I've already Twittered that I can't believe that we had our last lecture tonight! It only feels like a month or so since I started Uni - an MA in Creative Producing - but of course it was last year. The work is not yet over. We have another presentation next week and our dissertation in September, but the formal bit is done and dusted. And although the time for 'real' work is upon me and I have to try and repay the thousands of pounds it's cost me in bank borrowings to do this course, I can't help but feel quite sad.
Have I changed? This was me 2 years ago...
http://www.artshub.co.uk/uk/news.asp?sId=163056&ref=admin#
Maybe not hugely? But I think I have.
As I've already mentioned I'm the first of my family to go to Uni, even though I think my siblings are far smarter and harder working than I, and I almost feel the experience should somehow last longer because of that. I've not had a full summer to learn the routes to cycle to lectures and get to know the real cheap student haunts or be wistful and longing or angry and student arrogant. I suppose its because its a Masters and only one year and unlike most of the others on my course I've not had three years previously taking a 'normal' degree. And maybe its age too; the fact that I'm going through these feelings in my 50's instead of my 20's. Although, as has been pointed out, I was having fun in other ways in my 20's!
And tonight we had a very apt lecture from producer Neil L. We've had some top talent talking to us on this course and Neil by his own confession, is and yet isn't, a major player. He's a real enigma; both supremely assured and simultaneously self-effacing. He managed to piss off some of the chorum at his first appearance with his strong and provocative opinions and assertions. But to be fair to him, our first time with Neil was also his first time with producers, instead of directors or actors. And we soon all warmed to him for his enthusiasm, passion and belief. And tonight, with his lecture entitled 'Surviving as a Producer', he became the first of our lecturers to get a spontaneous and genuinely warm round of applause.
Looking back on the lectures and lecturers we've had over this (fleeting and all too brief!) course, we've been spoiled with some of the very top names in the theatre industry. It's been an eye opener in many ways and if nothing else has made me realise the work I like doing - maybe I can call it a career now - the career I have chosen (or did it choose me?) is as tough as it was at the Billesley Pub in Birmingham.
The business of theatre producing, particularly commercial theatre, is tough and brutal and like most professionals in any tough business you have to be careful. But I've also realised from our lecturers that because this business IS so brutal and tough, there's a perceptible camaraderie amongst those that last the course. We've had lectures from some very hard nosed operators, but its obvious that they are full of admiration for us wanting to be in the game - even at student level. Once we graduate, these Uni philanthropes will treat us like any other competitor. And yet I can't help but feel that if any of us were REALLY in trouble, rather than laugh and spit on us, they may actually rally round and help if they can. In fact I know this for a fact. It sounds weird. And maybe it is unique to theatre.
And I know once I graduate, I shall always think very fondly of the professionals I have met through the course. And never forget Neils final lecture and the final, spontaneous round of applause from we producers to be. Or, indeed, that the first course of this type at Birkbeck appropriately ended with a spontaneous outburst of audience appreciation...
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