The Truth about Developing Skills

In the US actors often maintain their training even after their initial conservatory education. In the UK, actors rarely do. It’s not entirely true, as enterprises such as the Actors Centre in London, exist to provide training opportunities to actors that wish to avail of the opportunity for development.

However, there’s a reason that both UK and US actors might not be developing as much as they could, even WITH this additional training. Why might that be?

To gain excellence in a field does not take look or innate gift, it takes graft. However, at some stage, to develop beyond simply being good, to better or even best, requires a very specific type of practice in training.

This involves the identification and isolation of particular areas of weakness and a committed effort to developing these into strengths. We’re all capable of doing this, we might need a little help from an outside eye in identifying our weaknesses, but we’re all capable of zeroing in on those weaknesses and applying ourselves to self-development.

But the thing is that we don’t and here’s why.

This activity is NO fun at all. Actually, it’s often zero fun AND it’s painful. And so, in place of this, we focus in on those areas that we are already good at, we practice those areas with which we have little problem, we take a singing class that does not actually demand that we are challenged where we need challenging and sadly this means little change occurs, if any.

There are THREE zones. The COMFORT zone. The LEARNING zone. The PANIC zone. We always feel a little uneasy when we’re out of our COMFORT zone, but the learning zone is where most development happens. Often when we work on areas of particular weakness, we may even brush dangerously close to the PANIC zone, but if we hold our nerve, it will result in effective change and development.

But it is those areas that need work, and it is those areas that with enough focus, energy and persistence will take us beyond our current status and turn good into better or even best.

We know what we need to do. But most of us will not do it.  Take comfort in this if you are a grafter, because you will succeed where those that will not commit to this type of change will not. You see, this is why not all the good can be great, it’s not that the good are unable to develop to the level of greatness, it’s that through pain, discomfort, the sense of panic and the fact that there is little fun involved in developing these areas, it’s easier to give up than to plough on.

But for those of you willing to graft, to work through these periods of pain, yes – the sky is the limit.