“Drama’s for Puffs” – Growing up fabulous in Rotherham.

I grew up in Rotherham, a town in the centre of England right smack-bang in South Yorkshire. Nobody really knows where Rotherham is, nor what it is really. When I tell people I’m from Rotherham they ask again:

“where’s that?”

and I would reply:

“Next to Sheffield, the Chuckle Brothers, Howard Webb the Referee and David Seaman the goalkeeper all come from there”

and, none the wiser, they say:

“oh right.”

With this reputation Rotherham, growing up in Rotherham never came with any ambitions. Everyone at school either wanted to be a mechanic, a plumber, a joiner or join the army. So imagine their surprise when I said I wanted to create theatre and act on stage – instead of being a mechanic like my father before me.

“Drama’s not even a real subject – and it’s for puffs!”

Now, no one needs to tell me they were wrong. I always knew they were but that didn’t make the pressure of wanting to go in to theatre any easier. Nor did I gain a resoundingly good message from my parents when I told them:

“why would you want to do that? You’d never get anywhere. There’s no money in it.”

This reaction took away some confidence – I didn’t want to upset my family nor chase something that wasn’t going to make me successful, but I had to try.

And so I passed my GCSE – C grade nothing more – It was a terrible grade now that I think about it but I managed to get a place on the Drama A-level course at my Sixth Form. All the while I learned more and more about Drama I pursued something else as a back up: Maths, merely because I had a nack for it. All the while this happened I kept getting the same comments – the same whimsical remarks that eventually led on to the basis for my personal statement – “Drama, is that even a real subject?” – ‘Yes it is dickhead’ is what I should have said in hindsight but I just laughed.

In the end the peripeteia of my life came about during my As Level drama performances. I was cast as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit.

 

Theatre was always a huge part of my life – I had always wanted to perform. I performed as a Madame Arcati in front of my parents – I was Billy Elliot taking the stand in the sports hall where he used to box and dance. I performed in front of them like they weren’t even in the room – and it paid off. This stimuli will offer me some inspiration in order to create a piece of Solo performance – the experiences that people have when chasing their dreams from a working-class background.