How to introduce yourself at parties.

What do you call yourself? When asked “what do you do?”, what do you say? The director Toria Banks reflects on the “professional”. Have a read.

I’m Toria. I’m a director and writer, a teacher, a dramaturg and a producer. Theatre-maker might be easier, but doesn’t exactly feel right. I’ve done many different, interesting things -  some of them well - but find it hard to say what sort of person they add up to. 

I’m 40 years old and I’ve failed to arrive at a satisfactory way of introducing myself at parties. Sometimes this feels like an overwhelming failure. When pushed I tend to argue that hybridity is a strength. In truth, I mostly feel like being disabled by chronic illness has made it really, really hard to claim a professional artistic identity for myself in the way that some (non-disabled, middle class) people take for granted, and I’ve done what I can.

My illness means I’ve spent a long time thinking about what I am without work. What if my condition deteriorates and I’m house or bed bound forever? What would I be then? The only answer that brings any peace is ‘enough.’ It’s easy to say, but hard to mean. And of course practically, I’ve still got to eat. But I have come to mean it when I say ‘I am enough without work’, and can tell you from experience that believing it won’t make you just give up.

I think I was drawn to theatre by the desire to put my whole self into something: all the creativity, intelligence and practicality I could muster. I didn’t want to have separate realms for thinking and feeling, understanding and organising.  I didn’t want to have a separate, apolitical, professional self 5 days a week. (This is definitely not the same as thinking it’s okay to be ‘unprofessional’). I’m perhaps less naïve now, and I like my privacy and my home life more. Nevertheless, a big part of spending the last couple of years setting up HERA, an intersectional feminist opera company , has been me and my colleagues - Simone Ibbett-Brown and Linda Hirst - wanting to bring our whole female, older, mixed race, and disabled selves to work.

Here’s a thing I’ve been thinking about…

When this crisis is over there will be fewer professionals, and exactly the same number of artists. So maybe one thing we can do in kindness for each other is to draw the boundaries of our professions less firmly.

I need to be clear that I am not criticising anyone for fighting for the arts as an industry or for their place in it. And I am absolutely not questioning anyone’s dedication or skill, or how crucial it is that people are paid properly for their work. It is just that it’s also true that there are people with beautiful things to say and art to make who never made it to ‘professional’, or who never felt they could try, and others who have already been pushed to the periphery or all the way out -  and now there will be more. Disproportionately they are and will be those with less privilege: women, working class people, people of colour, queer and trans people and disabled people. Can we find a way to grow together, even if sectors and industries shrink?

I don’t want to simply mourn the presence of those who will no longer make their living in the arts. I want them to be present and I want to be with them. Lots of us, myself included, already don’t make a real living from the arts. I want to be honest about that and I want to be present too. I don’t have the answer, but I do know I want to be a citizen-artist even if there comes a time I’m no longer a worker in the creative industries. And yes I still know, we’ve all got to eat.

Society should value the arts enough to pay enough for them. But if it doesn’t, we can choose not to internalise its value systems. We can say that something is serious, thoughtful, well put together, skilful, beautiful, entertaining, important, or that someone behaves with respect and integrity, and not just call it ‘professional’. We can value the creativity of audiences, and participants, and people with other jobs or none, because they are also us and we are them. And if we ever get to throw them again, we can ask each other better questions at parties.