So what are you up to at the moment?

This is the question that so many of us in the arts absolutely dread. The question in itself is meant in all innocence. People on the outside are genuinely interested, and people on the inside inflict it on each other when they can’t think of anything to talk about except work – myself included.

Of course it is not the question that fills us with dread, but the lack of an answer.

For the last couple of years I have been able to answer free from anxiety. I’ve been very blessed in that I have made my living almost entirely from acting, and when I wasn’t acting I was teaching English in China (which makes me sound much more interesting than I actually am). But then this January happened. The thing I swore I never wanted to do again in my life.

I had to sign on.

I was of course not thrilled at the prospect of being unemployed, but when I was asked the dreaded “So what are you up to at the moment?” I decided I would be honest.

“Nothing. I’m on the dole, but it’s OK” I tell them. “It’s research.”

For a large section of 2012 I was unemployed. I had naively quit my day job in the hope that I would be more available for acting work and could pick up flexible promo work in between.

I picked up very little promo work, and even less paid acting work.

After four months of hardly any work, there wasn’t much left of my savings. So I decided to take a trip down to the job centre. Each hoop I had to jump through to get my paltry £52.60 a week was more humiliating than the last. Filling in irrelevant information about my personal life (they wanted my housemate’s date of birth!) Having them scour through my little booklet every two weeks, being sent to a jobs fair for apprentice schemes – most of which you can’t apply for if you have a degree. The result of this became my third play – The Stars are Made of Concrete. I wrote the bulk of it between April and July 2012 and now that I am finally getting it on the stage it needs a drastic rewrite.

“So it’s ok” I tell myself. “I can apply for Universal Credit and then I’ll find out how that works and I can update the play, right?”

Wrong. My application was rejected, yet I was still eligible to receive Job Seeker’s Allowance. It seems that Universal Credit is not so Universal.

With this in mind I would love to hear from anybody who has applied for or is receiving Universal Credit. The internet is very vague about what you have to do to receive the payments (deliberately so no doubt) What barriers have been put in place? Have you been sanctioned and for what reason? Any information on how the thing actually works would be more than welcome! You can contact me on facebook, twitter or via email: michelle@messydress.co.uk

I am now happy to say that I only spent six weeks out of work. I was very lucky. I want to get this story out there because some people are not.