Whether you’re a Welsh native or you’ve adopted it as your home, forging a career as an actor in Wales comes with both challenges and chances. There may be fewer overall casting opportunities than for actors based in, say, London, but Welsh theatre, film, and TV shows often explicitly want to cast Welsh and Wales-based actors, which means it’s possible to train, live, and work in Wales – especially if you speak the language.
Read on to discover everything you need to know about acting in Wales.
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Many actors’ careers begin with training – and there are acting courses available to apply for in Wales. The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama is the most prestigious institution, offering BA courses in acting, musical theatre, and acting for stage, screen, and recorded media. You could also explore youth theatres and drama groups in your local area or sign up to become an extra to get insight into the experience of being on a set.
Get to know the work being made in Wales, whether it’s the country’s preeminent theatres, such as Theatr Clwyd, the Sherman Theatre, Wales Millenium Centre, and Swansea Grand; touring theatre company Welsh National Theatre, run by none other than Michael Sheen; or the nation’s unique broadcasters, BBC Cymru Wales, S4C, and ITV Cymru Wales.
Wales now has a thriving filming scene, too, and it’s home to production companies such as Bad Wolf, Vox, Joio, Severn Screen, Little Door Productions, Triongl, and Chwarel. It increasingly attracts major international companies to film there too.
Wales has “a strong production ecosystem, and it’s become a creative hub with world-class crews, facilities, and creative talent,” Jon Farrar, chief content officer for BBC Studios, told the LA Times. Shows such as Industry, His Dark Materials, The Other Bennet Sister, and Sex Education have all been filmed in Wales in recent years, and the creative industries now boast a turnover of £1.7 billion and employ close to 40,000 people in Wales alone.
Wales is a bilingual country and, although the majority of jobs are likely to be in English, many of the opportunities available for Welsh actors will indeed require you to be able to speak the language. For Welsh speakers, that’s actually a huge boon: Only about 18% of the population is Welsh speakers, so being able to siarad Cymraeg gives you a massive advantage.
It can lead to opportunities on Welsh-language channels such as S4C, where shows like the long-running soap opera Pobol y Cwm can provide substantial, ongoing work. Or it could open up the doors to working for Welsh-language theatre companies such as Theatr Cymru and Frân Wen. It also opens up commercial work, such as training and information videos or corporate gigs and advertising, which can help make an acting career more financially viable.
For non-native speakers, getting your language skills to a fluent level may boost your career opportunities – and adult-learning of the Welsh language is on the rise, with over 20,000 people studying the language, according to recent research. The Welsh government has a target of 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050, so there are many opportunities to help you on your Welsh-language journey, including free lessons for 16- to 25-year-olds through the National Centre for Learning Welsh. In short, having the basics is likely a wise investment if you want to make your career in Wales – even if it’s not a necessity for many jobs.
Keep an eye out for local casting calls and auditions. It’s also wise to try to get an agent. If you want to work primarily in Wales, it makes sense to go for one of the acting agencies based in the country, especially in the capital city of Cardiff. Screen Alliance Wales is also a one-stop shop for people seeking work or training opportunities in film and TV.
Whatever route you pursue, you should prepare your own materials: an acting CV with a good-quality headshot, and a showreel where you can prove your acting ability and any more niche skills, such as fluency in other languages or a facility for certain accents. It’s particularly worth specifying (and being honest about) your Welsh-language skills, and which kinds of Welsh accents you are adept at – north Walian sounds very different from a Valleys accent!
Wales makes up less than 5% of the total UK population. It may be small and mighty, but one of the downsides of forging an acting career in Wales is more limited casting opportunities than in other parts of the UK. It’s highly likely that your career will take you away from the Land of Song, as Wales is affectionately known, for theatre productions or bouts of filming.
However, Welsh productions often need (or prefer) to cast Welsh actors, and the pool to draw from is also smaller to begin with. So there are benefits to living and working in Wales too: Play the long game and you have a chance to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
The smaller artistic community can also have its advantages. Once you start booking jobs, getting to know people in the industry, and networking, you will more quickly be able to make a name for yourself or get plugged into an artistic scene.
What’s special about Wales is the strong relationships “between everyone in the sector, and how all the organisations here work together,” Kate Wasserberg, artistic director of Theatr Clwyd in north Wales, told Exeunt magazine. Work hard, work well, and be reliable and pleasant to work with, and you may find word of mouth helps you get the next job in a way that wouldn’t be the case in more anonymous environments.
