The biggest pressure of drama school lives outside of the rehearsal studio. Forget audition nerves, do you have the spare funds knocking around? Yes, it’s an investment. Yes, it’ll help you advance in your career and yes, there are scholarships up for grabs. Yet, it can still be almost impossible to gather the coins to get you in that studio in the first place.

What if I told you that you can get support to gain a place at one of the UK’s leading drama schools? Open Door is an organisation that is all hands on deck to do just this very thing. They currently have applications open for their Acting and Behind the Scenes programmes. Think you’re too old? Think again. The programme will work with people aged 18-30 and is based in Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Warrington, West Yorkshire, the Borough of Halton, Lon, Essex and the South East. The Behind the Scenes online programme will work with people aged 17-30 based in England, Scotland or Wales.

By this point, you’re most likely itching to find out the juicy details, myself included. The Open Door will be hosting open days at the Everyman, consisting of FREE (yes you read correctly), FREE acting workshops with Artistic Director, CEI and founder of Open Door, David Mumeni. This will be joint with Managing Director of Open Door, Rich Neale. This will follow with a Q&A session with the team to get information and a snippet of what drama school is about, as well as a chat about what to expect with the Open Door programme.

Open Days and Auditions will be held at the Everyman on the following dates:

Open Day 1 - Tuesday 5th September

Open Day 2 - Saturday 7th October

Audition Date - Friday 22nd September

Recall Date - Wednesday 18th October

If you are successful and receive a place on the programme, there are more freebies up for grabs such as auditions, travel, theatre tickets, training and 1-1 tutoring from industry professionals. Talking from personal experience, I definitely urge everyone struggling to apply. I didn’t go down the drama school path as I simply couldn’t afford the upfront costs. It’s heartbreaking and can put some people off the industry completely. Open Door is a brilliantly kind and supportive company that WANT to help you.

Apply NOW at opendoor.org.uk