I was a theatre kid classique. While other teens my age were obsessing over Megan Fox and Ian Somerhalder (I did my fair share of that too), I was rinsing my parents’ printer ink and making my own posters of niche actors I’d seen in (sorry) bootlegs of Broadway and West End shows from their headshots on google images – because obviously they weren’t available on RedBubble.com. (N.B. I’ll never confess publicly who these were because I would actually like to have some kind of career one day.)

My school staged about three shows a year, so I somehow managed to convince myself that I was a real life jobbing actor, rocking up at rehearsals in my netball kit and learning lines for not only the school production of Guys and Dolls but my GCSE Drama devised lines as well. With the odd chemistry lesson in between, whatever. And show week was intense. My ritual would be eating six slices of cucumber and a Vocalzone in the school canteen before going to the girls’ ‘dressing room’ (the English classrooms next to the main hall) early to prepare for my pérformance.

I was probably insufferable but I couldn’t imagine my life outside of the theatre back then. I was so passionate about it. It was all I talked about, all I thought about, all I dreamed about for my future. Desperate to audition for drama school, I would shake off the very reasonable encouragement of my teachers, parents and friends to go to university and even study something else (!) for a time, just to broaden my horizons. I was filling out a UCAS form anyway for Central so I compromised and put down Manchester to study Drama, which in turn ended up being the life-changing, enriching years that led me to theatre directing and writing.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the desire to make theatre has always been intrinsic to who I am as a person. I have always been in the fortunate position to feel empowered to perform it, to write it, to study it, to make it. And yes, the resources have not always been there (my friend Jess and I made an immersive show in a bar with about £50 in our second year of uni) and the rejections have been abundant, like they are for most.

But last week Chancellor Rishi Sunak referred to jobs in the arts as being not “viable”, and following that comment, Business Secretary Alok Sharma dug the knife in deeper with his affirmation that workers in sectors not currently able to open should be helped into “better jobs”. As Carrie Fletcher so astutely said in her Guardian interview on Wednesday with Chris Wiegand, we’re of course not hearing anything new here. Hardly one of my parents’ evenings would go by without someone guffawing about me getting a real job (to which my parents would always coolly shoot them down, to be fair, big up Jucy). But it isn’t that simple, Alok. We’ve done exactly what young people have to do in your government’s education system – we’ve committed.

This time, I don’t feel armoured by my teenage optimism or unashamed thick skin to get me through. The guffawing, albeit delayed a few years, has got to me. And how could it not? After losing a year’s worth of work, from being deemed ineligible by four creative financial aid schemes, rejected from much-sought-after job upon job, I’ve started to flirt with the idea of not chugging down the rocky road of making theatre for the rest of my life. I can’t help but feel a small but devastating resentment for the headstrong teenager that decided on this career path so wholeheartedly and I’m now not able to change my mind without starting again from zero and feeling like I’ve given up on my dreams. When Lloyd Evans published his hot take on defunding theatres in the Spectator at the beginning of September, stating that “the nation can happily debate political and social issues without the help of playwrights or actors”, I felt highly critical of his specious view of what theatre-makers consider to be the function of theatre in society (um… entertainment!?) but I couldn’t help being hurt by an overwhelming sense of insignificance. As a young, emerging artist, not only am I pointless in the theatre industry, but also in society at large.

I don’t really have any answers in this post. Unlike Lloyd Evans I don’t have a (tepid) hot take and I can’t offer anything aside from solidarity to my peers, a lot of whom I know are going through a very similar thing. I know that that innate drive to make work hasn’t and probably will never leave me, but in this world where one is forced to commit to a profession, will this be mine? I’m ambitious and hungry to do something productive and creative. It might just be that the theatre industry is the Jamie to my Cathy. Or it might be that the theatre industry will be back with a vengeance by next March. But I’ve got to start thinking outside the box for my own self-preservation.

Twitter: @emilyoulton