Why’ve You Created Another Full Time Acting Course in Scotland? Part 1

Recently, a former colleague asked this question about our new professional diploma in Stage and Screen Performance.

To be a highly successful professional actor takes a lot more than talent.  Really it takes a number of essential personal qualities such as curiosity, dedication, generosity, faith (self belief), fire (drive/motivation), and laser-like focus.

None of the traditional drama school application and audition process tests these characteristics. In their expensive and often short audition days, they test for the patently talented. Since they cannot test in a few minutes the personal qualities, then we give away their places to those that show obvious ability.

But the personal qualities outweigh talent as a factor in long term success as an actor, they are missing out on training those that truly have what it takes to succeed. They hope to accept those with both talent and the personal characteristics, but it’s unlikely they actually test the later at all.

And that’s one of the main reasons that we’ve created another full time acting course in Scotland, because in the UK, those candidates that aren’t in the top 0.5% of applicants, but are still clearly talented and have great personal characteristics.

So what happens to these people? If they don’t end up in drama school? They are in non-professional acting courses at universities, and generic college programmes, or they give up. Few might attempt to make it without training.

Most fall down the gap.  They need a high quality course, a professional course, but they can’t access one.

Well, Acting Coach Scotland’s 1 Year Professional Diploma in Stage and Screen Performance was created to fill that gap.