don’t have many other responsibilities. I have so much energy to pour into this craft, to give it so much and really work at it. It feels very, very weird and depressing that that doesn’t seem to be an option.”
It’s not just their immediate age group that these young creatives are concerned for.
“The people that I feel most worried about are the 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds,” says Frankie. “Leaving school, they’ve already got this feeling that the world is ending. If they’re going into theatre, they’re going to be told it’s an absolute non-starter, because it won’t exist in a couple of years. And that’s just – excuse my language – bullc–p.”
Alex, meanwhile, has sympathy for the cohort a few years above him. “I know people a couple of rungs above us who were about to have their first show at the Barbican, having worked the Fringe circuit for years. And I think that’s a much, much worse predicament.
“These are people who, two years ago, were the cream of the crop: they’re going to be an actor, a director, a producer. But a lot of them have now quit, decided it’s not worth the toll it takes on their mental health. It’s not worth the limitations financially imposed upon you, basically having to moonlight and do a normal job and somehow hope that you’ll be able to have the energy required to create.”
Who will be left at the end of the brain drain? Frankie worries it will be an all-too-narrow group. “It could be just the middle class [left], people who have parents to fund them – in which case, this industry becomes entirely one type of person, one type of story, and that there’s no point in that.”
