Misunderstanding Practice: Actor Training and Development

There is a popular belief that performance itself is the best form of training. It’s certainly the way that many people have learned their craft – on the job. It’s also the toughest way to learn because while you’re learning, everyone else is busy doing their job, mistakes are costly – and those are the ones that we usually learn from.

Many actors believe that work is the best form of actor training and development and those that work regularly certainly exercise their skills on a regular basis. But I believe that we are misguided in our thinking about practice and training.

Let’s make a comparison to sport. The soccer player that only considers their matches real training would never play for a living. The professional sports person understands that matches (their performances) are the peak opportunity to show their best, to put their hard training and determined practice to the test. They do not wait for the match to learn something, but they may well learn something from the match.

Performance may work some or all of the skills you have, but only practice can work those skills individually. Only through practice can you take individual skills and stretch them.

Since the skillset that most apply to acting is so vague, nonsensical and impracticable, I understand why many actors do not associate training with developing their skills. Since 3 or 4 (or 7 in the case of the USA (BA+MFA) years of training in acting school ended up having little to no relevance to the work they had to do for money, having faith in training, practice and further actor development would be fruitless.

We have a belief that practice (actor training and development) are only for those that are missing something. No soccer player would ever believe that. No professional musician would believe that they only practice when something is wrong or deficient. They practice to maintain proficiency, to give the best performance possible, to stay in the best form, and to get better.

Actors do not. They train. Or they do not train. And then they work or they do not work. And they get better, or they do not get better. There is no design, no plan, no course of development.

When we misunderstand the value of actor training, development and practice, we miss out on the opportunity to excel.