Raffaella Covino is leading the charge for change in an industry whose workers do unstable jobs under unprecedented pressure
It was the winter of 2017 when Raffaella Covino realised she was in the midst of an emotional breakdown. Despite living out her childhood dream as a professional stage actor – appearing in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights at Southwark Playhouse and On the Town at Regent’s Park Open Air theatre – Covino had reached a point where she was unable to function. “There was no real reason for how I was feeling,” she remembers. “I was really lucky and I’d always had the pang to perform. In so many ways, it didn’t make sense.”
Overwhelmed, Covino decided to take a year-long break from theatre. She went into therapy and was diagnosed with a dual mental health disorder. Six months into her recovery, she began to question why she’d had such limited access to mental health support while working in the arts. Born in Worthing, Covino got a scholarship to the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts at 14 before going on to train at the London School of Musical Theatre. She describes the four years spent working as an actor as being “fortunate, job-wise” but she remembers having very few conversations about her mental wellbeing. “There was a distinct lack of bespoke help in a career that has some very unique pressures,” she says. “So I decided to create a platform that could be a hub for people going through similar things to me.”
