The actor, director, author and playright gives an inspiring speech as he receives his award
15 Aug 2013
Brighton-based Neil Bartlett OBE, actor, director, author and playright, gave an inspiring acceptance speech at the University of Brighton, Faculty of Arts graduate awards ceremony held at the Brighton Dome this week. After receiving an Honorary Doctor of Arts for his contribution to literature and theatre he said that no careers adviser would have predicted his career:
“No-one from my family background was ever ‘meant’ to go to Oxford University. No-one who went to Oxford, and they had the luxury of being brilliantly and systematically groomed for a life in the cultural Establishment, was meant, in 1980, to take off too many clothes, to put on too much Siouxsie Sioux eyeshadow, to go on Jobseekers Allowance and proceed to re-invent themselves as a part-of-the-time naked and all-of-the-time queer performance artist, author and activist.
“It gets worse. No-one who did those scandalous things was then meant or allowed to go on to run a major national theatre, and indeed even to go on to be invited to make work at the National Theatre .
“What careers advisory office would have ever have predicted that? And trust me, I am not speaking purely in retrospect; I am still making my living doing things I am not ‘meant’ to do. The suit-wearing, middle-aged, apparently respectable and eminently employable arts professional you see standing here before you is, the weekend after next, performing in a dark room in Southwark, reading in a tent at Gay Pride here in Brighton, and delivering the script of a new lesbian psycho-drama for Radio Four, to be broadcast on Women’s Hour.
“The moral of the story?
“Well, I want you to consider…this whole question of what people like you are meant or allowed to do; to consider what is possible, and what is impossible.
“You have of course already done something peculiar and remarkable and unlikely – something that wasn’t just ‘meant to happen’ – by getting yourself a degree – and if you think that’s an ordinary or predictable achievement, try telling that to anyone who has never had the chance to do what you have just done.
“Furthermore, you chose to do it in this peculiar, remarkable and unlikely town. Now that you’re leaving both the university and the town, lots of people are going to give you – either overtly or covertly, noisily or silently – their opinion about what is now possible and impossible, for someone like you. Especially what is impossible in these hard up, Osborne-run, Cameron and Duncan-Smith-codified times.
“They will politely suggest that everyone in the real world knows, and agrees, what is likely, and unlikely, for someone like you; what is meant to happen to you, and what is not meant to happen; what is possible, and impossible. I would urge to consider these suggestions very seriously, but with the smile to which having a degree in your back pocket entitles you.
“Take it from me, a lot that is ‘not meant’ is possible.
“I would like to make it clear that I am not talking here about your future income, and I am most emphatically not suggesting that you subscribe to a Britain’s Got Talent or Big Brother theory of life – that unholy alliance of First-World entitlement, self-aggrandising consumerism and giggling nihilism; rather, I would urge you to look intelligently about you and see the world you are about to enter as permeable, disruptable, changeable and …. possible.
“Let’s face it, the world in question needs your help.
“If my experience is anything to go by then you will need to get through the next few years, to be resourceful, feral and skilful. You will need your wits about you, and considerable nerve.
“The good news is that by getting your degree, you have made a good start.”
