Chloé Naldrett Elwood

My advice to anyone that thinks they might want to work in theatre is to get a job, as I did, working front of house in a theatre, if at all possible. Because being in a working theatre gives you such a good awareness of what is involved in making art in this way, and also a really, really good awareness of the fact that not everybody who works in a theatre and is crucial to the process of making theatre is an artist, and that that creativity that is required comes in many, many different forms. So, had I not worked front of house at a theatre, I wouldn’t have been aware of the fact that there are roles backstage for carpenters and people who are metalworkers and people who are specialists in hair and make-up and wardrobe and that there are roles for people who have these super-organized tidy brains and that is stage management and that there are roles for people who are really brilliant at being able to talk about and communicate about work and those are the people that sit in our marketing department or our press department. You know, there is a real wealth of opportunity that exists within an institution like Bristol Old Vic for people to be involved in the process of making work. So, you know, getting a job of any kind, even if it’s working front of house or on the box office, is a really good starting point. Also, while you’re at school, while you’re at university, while you’re at college, in your community groups, whatever it might be, making work wherever possible, getting involved in the opportunities to put a piece of work in front of an audience and to collaborate with artists in making it, is brilliant. So, every piece of experience is really useful, and I think one of the important things to hold in the minds of anyone that’s interested in working in theatre is that you learn by doing and sometimes there aren’t right and wrong ways of doing things. The most important way of gaining experience is just to start and to learn on the job, which is a little bit of what I did before I then stepped into a role within a theatre where I started to learn more about the best kinds of processes.