Hands up if you’re feeling it too!

A lot of you are getting A Level results tomorrow. Some of you are frantically refreshing your emails and checking UCAS Track for the tenth time today even though nothing has changed since the ninth. So first things first: take a breath.

Here is the truth: your results do not define you. They are a stepping stone, not a verdict. Intelligence comes in more forms than an exam board will ever mark, and some of the most talented, emotionally intelligent and intuitive people I have worked with are creative people who found conventional academia genuinely hard. That is not a flaw. It is just not what our current school system is built to measure.

Peer Productions was founded in 2006, and this year we turn twenty. In that time I have seen what theatre can offer that an exam cannot. It asks something different of you: to feel, to try, to fail in front of other people and get back up anyway. That is its own kind of intelligence, and its own kind of proof of who you are.

Your generation has had it harder than many people want to admit. Lockdown hit while you were still in primary school, right when the foundations of learning were meant to be going in. You've grown up amidst a mental health crisis nobody built enough support for, sat through more testing and more pressure to perform on paper than any generation before, all while being told, quite rightly, that the planet you're inheriting is in trouble and it's somehow going to be your job to fix it. That is a lot to carry into one envelope tomorrow morning.

Whatever happens tomorrow, celebrate it however feels right to you. You have got through compulsory education. And in September, whatever your results say, you get to start something completely new on your own terms.

If "something new" doesn't have to mean the path everyone else is taking, we'd love to meet you.

Peer Actor Development is our free, full-time, year-long actor training programme for 18 to 25 year olds. There is no tuition fees and no student loan involved, because we believe high quality arts training should be open to everyone, not just those who can afford it. No clearing scramble. No stress. No sitting on hold to a university admissions line hoping a space opens up. We are person centred, which means exactly what it sounds like: you are not a number to us, you are a person, and we build the training around who you actually are.

Here's what a year with us actually looks like. You train. You go on tour, performing in schools and communities across the region, because we believe actors learn by doing, not just by studying. You come away with a real qualification, an RSL Level 4 Creative Practitioner Diploma. And you give back, because part of what we teach is that theatre is a team sport, and nobody trains here, or makes it anywhere, on their own.

It works. In the last two years, over 90% of our actors who applied to drama school received an offer, at places like LAMDA, GSA, Rose Bruford, Mountview, East 15 and Royal Central. That's not luck. That's twenty years of knowing how to get young performers ready.

We've added one last chance: a final audition on 27th August. We are building our forever home in Woking, but next year the company will be resident at Lockwood Studios, a fantastic arts centre just outside Guildford.

If you want in, the first step is to fill in our application form and submit a self-tape before 24th August to be in with a chance of being recalled on 27th. Break a leg.

However tomorrow goes, you survived compulsory education. Now its time to choose what you do next!