What does Drama School teach you?

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.  Certainly access to thousands of hours of practice, expert tuition and knowledge will make you better. But to my mind, acting courses are a little bit of a scam.  Well, I believe they are if they take those that are the best (i.e. those that are already good enough to work) and then teach them.

It reminds me of that Don Richardson quote about the Method: “The good stayed good and the bad didn’t get any better.”

If you only take the best into drama school, then you’re not really teaching them anything are you? You’re exposing them to good practise.

And I’m sure in some places that is the case, but what if you take the best students and you try to impose a hodge podge, pix and mix of techniques on them and then push them off into the world more confused than they were when they started?

What if you charged them £9000 for the benefit, or $$$$$$$$$$ in the US and Australia?

I don’t doubt that some schools really help actors, but I’m not convinced that the most schools and colleges do anything other than confuse their students.  Students start to progress in spite of the training they receive.

What would happen if you took 3 complete beginners, with NO experience at all.  And you don’t even get to audition them and put them in a competition to see who could train their actor.  I think you would find the institutions hiding behind the old excuse ‘actors are not trained, they just ‘are’.  Or you’ve either got it or you haven’t.  Then you hide behind the talent myth.

I know they do teach some essential skills. But I think the students could probably figure out most of it for themselves. How many actors never went to Drama School? Loads.

And those that do are claimed by their alma mater, yet what did they actually do for them?

I would challenge any drama school to try this.  I would imagine there would be pink mist EVERYWHERE from the staff and their trainees. I remember when the School of the Science of Acting tried training models or MTA (model turned actor).  Their final project was fascinating, there was barely a word spoken because learning to bring the lines to life is exceptionally difficult.

So to those of you that didn’t get into drama school this year, you just saved yourself £9000. Now how about make a list of the things you think an actor might need to know and go about teaching yourself it.  If you need a hand, grab my email off the blog.