Acting and performance personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I was twenty-four when I was talked into auditioning for a community production of Blood Brothers by a colleague who needed someone to fill out the chorus. I had done a bit of drama at school and assumed that was the end of it. What I found in those rehearsals was not the thrill I expected but something slower and more absorbing: the work of repeating a scene until a line stopped being words I had memorised and became something I actually wanted to say. I have been chasing that feeling ever since, and I now want to train properly rather than continue picking things up in fragments on Tuesday evenings. What draws me to acting is how physical and practical it is. Reading Declan Donnellan's The Actor and the Target changed how I approach rehearsal, because it moved my attention away from what I was feeling and towards what I wanted from the person opposite me. That was a relief. My worst habit has been watching myself from the outside, and thinking about objectives and attention gives me something concrete to hold on to. I am also increasingly interested in the work around the performance: how a rehearsal room is run, how an ensemble builds trust quickly, how a company decides what a play is for. I want a course that combines voice, movement and text work with the chance to make original pieces, because the productions I have most enjoyed watching have been ones where a company clearly built the thing together. Coming to this at twenty-nine, I know what I am giving up to do it, and that clarity is part of why I am applying now rather than later.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I am studying for an Access to Higher Education Diploma in Humanities at my local further education college, taking units in English literature, history and sociology alongside study skills. The literature units have been the most directly useful. Working on Twelfth Night in an essay on disguise and gender made me rethink a scene I had already performed in an amateur production, and I realised I had played Maria's teasing as simple comedy without noticing how much of it is calculated. Since then I have made a habit of reading plays twice: once for the story, once for what each character is trying to get and what stops them. My sociology unit has fed into this too. A topic on class and cultural participation gave me a vocabulary for something I had noticed but never articulated, which is who feels welcome in a theatre and who does not. It has made me think about audience as part of the work rather than an afterthought. Returning to formal study after seven years of work has been an adjustment, mainly in learning to write essays again and to plan reading around shifts. I keep a weekly timetable and I have used my tutor's feedback deliberately, particularly on structuring arguments rather than listing evidence. My A levels in English Language, History and Geography were passed several years ago and I would not claim they are recent preparation. What I bring instead is an Access course completed while working and rehearsing, and the reading I have done independently, including plays by Lucy Kirkwood, Arinzé Kene and Timberlake Wertenbaker.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For the past four years I have performed with a community theatre company that stages two productions a year in a church hall and a small arts centre. I have played Mrs Johnstone's neighbour, a nurse in a devised piece about the town's factory closures, and most recently Rosalind's cousin Celia in a heavily cut As You Like It. The devised project taught me the most. We built scenes from interviews company members had recorded with relatives, and I learned how much editing and restraint honest material needs before it works on stage. I also learned to accept that a scene I had written and liked could be cut. Alongside this I volunteer fortnightly at a youth drama session for eight to twelve year olds, mostly running warm-up games and supervising in pairs with the lead facilitator. Explaining a simple status exercise to children who want to be silly has sharpened my own understanding of it. Seven years of paid work has given me things I expect to use daily on a demanding course. As a supervisor in a garden centre café I opened up at six, wrote rotas, trained new starters and dealt with complaints without taking them personally, and I got used to being reliable when I was tired. My current library job involves running a weekly reading group, which means preparing questions, keeping quiet members involved and letting a discussion go somewhere unplanned. Outside all this I sing with a choir, which has improved my breath control and my ear for how a group listens to itself. I am ready to work hard, take direction and be one voice among many.

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