Actors’ and Performers’ Yearbook
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Since 2004, Methuen Drama’s Actors’ and Performers’ Yearbook has been guiding creative professionals as they pursue their dreams and progress their careers. With annual editions, each updated to reflect shifts and trends within the industry, readers are supported in their training and their continued search for work on stage, screen and radio.
A comprehensive directory, the A&P Yearbook features all manners of resources and listings, ranging from casting calendars and agent almanacs to breakdowns of how tax and National Insurance works for actors. With this depth and selection of content, the Yearbook saves creatives hours of research whilst also offering a clear path to progress their careers. Simply put, it is the essential reference book for actors and performers everywhere.
Equally, the Yearbook isn’t only a handbook for the year to come, but also a reflection on the year that’s just been, with experts and professionals offering thoughtful and informative guides on contemporary issues in the industry. From interviews that discuss the important role of inclusivity and allyship in training, to actionable guides on how auditions work in a socially distanced world, the Yearbook is the only directory to provide detailed and specific advice in-line with the times.
Key features of the Actors’ and Performers’ Yearbook
- Provides up-to-date information for each contact – including productions, casting details, agents and whether they will accept approaches direct – saves hours of research
- More than just a listings directory – contains advice articles and tools such as the casting calendar, which outlines when theatre companies will receive CVs
- Actor training and professional development is covered, including training for under 18s, drama schools and short and part-time courses and private tutors and coaches
- Features up to four brand new articles every year, giving timely advice in response to today’s fast-changing industry
Highlights of the 2025 Actors’ and Performers’ Yearbook
Foreword – Maggie Norris
“I had no training, no agent and no knowledge of the industry. So, like many actors back then, I bought The Stage every week and scoured the job pages. I responded to an advert looking for actors for a tour of old people’s homes in Birmingham. They wanted an actor/musician and I played the saxophone just enough to land the job. This was the beginning of a career that went on to encompass acting, writing, directing and producing. It was on this journey, as I prepared to direct a musical set in a prison called Bad Girls for West Yorkshire Playhouse and subsequently the Garrick Theatre, that I found myself visiting a number of prisons as part of my research. I talked to a lot of people who I felt shouldn’t be there. I also found that a high percentage were care experienced.
Resources for young people leaving care tend to be focussed on education, training and employment. None of which is sustainable if a young person is in crisis. Over time, I have found that the systems set up to support care leavers often belittle and reduce them in the name of helping them. They are clumsy, self-interested and overwhelmed. The point of The Big House – the theatre I went on to create – is to help them see that they deserve
better and are capable of more (see page 279).
When I set up The Big House in 2012, I had no interest in managing people, and I didn’t want to be defined by a CEO title, sitting at the top of a hierarchy. I wanted to be defined by the young people (they would give me the best title anyway: my nickname, Magsta) and I wanted to remain an artist – an artist that strives to be an innovative practitioner and, above all, curious. I wanted The Big House to be a place where empathy lives and where small ideas incubate in rooms to be shared in powerful immersive settings and grow into big ideas that reshape a system.
Over the last 12 years, I have been lucky to be trained by the young people I work with, many of whom we prepare for the industry. Our projects support those who have had a challenging upbringing. That often involves stabilising their lives before developing their creativity and nurturing their long-term goals. Most of the young artists have had little support growing up. Many will have been in care and had ‘‘corporate parents’’ (when a child goes into care, the council becomes the ‘‘corporate parent’’) or been referred from a Pupil Referral Unit for excluded children through a Youth Offending Team or a Probation Officer. Some will be introduced by our community of young artists, who know who’s at risk and in need of the long-term support we offer. All will be creative, none will be auditioned by The Big House, most will never have acted before and very few will have any knowledge of how the industry operates. This book is an invaluable guide that will help them navigate their journey to becoming a working actor.”
Actors and writers: an imperfect creative marriage – Lucian Msamati
“Strong – and, increasingly, loud – opinions are only ever an interpretation or a stance on the truth and don’t tend to make for interesting stories because they are the antithesis to curiosity. And curiosity is the beginning of empathy. As an actor your opinion therefore has to be secondary to your capacity for empathy. It can be the most dangerous, tenuous but rewarding creative currency to trade in. As the designated ‘grown ups’ in the rehearsal process (i.e. the director and the writer) work out the bigger picture from a remove, the actor intimately embraces and inhabits all the imperfections of this make-believe world. The necessary cutting, pasting, editing and reworking of the text therefore aren’t just practical exercises for an actor. These actions can sometimes feel like major, instantaneous, emergency organ-replacement surgery. With time and experience of course, you can learn as an actor to better manage the emotional and psychological wrench that can occur, but it is and always will be a delicate dance. After all, you’re dealing with human beings trying to play human beings (or lions, or trains) that have to feel human enough to connect with a room full of strangers who have parted with good money to be entertained. It’s kind of intense! And will invariably get mixed in with ego. That’s usually when phrases such as, ‘You know, I think my character would do X!’ or worse, ‘I don’t think my character should say Y!’ come into being. It is an exposing, exhilarating exercise because the actor has nowhere to hide in the process: exposure is your process. If I had a penny for every time I heard a director say, ‘Yeah, I know it’s not great, but please can you just do it as it is for tonight?’. And, of course, in the end the actor delivers because, ultimately, it’s a creative duty of care to the writing. Sometimes the greatest lesson for a writer is to see and hear their words out loud. An idea may read as glorious on paper and in your head but be a shambolic mess in the flesh and vice versa. This is the great challenge of writing language for performance. It has to start in theory and be continually polished in practice but for the actor it’s all practice; there is no room really to theorise because for better and for worse, your job is to be.”
