My Time at Drama College

I think it’s time for me to share a little bit more about myself. The next couple of posts will be about where I am from and where I have lived and what I’ve done in the meantime. I suppose I should get started really.

I am from a lovely village in between Portsmouth and Southampton. I loved growing up on the south coast and being able to hang out with my friends down the beach, park or go into town easily on the bus before any of us could drive. In my opinion it is the ideal place to bring up a family, however, as we all know the south, in general, is a lot more expensive than the north so my adventure of working my way up the country began, with a little detour in between and a gradual return to the south.

When I was 18 I auditioned for Drama College and was lucky enough to receive offers for a couple. I accepted my place at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance to study European Theatre Arts. It is a beautiful college full of amazing, kind and fun people. The grounds of the college are stunning, as you walk in there are brightly coloured walls and a cute courtyard, to the right there is a path down to a grassy, garden-like area with a lake next to a building known to the students as ‘The Old House’, which was actually where all the staff offices are. The college also boasts two theatres, it was always so exciting when we got to perform in either of them but The Rose Theatre was my favourite as it was in the round, meaning the seating surrounded the stage causing the action to constantly move around, engaging all the audience.

Whilst studying at Rose Bruford I lived in Sidcup, which is on the outskirts of London, making it slightly more affordable (thanks to the student loan) than living in central London but also had easy transport links into the Big Smoke. We used to go clubbing in New Cross at a club called Venue, it’s had a dodgy history but we always had a great time there and enjoyed a lot of tribute acts. We also went to Moonlighting in Soho when they did their club nights called Cheapskates! That was until Purple Thursdays became a thing, I think it was one Thursday a month a local social club in Sidcup opened its doors to the students of Rose Bruford and Bird College (a local dance school).  

Alongside all the partying we did get a lot of studying done and created many a masterpiece. Our course had a lot of written work as well as practical so we worked very hard. Ironically I have never found writing essays easy and I struggle with spelling, punctuation and gramma which I am sure you have already figured out. In the first few weeks at Bruford we were given a talk about dyslexia, as the man was speaking I found myself nodding along to most of what he was describing. I had a meeting with him where I took a very short pop-quiz style test. The results suggested that I was borderline dyslexic but he told me that I probably wouldn’t need to do the proper test unless I found the symptoms caused me problems with my work. To this day I have never had the official test but sometimes find myself using the term ‘honouree dyslexic’ to excuse my mistakes.

I was much more interested in the performance side of the course, most of our performances were devised, designed, direct by and performed by us. We usually had to provide any costumes and props ourselves as the course was designed to veer us towards creating our own theatre companies and making our own work rather than relying on agents etc. Many of my Bruford friends have gone on to work in totally different fields but some have created theatre companies such as Smoking Apples and some have gone into acting using agents and had varying success.

I’ve had many different chapters in my life, but my time at Bruford was definitely one of the best. I made the most amazing, life-long friends who are all a little nutty but all completely lovely and we would do anything for each other. There will always be a special place in my heart for Rose Bruford.

Pictures

Top photo shows myself and my friend Roxy about to go to a local neon party.

The middle photo is of friends Hattie, Jax, Roxy and then myself on our graduation day.

The final picture is of myself and Roxy at Purple Thursday sporting our funky style many years before Sia had similar style for her album cover.

Smoking Apples: http://smokingapplestheatre.com/

Rose Bruford: https://www.bruford.ac.uk/

 slmc