The Stage Scholarships/Fourth Monkey Theatre Company winners 2017

Naomi Denny, 23, from Brighton, and Carla Cuscito, 21, from Bari in Italy, have won The Stage Scholarships at Fourth Monkey Theatre Company (each worth £9,500) and will be attending the company’s accelerated two-year actor training programme.

Naomi said: “When I found out that I had been offered a scholarship to train at Fourth Monkey, I was ecstatic. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to continue acting as I just couldn’t afford the training.

“It means the absolute world to me, and I’m so grateful to the practitioners and Fourth Monkey family for having that belief in me and my potential as an actor.

“I’m so excited to be able to work and push myself to achieve the best I can in the next two years. Fourth Monkey has such a great ethos and attitude towards the changing world of the arts, and the chance to experience training at such a great school is something that wouldn’t have been possible without this scholarship.

“This is by no means an opportunity I take lightly, and I am so thankful to The Stage and to Fourth Monkey for allowing me to pursue my career as an actor.”

Carla said: “When I told my parents I wanted to move to London to study drama they thought I was joking. They’ve always been really supportive, but they believed I was just dreaming; perhaps I was. Then Fourth Monkey called me and said I had received The Stage Scholarship. It wasn’t a dream, it was real.

“I’ll never be able to say how grateful I am to have people who truly believe in me. This scholarship represents challenge, reward, achievement and the proof that your sacrifices will pay off.

“Fourth Monkey is the place where you can be whatever you want to be, where people -support you and become your family. I knew since I took my first step in the Monkey House that this was the place where I should be.”

fourthmonkey.co.uk