Acting Education vs. Industry Access: What Are We Losing?
The consequences of replacing acting education for access to the industry.
There are still lots of actors spending their money on workshops with casting directors, agents, and managers —and they are spending less and less of it on actual acting classes, programs and coaching.
We need to talk about what that means.
You are replacing acting education with access to the industry.
You are paying to sit in front of the people who might hire you instead of paying the people whose profession is teaching you how to do the job.
And those are not the same thing.
Casting directors do not make their living teaching actors.
Agents do not make their living teaching actors.
Acting teachers do. And like any other profession there are many educators who have dedicated our lives to teaching the skills necessary to confidently perform in their jobs. We are not teachers because we are filling the gaps and want a side hustle. We are not teachers because we can’t do anything else. Educators who choose to be educators in any industry are there because foundational and strong education is where every skilled performer earns and inherits their skill set.
No matter what your profession, educators are the foundation.
You cannot build an acting career by investing exclusively in getting the opportunity to act.
Every time you spend money on your career, you are helping decide what kind of acting industry exists.
Be very careful what you have allowed to convince you is most important. What other profession can you think of where you are expecting someone to hire you without any foundation for the skills they are hiring you to perform?
Let’s stop devaluing education by contributing to the short-cuts and calling them education. Call them seminars, lectures, meet and greet opportunities and most definitely in some spaces exactly what you don’t want to admit they are, pay-to-plays. But don’t call them classes or workshops. Those are words I get to use because I am a teacher by trade. I have a class where the experience of education takes place. I would never call my class an “audition” or a “casting event” because that’s not what I do. Those words belong to agents and casting directors. Don’t give them my words and assume because you called it the same thing it IS the same thing. I’ve earned the right to call this a class, a program, a curriculum and an educational experience.
Have you asked yourself what happens when actors stop investing in acting education and learning a solid set of skills? Or are we okay with just kicking that can down the road while people make whatever money they can off the backs of actors desperate for access?
We might end up with an industry full of people trying to get into the room—
with nobody left to teach them how to act once they get there.
Comments