Guest Blog: David Shopland - "When all is said and done, it is the artistic output that has to count."

David Shopland

In the late summer of 2011, I sat around a table at Henry’s Bar in Covent Garden with three close friends and discussed the possibility of taking those first brave steps towards starting a theatre company. Two years later that company is producing Riverside Studios’ Christmas show, The Little Mermaid.

This original adaptation searches for the truth behind the fairytale paralleling the life of Hans Christian Andersen and focusing on issues of sexual identity and belonging. We had all trained at Rose Bruford College together and despite coming from different backgrounds and possessing diverse theatrical interests, we had gravitated towards each other during our final year.

I think Drama School instills you with a certain fire in your belly, and as a performer it gives you the chance to play characters like Willy Loman and Blanche Dubois; parts you would never be considered for professionally until much later in your career. You also get the opportunity to create your own work experiment with different theatrical techniques. This means a Drama School student can graduate with an idealised impression of how the industry will treat them when they graduate. There is nothing wrong with this. Rose Bruford was a fantastic training facility, and the American Theatre Arts degree was particularly focused towards creating militant theatre-makers. However, you are forced to learn swiftly that the realities of theatre are far more complicated than the rose tinted image you have in training. That’s when you have to make a choice. In my mind there are two options for any graduating practitioner; either you strive to become part of this country’s historic theatrical landscape or you strive to change it.