Friday, January 27, 2012

Should you go to an expensive acting school?


I don't think it is necessary to go to expensive acting schools to be a successful actor. It is necessary to take a few classes,but not a full two or three year program. And it certainly is not necessary to have an academic degree.

Here are a few different ideas about acting schools. \

1. Most
of them don't care if you ever become an actor, they just want you to enroll
and pay tuition. See item 5 below.

2. There are very few jobs even if you do graduate and are
taught how to find them. I say in the Introduction to my book, The Tao of Acting, that acting schools exist on the lie that there are jobs waiting for their graduates.

3. It is not the school that makes the actor, rather
it is the actor who makes the school. Doesn't matte where you go it you are
talented.

4. Thirty to forty thousand dollars a year is outrageous. Why should
it cost so much? Why aren't successful actors teaching aspiring actors for nothing? I do that and I don't make a lot of money. But whatever happened to serving the art?

5. Most of the older schools are just existing on their past
reputations and have become bureaucracies. AADA, Stella Adler, Tisch, etc . fall
into this description. Probably NYCDA as well. SUNY Purchase, I don't know
about. But I do know that actor training and academics is a poor fit.. The point is you can go to WM Esper Studio for half what it costs at
other drama schools, But again if you are talented, you don't need two years of
acting school.

6. Julliard
remains high on the best schools list. But it has transcended the academic model to be effective with actor training.

7. No school can guarantee you work when
you graduate. That depends on you.

8. When picking an acting school. First decide if you are going to get a degree and do not mix academic schools with
conservatories. They are not the same. An actor does not need an academic
degree. Nor does he need to be a graduate of a conservatory. He needs to be
special.


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