Elaine C Smith Creates New Prize For Female Comedy Actors at The Royal Conservatoire Of Scotland

She's the Scottish actor, comedian and legendary panto queen who has entertained audiences in a 40-year stage and screen career. And now, Elaine C Smith is helping to pave the way for aspiring comedy actors to follow in her footsteps. The TV and theatre star has established a ten-year prize at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to support and celebrate new female voices in comedy.

The £500 prize will be presented annually to a final-year drama student across RCS's BA Acting, BA Performance and BA Musical Theatre degree programmes at the end of the academic year.

"Making people laugh is such a joyous thing," said Elaine, who studied drama at RCS, when it was the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Elaine studied on the Diploma in Speech and Drama and graduated in 1978.

"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 is one of the nation's most familiar faces, from starring in smash TV sitcoms including City Lights, Rab C Nesbitt and Two Doors Down to her reign as one of the UK's best-loved and longest-running panto dames.

She 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."

Elaine, who was born in Baillieston in Glasgow and grew up in Newarthill, North Lanarkshire, joined RSAMD at seventeen: "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 laughed.

"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 and 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."

Elaine's passionate about access to the arts and after graduating from RSAMD and completing a teacher training course, she worked as a drama teacher in a school in Edinburgh for three years.

"When I was a teacher, I took my kids to see stuff all the time and to make them realise that they shouldn't be intimidated walking into a theatre. The theatre was theirs.

"Pantomime, and one of the reasons I keep doing it, is because it's a gateway into the theatre. It might be the only time people go and the first time kids see an orchestra, live band or dancers.

"I grew up believing that art belonged to other people, and posher people than me. The notion of art was defined by the middle to upper classes. But art belongs to everyone."

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