Glenda Jackson, Honorary Fellowship acceptance speech
Glenda Jackson was made a RADA Honorary Fellow in 2018 attending a ceremony in 2019. Below is a full transcript of her acceptance speech.
Glenda Jackson: "First of all, I'd like to say thank you very much not only for this award but for the lovely warm welcome and double congratulations to you all. It was made abundantly clear to me by your director that this is not a ceremony that honours those that would be actors it is also honoring those who are the technical side. Certainly in every theatrical, film and television performance I've ever been in, I have to say I have yet to meet a sound engineer who is not suffering from being hard of hearing, a lighting man who doesn't have to have spectacles, make up and hair who always have difficulty with a hair dryer, and costumers who always refuse to accept that I am the shape I am.
So thank you. In seriousness, to pick back to what we have already heard, Sybille Thorndike's point of view, which is absolutely mine, that everybody involved with a play be it on stage, under stage, backstage, above stage, are responsible for the whole play. In my view there are no such things as small parts, as someone has already said, there are only small actors: if you've got a huge speech or four lines, your responsibility is still the whole play. So take that away and think about it.
When I left, more than 60 years ago, this place was completely different; there was no bar. And it was not infrequent when I said what I was doing people would pronounce those four letters as 'radar', and say to me oh, are you using sort of x-ray machines? It came as a big shock to realize that there was actually an establishment that believed in the theater, believed in actors to the extent that wanted to help them to be the best they could possibly be. And it is true, I think still, even though we're living in a very different world, and what you will be offered will be very different to what I was offered.
But theater, which is my favorite, is a genuinely unique experience. A group of strangers come in – well you're not sitting in the dark here but if this was a show you would be – and a group of strangers come in to the portion of the theatre that is lit, and when it really works and energy passes from the light into the dark and that energy is returned to the light is increased – and so when it really, really works – and it can – and should – it is for me a model of an ideal society and that is something that I think also under… undermines is the wrong word – it’s the foundation of what theater is about. Let's take the example of the greatest contemporary dramatist in the world today as it has been through many, many generations, namely William Shakespeare.
He only ever asks three questions. Who are we? What are we? Why are we? And no one has yet come up with satisfactory answers to those questions because he looks all the time at what we human beings are like and human nature is immutable. Hopefully the human condition can and indeed should be improved.
But what we are like as people seems to me to be immutable, and to have that at our fingertips, if we're still in society that regards education as very important and certainly this place does, to read about ourselves to learn from ourselves and then to see it transform into a living reality via the theater, is truly miraculous, I think.
Someone said to me when I was doing one of those tedious interviews where everybody treats actors as though they are actually just playing games – and we're not – we are not – and said, you know, how does it feel to be loved by your audience? And I find that very shocking because I don't want to be loved by an audience – I want to be believed.
I want there to be that join between, you – though you're not – sitting in the dark and us hopefully working in the light, underlining what it is to be human beings and to learn from that – to learn that we are more than the envelopes we inhabit and we are infinitely more similar than we like to believe we are different.
I'd like to wish you all well, you're about to enter the toughest part of your life. I can remember distinctly even though I know the process now has changed, of going for an audition. I never got a job from an audition in my life: preparing for it days in advance, presenting oneself to the best of one's ability, walking into a room – in those days people sat behind a table and they'd look up and say oh darling sorry, we're wanting a blond or oh sorry, darling, we're wanting a brunette or oh no dear, you're too tall or oh no dear, you're too short. Now the sense of rejection the first time that happens is very total and very damaging. Don't take it seriously. It is not personal. It is simply the actual practical realities of the profession you have chosen.
Many people have come up to me over the years and said, oh I'm thinking about going into the theater and my response – my own grandson has said it to me – and my response to him is if there's anything else in the world that interests you don't go near the theatre. It's a vastly overcrowded, under recognized, I think, profession, but all the people sitting behind me couldn't find anything else that they wanted to do. For them, and rightly so, it is life or death. So, God help you all – and live!"
