Page 199 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

However, once you step outside the hallowed halls and are out there in the real world, just how
well has your drama school equipped you for what the real world will bring? Have you got what
you need from your training? Or has your drama school let you down?

Will Kirk graduated this summer from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff.
“One of the best things my drama school gave me were brilliant radio classes,” he says. “I was
lucky enough to win the Carleton Hobbs Bursary Award. From that, I got an agent.”

A five-month contract with the BBC Radio Drama Company is Kirk’s first job. “I’m loving it. Without
the radio training at drama school, I would have been lost when I started this job, but I think the
greatest thing drama school has given me is a sense of openness and fearlessness.”

Stacy Abalogun has also gone straight from drama school into work. Leaving RADA early, she
filmed an episode of Casualty and then settled into a summer at Shakespeare’s Globe in As You
Like It. Having previously worked as a dancer and then taken a choreography degree, Abalogun’s
move to train as an actor comes when she’s already a parent. She’s realistic that unemployment
will come, but believes that having a family to look after and spend time with will give her the
strength she needs.

“RADA is also very good at supporting people,” she says. “We had lots of professional
development chats from actors, both employed and unemployed. RADA in Business gave us a
free week of workshops in skills to use ourselves and to give us a glimpse of the possibilities
available for work in the corporate world.”

Robert Wolfe, who left Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in July, is waiting for his first job to start in
late September.

Robert Wolfe

“I think the hardest thing is finding a day job with enjoyment in it. I sorted a job in a restaurant
before leaving, and prepped myself for the fact that there might be no work for a while. That’s not
admitting failure, that’s facing up to the world,” he says.

Being asked to draw up a business plan in his final year was something that Wolfe found very
useful. His time since he graduated has been taken up with “the business side of being an actor,