Go Live Scholarship
We have teamed up with North London Drama School, Platinum Academy of Performing Arts, to offer one young person a three-year scholarship - worth over £20,000!
Twenty-one-year-old Magdalene Sesay (Mags), who begins her Level 6 professional Performing Arts diploma, this week, said: “The scholarship came at a beautiful time. I was working a corporate job and felt restless. Everything that had come beforehand almost prepared me to be where I am today. I am very grateful.”
Course director (and Ambassador for Go Live Theatre Projects), Philip Joel, was so enamoured with the work Go Live do to help make theatre accessible to young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, that he spoke to Principal Nina Lewis-Hart about offering a three-year scholarship to one Go Live member. Philip said “At Platinum Academy we are thrilled to be able to offer Mags the Go Live Scholarship. From their energetic, passionate audition to now training full time with us, we are excited to see their journey progress throughout the course & excited to see Mag’s future destinations heading into the industry. Platinum Academy are honoured to be working alongside Go Live.”
The Go Live Club is an independent theatregoing scheme for young people aged 15-24, aimed at offering reduced price tickets to those who may benefit from it. West End star and Go Live Ambassador, Georgina Onuorah (Kiss Me Kate, Oklahoma, The Wizard Of Oz) was a member of the programme as a teenager and said (video below) “I’m from Luton and so the trip up to London to see shows was a really big deal, really expensive, so I was always trawling the internet to find companies I could see shows with and then I found Go Live. It was amazing and really important to begin my career”. Young people can sign up to the club for free and receive ticket deals and offers from £5!
Mags, whose favourite show is Hamilton, was born and raised in Southwark and went to university in Manchester, thinking she would be a lawyer but dropped out to explore her creativity. “I thought, what better time to take a risk than now?” She got involved with every Youth Theatre programme she could think of, including the National Youth Theatre, the Almeida Young Company and Intermission Youth, before stumbling across Go Live and the opportunity at Platinum Academy. “Go Live was introduced to me by a friend and I found that it’s an organisation that makes theatre accessible for young people, which I think is amazing”.
Magdalene enjoyed drama at school but felt pressure to put her creativity on the back burner and focus her studies on a more reliable career, “being told to do something academic, something practical, something reliable at a young age got to me. It had a knock on my confidence.”
Mags pushed her dreams of drama school to the back of her mind to focus on her studies and didn’t think about it again for a few years, “Drama, especially at school, is something that I loved and had a real passion for. There’s something great about being on stage, embodying a character and looking at that relationship between a stage and an audience. It captivates me in a way that I can’t explain”.
But after her knock in confidence years before, she wasn’t sure if revisiting a career in the creative arts would be a good idea. “The idea of going to drama school was something that I was wrestling with and I didn’t know if it was for me. But I am so grateful for the entry level programmes that I was able to do, because putting myself in those sorts of spaces allowed me the opportunity to build my confidence and believe that I could do this on a more professional level.”
Mags felt that Platinum Academy of Performing Arts is the right school for her needs because of the care and attention they provide to their students. “One thing that really drew me to Platinum is that it’s not an experience where you just come into the school, you learn and then they push you off into the world and tell you to figure it out on your own. They back and support you. I’m looking forward to being in a place that’s able to prepare me as best as they can.”
At a cost of over £20,000 for the three-year-course, Mags says that without this scholarship, it is something that she would never have been able to do. “I wouldn’t have been able to afford training without this scholarship. I probably still would have been in my corporate job. Opening doors to something like this, for me, has quite literally made my dreams come true”.
When asked if she had any advice for aspiring performers, Mags said “immerse yourself in every opportunity that comes (especially the free ones) as much as possible. It will help take away any assumptions you may have that you can’t do it. And honestly just keep going with your craft, keep going with what you believe in. Love the dream that you see. It doesn’t matter if anyone else doesn’t see it.”
We wish Mags the best of luck in her creative pursuits and hope to catch up with her again, when she graduates, to find out how the experience has been!
Interview conducted by Rinre Olusola who is a member of Go Live’s Youth Forum – a group of young people who help to shape and guide the work that Go Live Theatre Projects do.