Author: Michaela Bennison
-
6 Tips for Tackling your First Arts Funding Application
Six top tips to help you complete your first application for arts funding in the UK As an actor, were you taught about arts funding applications at drama school? I know I wasn’t. Funding applications always seemed to exist in a roped-off section of industry know-how marked ‘producers only’, but it’s not true. Funding applications…
-
How to Handle Criticism
Eight steps for handling feedback, whether it’s constructive or misguided As actors, feedback is a necessary part of our craft. We can’t see our performance from the outside, so we rely on teachers and directors to guide us. However, criticism is sometimes less than constructive. It can be ill-intentioned, clumsily put, misguided or plain unhelpful.…
-
Tips for Making Positive Friendships as a Young Actor
How to create lasting bonds and friendships with other actors as a young performer It’s a big leap from performing as a hobby to becoming a professional performer. Young actors work alongside adults in a very technical environment, and drama school is very different from school or university – with full-time contact hours and mostly…
-
8 Top Tips for Bonding with a New Cast
Industry advice for getting on with your fellow company members and creating lasting bonds Meeting new people in any context can be daunting. Unlike most professions, actors’ careers involve hundreds of first days at the proverbial office. Our job requires working closely – sometimes intimately – with colleagues we’ve only known for a few weeks. In…
-
Navigating Self-taping When You Have Kids
Five tips for performer parents or guardians who need to self-tape whilst caring for kids or babies. Self-tapes have opened actors up to a world of possibility, but they can become pretty complicated when you add small children into the mix. Love them or loathe them, self-tapes are here to stay but if you’re a…
-
A Guide to Working in the EU If You’re a UK National
What you need to know if you’re a UK citizen who is auditioning or working in the EU. Updated on 17 October 2022. The UK has officially left the European Union and as you’d expect, this has caused changes to the rules and regulations around travel and work on the continent. Whilst the Brexit deal…
-
Five Steps to Set Effective Career Goals
How many times have you set career goals that never came to fruition? I’ve fallen into this trap myself in the past, from monologues left unlearnt to dream jobs not landed. But why is that? Review your long-term goals at least once a year. Are they still relevant to you? It’s likely that what you…
-
Learning an Instrument to Increase Your Employability
It takes time and dedication but playing an instrument can help boost your career opportunities. Michaela Bennison shares her advice if you want to become an actor-musician. Playing an instrument can not only open up a range of job opportunities but can also be an enriching journey in itself. In the last few years, both…