102
heroica
NO
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F R E E L A N C E
L I F E
he day our lives changed forever, I was taking a Saturday morning nursery class at a performing arts school in South-West London. My phone was plugged into the speakers to play music through. Suddenly, mid-parachute game, my ringtone sounds loudly. My friend X was calling. I immediately put my phone on aeroplane mode until the end of the class, and once all the children were safely redeposited, took it off again. Countless emojis of champagne popping, balloons and clapping hands swept over my phone screen from our friend group’s WhatsApp chat. I call X back. He’d got the part. Four years out of Drama School, I was working ten part-time jobs to pay for half our room in a London flat: nanny, private tutor, teacher’s assistant, waitress, caterer, food-sampler, drama teacher, receptionist, dog-walker and… coordinator for a social-impact
I N
L O N D O N
BY GEORGIE OULTON
award at the Edinburgh Festival (there’s no real job title for that). This is how I funded my dreams of working as an actor, producer, director, theatre company co-founder and writer. My best-paid job was my first job in London aged eighteen – a children’s entertainer. I met my boss on a train. She had just started a children’s birthday party business, and I made up some rubbish on the spot about having a close eye for detail and a passion for performance. She gave me her card. For the next three months, I became her personal assistant and did parties on the weekends, dressed as everything from Princess Elsa to Mickey Mouse. The necessity of the job blinded me from the absurdity of commuting an hour out of London to fire off emails in a shed-turned-office at the bottom of her garden. However, I will always be grateful to her; she gave me my first chance.
