If it looks like a Duck

For Gordon…

They say that if it looks like a duck and it sounds like a duck, then it must be a duck. That might be the case for ducks, but in the case of acting schools, teachers and their techniques, some ducks are not ducks at all, they’re turkeys.

I have lots of current students that went to so called colleges and studied acting. These are not accredited drama schools. They are instead, part of the flurry of colleges cashing in on the aspiration of the young, and come to think of it, the mature too, by providing what looks and sounds like an acting training programme, but is in fact just a paper qualification, received for work done on a play-pretend course.

I have no doubt that the teachers are sincere, but the institution often fails to equip these teachers with enough support to enable them to teach the students and prepare them for the profession. Also, a degree in drama and a bit of fringe theatre experience and an episode of Taggart or The Bill, does not make an acting teacher, and often the students end up more confused and less empowered than they started off.

For the students, it’s a raw deal, because if the training they receive looks like proper actor training and it sounds like proper actor training, then indeed for them, it must be proper actor training.

But this is not the case, and I know this because my classes are filled with students that went through Turkey School and still can’t quack.

It’s easy to blame the students, perhaps they didn’t listen, perhaps they didn’t understand, but I would put it to you, that these courses failed the students and not the other way round and that if any students achieve a modicum of success. It is due NOT to their training at these substandard institutions, run by second-rate minds, but instead, through luck and force of will.

These people I admire, for the adversity they’ve overcome to reach success, they’ve worked their way to achieve something inspite of the disabling effects of their training.

For those of you that are still looking at training options, or those that have failed to get into an accredited drama school and are considering taking up a secondary option at one of these Turkey schools. Don’t do it. Your naivete leads you to believe that you must take action or you will lose out on something and peer pressure and parental pressure will tell you to make this choice, but choosing a poor or weak school isn’t a second best, it’s a second rate experience.