Right on, Michael.
-Joel
On 9/14/2014 9:30 AM, dave miller wrote:
Brilliantly put - well said "My greatest hope (and belief) is that
sometime before I shuffle off we will show them how wrong they were" -
yes!!!!
On 14 September 2014 17:03, michael szpakowski <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
It's interesting that the original article uses theatre as a
starting point. Having started out in the late seventies working
in the theatre and keeping a toe in that camp until very recently
I can vouch for the change.
I remember on my second job ever in 1977 I asked one of the guys
in the small touring company I was working for what he'd been
before he became an actor. "A burglar", he replied. It was true -
he came from a poor working class area of a big industrial town
and rebelled in perhaps not the most social of ways. He'd wanted
out though & learned to play the bass, joined a band and then got
into acting through the many connections and opportunities there
were then ( and which were not tied to expensive training). He
later became quite a celebrated TV performer playing a part that
was related to his earlier life and authentically so.
Many of the people I worked with at that time came from similar
working class backgrounds to my own - I myself am the child of a
Polish refugee turned furnaceman in the Sheffield steel.
Now , unless it is someone who worked their way in through the
soaps, working class accents are produced to order by the "skills"
of the largely privileged cadre who can afford to make it through
drama school. In the 90s I taught theatre to FE students one of
whom (the daughter of a classroom teacher from Essex) went to
RADA, through merit not connections. I went to see her rather star
studded West End debut ( a triumph which gave her a good deal of
class satisfaction) and she told me she'd spent three years at
RADA playing "second secretary" or similar whilst the sons and
daughters of those already in the "biz" or simply the well heeled
and confident scooped the leads.
What is the timeline? - I can tell you exactly what it is - when
the working class were fighting and winning in the UK, mid-sixties
to 74ish, miraculously there were ways for us to "better
ourselves" in other ways than struggle.
It took awhile for these gains to be chipped away but it has been
downhill in proportion to the series of (often entirely
unnecessary) defeats that have been the outcome of workers'
struggles since the Winter of Discontent in the late seventies.
The marginalisation of working class voices in the arts is a
consequence of the fact that our rulers believe they have us
licked and under control in general. My greatest hope (and belief)
is that sometime before I shuffle off we will show them how wrong
they were.
michael
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* ruth catlow <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*To:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Sunday, September 14, 2014 1:53 PM
*Subject:* Re: [NetBehaviour] The privileged few are tightening
their grip on the arts
Do we care if our arts are increasingly practiced, disseminated
and discussed in the media by a privileged few?
Were the post-WWII gains in diversity an illusion? or did time
really stop, and start going backwards?
If so when did this reversal start?
Early 80s, mid 90s, early noughties?
On 14/09/2014 11:12, marc garrett wrote:
The privileged few are tightening their grip on the arts | The
Guardian - http://go.shr.lc/1wsoLXu<http://t.co/LqXQEQDy72>
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