There's no business like Choux Business
Trying to become an actor is a ludicrous task. The gigantic hoard of applicants for the small amount of places at drama schools is a daunting first obstacle for any aspiring actor. If you are lucky enough to be attain a place you are then faced with an even more discouraging truth, that graduating drama school offers absolutely no guarantee of finding work in the profession. At all.
The unemployment rate of actors hovers around the 90% mark, compared to the national average of 5%, so the thought of spending so much time, money and, more importantly, soul on getting into drama school may seem a little pointless.
And it is. A little.
Considering the huge number of applicants to pick from and the time they have to invest in training those applicants (sometimes four years are spent at institutions with foundation courses) employment figures are mostly disappointing.
Imagine if other jobs made you tread a similar path to the aspiring actor…
Say you wanted to become a baker for instance. You have always wanted to be a baker for as long as you can remember, any excuse to bake and you were there. Every Christmas your family are forced to enjoy your flaky pastry and at school you frequently get detentions for bemoaning your teacher’s soggy bottom. After much soul searching and to your family’s chagrin, you reveal that are adamant in your desire to break into choux business, you want to train to be the best baker you can be at the most prestigious Bakery School in the country.
In order to do this you have to show two of your bakes (one modern, one Jacobean cake) and participate in a small bun-making workshop in order to impress a small panel of ex-bakers, one of who is still dining out on the fact that they once made a soufflé with Mary Berry some decades previously.
After several recalls, considerable expense, some deliberation and an unsatisfactory explanation, they inform you that they don’t think you are quite ready for the Bakery School and invite you to attend their Bakery Foundation Course*, where you will learn all about yeast and…I dunno… rudimentary proving drawers... or whatever.
After working hard for a year, you stand before the panel again, ready to prove to them how much you have risen and how much you knead this and… success! They invite you to attend their three year BA Bakery Course** where they really get to show you what yeast and proving drawers are about in fine detail.
You learn all about breads, cakes, shortbreads, biscuits, pittas, homity pies, some crazy dude from Israel comes to teach you all about bourekas (which is much more fun than you thought it would be), you learn all about whisking, stirring, measuring, oven temperatures and the correct way to spell the word donut*** and you grow as a baker and as a person.
The third year approaches all too quickly and you and your fellow baking students have just a two minute showcase to demonstrate your skills in front of the country’s finest restauranteurs and some restaurant agents, who may have some interesting cake projects in the piping bag. And even after all of that struggle, all of those hoops you jumped through, all of those eggs you smashed, after culminating four years’ worth of study into a two minute showstopper… even then, a staggering 90% of your graduating class will never get to bake a cake ever again! Ever! ****
So with such bleak prospects, why would anyone even bother going to Bakery School?
The answer is quite simple. It depends on your reasons for trying to go to Bakery School in the first place.
If you want to become a baker because you like the attention bakers get, you think you'd look great in those big white hats they wear, you watch lots of episodes of GBBO and yearn to get a handshake from a taciturn Liverpudlian, and you lie awake at night dreaming of the day when you are on the cover of Hello magazine holding a cake-stand trophy, then I am afraid that you really shouldn’t bother. Bakery school isn’t for you. If these are your motives, you need to know that bakery school cannot help you.*****
However, if you simply adore the act of baking, if you like creating your own recipes not just copying them from a recipe book, if baking stimulates you physically, emotionally and spiritually in a way that no other pastime does, then you will have the time of your life at Bakery School. The time of your life! All of the sacrifice and struggle and compromise and rejection is actually worth it. Spending the day messing around in a kitchen with inventive, open-minded people playing with ingredients in a creative and expressive environment is a wonderful way to waste a few years.
And who cares if no-one buys your cakes? You bettered yourself, you learnt, you grew, you met some extraordinary people and you became the best baker that you could be. Above all, you made some of the most beautiful breads you could ever make. Even when you have nothing left to prove, you have nothing left to prove.
You created some things. And isn’t that the point? To create some things?
And sure, a lucky few of you may go on to become jobbing bakers, you will make your living baking delicious things and at the end of the week someone will pay you money for them.*****
You will have one of the best jobs in the world.
Almost as good as being an actor.
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* Demand that you pay approximately £7000 to attend
** Demand that you pay approximately £27000 to attend
***Doughnut
****Besides there a much easier ways of getting on the cover of Hello. Being talented isn’t one of them.
***** Or, more likely, someone will expect you to bake for free because it will be great exposure for your flatbreads… but that is a subject for another blog
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Darren Strange has worked as an actor and metaphor-stretcher for the last 21 years. He ran the Acting Pathway at GSA and will soon be joining The Fourth Monkey Training Company. He has helped over 150 students gain places at every accredited drama school in the UK.
Details of courses and private lessons can be found on www.actingteachersurrey.com
