I agree - Michael, you're incredibly eloquent!
- Alan
On Sun, 14 Sep 2014, Joel Weishaus wrote:
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]>
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]>
To: [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
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