Reframing the future of actor training – Pamela Jikiemi
“Modern actors must be adept at transitioning between theatre, film, television, and audio. Each medium requires a different dynamic and clear understanding of that dynamic and what is required in terms of craft by the actor. This underscores the importance of a trained imagination, transferable skills, versatility, energy and adaptability as key parts of an actor’s skill set. In 2023 actors in America went on strike for (among several things) the right to have control over their own digital image. This is a very real concern as technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly advanced. There has been an exponential explosion in environments where everyone can distribute material digitally with maximum efficiency to everyone else worldwide. Conservatoire training needs to address the implications of this to fundamentally raise awareness around actors being their own brand and how to develop and protect it. Today an actor might well focus solely on screen work for part of their career – the streaming platforms require a certain exclusive/loyalty not unlike the big Hollywood studio system of a previous era and the rights to one’s image and its usage are increasingly nebulous. But in-between screen projects they might try to squeeze in a theatrical stage play project, be commodified as the face of a major brand extolling the virtues of perfume, aftershave, high fashion. They might be facilitating presentational skills for businesses, doing motion/performance capture/voicing characters for gaming brands and/or visual effects work, narrating an audiobook or producing a podcast. There is a much bigger and recognised diversification of craft and young actors need to have a much more heightened sense of the range of an actor’s working life and how much they can do for themselves to access it. Some of the most talented young actors today never trained at drama school yet are consistently in work moving fluidly between screen and stage. Training may not have been an option for any number of reasons, but these actors are in demand, and they are focused, disciplined, open, agile and learning on the job.”
Theatre as community: overcoming barriers for participation – Interview with Lee Hall
MN: What moves you to write?
LH: To attempt to make something beautiful.
MN: What’s the best piece of advice you ever received about your career?
LH: It’s not a race.
MN: Which part of the production process do you most enjoy, from research through to watching the finished work?
LH: Each bit of the process is exquisite pain of one kind or another. The lovely thing is there are so many stages. But I love the rehearsal room because it’s actually where you find out what your play is really about. It’s so amazing having the thing you dreamt up in your bedroom becoming owned by other people.
An actor’s values: establishing principles for success – Interview with Paapa Essiedu
MN: When I was talking to Michael Wiggs, the agent, I asked him what he was looking for when he interviews or meets an actor. You know, what interests or excites him and what might make him lose interest. He said a red flag would be somebody saying that they want to be a star. He said that when you’re working with somebody to create a career, develop their skill set, that’s the last thing that you want to hear, because it’s divorced from reality.
PE: Yeah. The thing is, when you talk about wanting to be a star, what is that actually connected to? Maybe that’s connected to wanting to emulate someone that you’ve seen on television or that you’ve read about in the papers. I remember once I went to the Met Gala, which is literally like a vacuum full of the most famous people. I expected to go there and see the most charismatic, the most confident, the most self-actualised people on the planet. But, actually, you’re seeing the most nervous, the most stressed, the most anxious. Because they’re at an event where their publicists aren’t allowed to be, so there’s no protection. But also, there is a real confrontation that you must ease into when you’re in those kinds of rooms. A confrontation between yourself and your self-consciousness. With people actually thinking about the things that they’re not good at or how they’re not beautiful or how they’re not smart. It’s interesting because it comes across in a certain way, but the reality is totally the opposite.
Nurturing talent: an agent’s frame of mind – Interview with Michael Wiggs
MN: How do you nurture an actor, at the beginning of their career?
MW: I’m strategic. I’m entrepreneurial naturally. I’ve always done it in a different way, punching way above my weight. Even as a young agent. As much as I love the casting process, I would also cultivate directors, writers and producers.
MN: If you were to put yourself in a young actor’s shoes now, what would you look for in an agent?
MW: I would look at, say, a young casting director, like Isabella Odoffin, and look at her work, look at a film like How to Have Sex, look at all those young actors and see who represents them. It’s all online now, thankfully. So, you can go on all the agents’ websites and see if you like the work, if you like those actors. That’s what I would do. And you can see how many clients they’ve got as well, which is quite important.
An actor’s advice: navigating your way through the industry – Interview with Naomi Ackie
MN: What influences your decision-making when considering taking on a role?
NA: Hmmmm.. I really don’t know. I just wanna feel something. I wanna be able to visualize myself or a version of myself not yet thought up that can exist in that story. I wanna feel like I have something to offer. Also, something that scares me! That’s always important.
MN: Your mum gave you very practical advice about a potential acting career and told you to learn your craft well. That is such great advice. Watching a documentary about Marilyn Monroe recently I was struck by how well she knew her craft and how she created her own opportunities within the industry. Have there been times when you have had to create your own opportunities? And is that something you want to do more of in the future?
NA: Yeah, she was a very wise woman. I do. I definitely do. I think right now I’m in a rest mode. I am waiting for inspiration to approach me. My mum also used to say you have to live life to inform your art so that’s what I’m doing right now. But, in the future, I hope I can find further opportunities for myself that add to the conversation!
MN: Having watched you be interviewed and having seen your work, you have a strong sense of playfulness. How do you retain that quality when you’re working under pressure?I think that’s when you have to hold onto your sense of play more. I truly believe it’s about relaxing into the atmosphere. Everything around us feeds into what we need in that moment. Yeah, it can be stressful sometimes, but my goodness when pressure is applied that’s when diamonds are made. Lean in to it. Laugh with it. And get it done!
“A map, compass, guide-book”
Simon Callow</h4 >
“An essential tool for all actors”
Christine Payne, Equity</h4 >
Use of this book will save you time and money
Samuel West</h4 >
Indispensable
