Here are some thoughts, after 11 years as a producer with some (admittedly limited) experience in acting.
Acting is not learned in a class or workshop. Unless one is very young and needs to learn the absolute basics, acting classes or workshops in themselves are a useless, false environment. They do not prepare you for the reality of acting. One example: a real life audience is random and fresh every time; in an acting class, your audience is the same classmates who show up week after week.
Acting is learned by apprenticing, interning, by doing and observing, like a trade such as being a jeweler or a blacksmith. How do you learn to act? You act, and more specifically, you note the audience's (or onlooker's) reaction. Do they fall asleep or throw tomatoes at you? Better not do what you just did the next night. Do they respond in a manner where they laugh, or they're touched, or you have a real breakthrough? Good work -- keep it up, build, expand on that. Trial and error, it's all trial and error.
Acting lessons and acting classes which are useless? They cost you thousands of dollars. Interning with working professionals? Costs you nothing. I had a better résumé, was working more, and was more in demand than the vast majority of the acting teachers I knew by the time I was 19.
Formerly gvendo2005
Broadway Legend
joined: 5/1/05
Blocked: After Eight, suestorm, david_fick, emlodik, lovebwy, Dave28282, joevitus, BorisTomashevsky, Seb28
Updated On: 1/4/17 at 03:14 PM
