intern life and opera in London
Photo by Fiona Bailey
This month, we’ve asked our wonderful social media intern, Edie Bailey, to share their thoughts on trying to get into opera directing. Not only to bring their work to your attention, but also to give them a chance to express how they feel about where they are and what we might do to make their journey better. Just like everyone at The Opera Makers, Edie is unpaid for the day-to-day admin they do. Sadly, we are currently only able to pay our team from production-based funding, though we are actively seeking core funding.
So, I’ve been asked to finally come out of hiding. As The Opera Makers intern this year, I’ve been creating all our social media content and enjoying the anonymity that has given me.
It seems appropriate that in the same week as my first ever headshot shoot, I am now becoming more of a public facing member of The Opera Makers team. For some reason, I have shied away from both things for a while. My own anxiety around being photographed aside, this is the conundrum of working ‘backstage’ in the arts. Quite often, the people behind the scenes want to be invisible, but they are also fiercely creative and passionate about what they want to see on the stage.
I want to share with you what it is like for a young person trying to make it in the opera industry. So far on my journey, I have mostly been asked to do the fading into the background side of arts administration. As a person with fairly severe anxiety, this is something that comes quite naturally to me; but as an artist and aspiring opera director, forcing myself to hold my tongue and act in a purely supportive way can be quite creatively challenging.
To explain, I am currently working as an assistant director, trying to build up my experience in professional opera productions to move towards directing productions of my own. The role of an assistant director is, effectively, to be as supportive to the director as possible in their vision of the opera they want to create. It is not a directing role in any sense, it is an assisting role. It is, of course, an important job – crucial to a successful rehearsal and production process; but it is a naturally silent role. Indeed, in my most recent production I was told that I was doing a good job specifically because I held back from speaking. This is the nature of the position, but it seems to mirror my experience since leaving university. As a young and relatively inexperienced person in my position, undertaking unpaid internships and low paid opera work is not particularly creatively stimulating. (I must emphasise that this is not an admonishment of The Opera Makers; indeed, the very fact I’ve been asked to write this post is an example of how supportive they are of me and my journey.)
Then, on the other hand, because I work in a restaurant (so I can afford to eat and pay my rent) I don’t even have the time to pursue my own creative exploits. I can barely even commit enough time to my internship and assistant directing work, let alone create art. This is my experience, certainly, and it feels like a lonely one. The fact that I am queer and non-binary in an industry where queer and gender non-conforming people arent really celebrated or even highlighted only builds on this feeling of loneliness. There are hundreds, if not thousands of young artists in London struggling to pursue what makes them truly happy while also trying to make ends meet. It would be amazing if there were some sort of under 25 and struggling backstagers network... particularly post-covid, the opportunity to meet people in the same boat as you face to face is so important.
When you are the only person you know doing what you do it becomes hard to value yourself, and to realise if you are getting something out of your work or whether you are being exploited. Sometimes you just have to rely on your gut instinct. It’s difficult to know that something is wrong when you don’t have the experience of how it can be done right.
I realise how whiny I feel like I’m being. I love what I do, and I am so privileged to be doing it. Opera is, in my opinion, the most radical, innovative, and emotionally rousing art form there is, and I am so lucky to be able to be part of that creative process. As an unpaid intern, I have been able to attend and take part in events that have been so inspiring to me and the people who have been generous enough to agree to employ me have effectively paved my career path. In an industry where it’s all about who you know, I feel like I already know so many of the right people. Moreover, the experience that I share here is one of a person who has lived a very privileged, upper-middle class life; where attending private schools for 15 years certainly enabled me to do what I do now. But in light of that, I have always wanted to be financially independent; though I am so grateful for the opportunities that my parents gave me, I have always sought my own path through my own hard work. So much so that when I got a job that meant I was able to pay my own rent for the first time I was overjoyed.
So where do I find myself concluding this? There certainly are opportunities for young people in opera, but you tend to have to have a lot of experience and contacts already to get them. But how do you get that experience in the first place? In my case university provided me with a jumping off point to create whatever I wanted, and that seemed to set me down the path that I’m on now. It certainly is a lot of unpaid and low paid work with a hell of a lot of luck. And to refer to how I started this blog, it seems to be a lot of putting up and shutting up.
When I finally get to a point when I create my own productions, I aim to provide all my creative colleagues with equal collaborative and creative opportunities. This might seem like a romanticised and over-ambitious goal, but I fundamentally believe that it is achievable. Not only that, but I also believe that approach amounts to a far more creatively stimulating process and successful production. Here’s hoping I get to achieve that one day.
