Drama School is only the beginning
To be a professional actor, most people need to obtain some kind of drama school or conservatory actor training. It’s one of the gate-keeping system that keeps the majority out of the profession (along with high course fees and agents).
But drama school is really only the beginning of your training, because for the most part, it does not deliver enough depth in any one technique to create a workable approach.
The idea that acting students that attend a drama school can piece together an approach of their own from lots of little bits and pieces of training and create their own way is ludicrous of course, but they do get exposed to elements of the industry and some particles of actor training.
After 3 years of this training, you’ve perhaps discovered some elements that you believe work for you. But that’s not enough to work successfully with consistency. What you need is the chance to find tools that work every time you need them.
Unfortunately most student’s experience is that the tools they given DON’T work, so they never use those tools again. Sooner or later, learning lines, a bit of analysis and ‘getting on with it’ are the only technique they use at all.
After drama school, the lucky ones start working and they start learning some simple ways of working on the job, they aren’t necessarily the best ways, but they create some results and so they get used a lot. They aren’t very reliable, but if they worked a few times, they have to be better than most.
What these actors need is professional development training, taking the disciplined professional and giving them reliable tools that create consistent results. Drama school introduces them to ideas, teaches them professionalism and allows them to feel like a professional actor for three years. When they graduate, they need professional technique training, preferably on the job, specific skills for the individual actor. It’s just something they couldn’t do in theatre school, they don’t have the resources, well – that’s not true, they have those resources for musicians, but not for actors.
When professional actors need training to bring out their best, they come to an acting coach. That’s my job, that’s what I do. I take the already established and push their skills to the next level. At ACS we’ve delivered this training time and again, but we’re only in the beginning of developing a coaching culture in the UK.
When you leave drama school, your learning never stops, with coaching, without coaching, keep learning.
-COACH-