Elaine C Smith creates prize for comic actors at Glasgow drama school
- Elaine C Smith is to grant £500 to a comedy-focused student at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland each year
- She says: "It's a wee bit of money to help them along the way, to buy the books they need or to afford to go and see a few shows"
Two Doors Down star Elaine C Smith is offering a £500 annual prize to a comedy-focused female final-year student at the Glasgow-based Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
The prize, which aims to support and celebrate new female voices in comedy, will run across the RCS's BA Acting, BA Performance and BA Musical Theatre degrees programmes.
"Making people laugh is such a joyous thing," says Elaine, who studied drama at RCS in the 1970s, when it was the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
"In my time, comedy in many ways was seen as lesser. Everyone wanted to do the serious roles. And invariably, what I've found in my career is that people who can do comedy well can also do tragedy very well.
"It's all about timing. Comedy touches people and, as the great Joni Mitchell says, laughing and crying, are the same release. There's a real skill in comedy that's innate."
Elaine, who was born in Baillieston in Glasgow and grew up in Newarthill, North Lanarkshire, joined RSAMD aged 17: "I remember coming in on the bus for my audition wearing a three-piece trouser suit and platforms with Farrah Fawcett flicks in my hair and sitting with girls in leotards and tights and hair in buns. I was completely unprepared and felt out of my depth. But they thought I had a talent, and I got in."
Her love of the arts was sparked at school: "When you could perform and sing you got attention ... and I was a show-off," she laughs.
"It was also watching people like Doris Day and Lucille Ball and seeing women being funny - it opened my eyes. I wanted to be Calamity Jane and I loved Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, and then finding out that she was the first woman to set up her own production company in Hollywood.
"It was also seeing what comedy did to my parents - how they laughed at Morecambe & Wise and Billy Connolly. Billy was a really big influence - especially hearing your own accent and culture, particularly when he was on talk shows like Parkinson."
The Rab C. Nesbitt star hopes the prize helps to empower women in comedy, particularly those from working-class backgrounds like her own, while offering financial support during challenging times for the creative arts industry.
"The prize is me wanting to leave a trail of sweeties, saying to women, 'here's a route, come on'. In a time like this, when the creative arts are under attack, it's a wee bit of money to help them along the way, to buy the books they need or to afford to go and see a few shows.
"Even though I had a grant, I was working in clubs and bars and waitressing all the way through my studies and living week to week. Hopefully the students - even if they don't have a clue who I am - will think 'well, if she did it, so can I."
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