Charles Brammall on serving a stressful industry through ENTER, a entertainment ministry
Employment in acting is notoriously difficult to get, and completely unpredictable. There is an infinitesimally small number of jobs compared to the number of artists looking. During the ENTER years, 93.1% of Australian actors were unemployed on any given day. Actors may get between two or three auditions per year, or two or three per week. It is utterly unpredictable. And most of those don’t lead to roles. On average one role is offered for every fifteen to twenty five auditions. “You’re only as good as your last gig”, as they say.
It is difficult for actors to hold down regular jobs in other industries as well, as they often need to hightail it off to an audition at a moment’s notice in the hope of getting at least somework. And very few bosses are willing for them to do this, as they need regular, committed staff. The work schedule of normal jobs doesn’t bend to fit in with the irregular quirks of entertainment employment. So unless you have a spouse in full-time work (as one high profile lady I know does) who is able to support you, you would never be able to do this. Her husband is a lawyer.
Most “actors” are baristas, checkout chicks, mower people, or labourers. And I don’t put “actors” in inverted commas to suggest they don’t have the right to call themselves that. They do- that’s what actors are– people looking for work who scrounge flexible work in other industries in order to go to auditions. Consequently, because of the emotional strain of this lifestyle, anxiety and Mental Health are an issue for many industry people:
At Sydney Fashion Week, and I was in the Green Room chatting to a very attractive but excruciatingly thin high profile catwalk model. After a time she felt safe to share that she experienced self hatred, had severe body dismorphia, and times of suicidal ideation.
Just the widespread occurrence of Anorexia and Bulimia themselves are enough to push some entertainment people over the edge. It gave me a tiny glimpse of what Jesus seemed to feel in Matthew 9:35 – “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
Please pray that the Good Shepherd will send out many more under-shepherds to Australia’s entertainment people to feed, protect, and correct them. Many industry people are not emotionally or mentally robust; the opposite, in fact. Sometimes, we see them andthink they have it all, but they don’t. The confidence and self-worth of many performers are tied up in the kudos they receive from performing, and because they do it infrequently, self-worth is therefore, low. So their physical and relational health suffer.
Studies have shown that relationship breakdown in the industry is at a higher rate than the general population. Marianna Szabo’s article in ‘Psychological Well-Being of Australian Actors and Performing Artists: “Life Satisfaction and Negative Affect”’ in The National Library of Medicine- PubMed, June 2022, reported that;
“… A sample of 728 Australian actors… reported lower levels of life satisfaction, and higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress than found in the Australian general population. Being in a relationship was associated with better psychological well-being. However, work stress often negatively impacts relationships. Australian actors may be at a higher risk for poor psychological health.”
But our gracious God and loving Heavenly Father continues to use weak, fallible and fallen believers in entertainment, this stressful and vexed industry, to advance His Kingdom and bind the Accuser. Just as He kindly and powerfully uses all of us, spiritually lame, blind, weak and foolish as we are. Just as He used the LORD at His weakest point– broken, torn, rejected, forsaken by His Father in glory, and executed.
And the supreme flexing of the arm of God and the hand of Jesus wasn’t when He preached or healed or worked miracles, or even brought people back to life. It was when the eternal, international, all-powerful Messiah hanged on the tree. Executed for us (and by us) who hated Him. Mystery of mysteries. Is it any wonder there are so many “redemptive” and “Messianic” motifs in film, TV, music, theatre, visual art, and even sculpture and dance? In one sense, industry people are soclose to their King, Acts 17:27-
“… they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us.“
Glory of glories. But in another sense they, like all the rest of us, are so far from Him, Jer 17:9 – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
But in Ez 36:26, God says (including to entertainers):
“I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
And Is 1:18- ‘“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
Psm 103:11-14: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. As far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. For He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.”
Contrast this glorious grace with the blasphemy of the serpent who attempts to snatch away the Word of God from entertainers and others for eternity. What a God we have indeed.