Hello!
I am a LONG time lurker here at BroadwayWorld, and am currently in graduate school for acting, emphasizing in pedagogy. I aspire to be the head of a musical theatre or acting program, and a big part of my training currently is studying what training programs have the best returns.
With hundreds of musical theatre programs all over the world, it’s important to find the training experience that best matches your needs, in terms of skill level, experience, rigor, ingenuity, finances, and goals. It can be a really daunting decision, and one that may feel like you have to make extremely fast.
I’m going to be extremely candid with you and I hope you don’t mind.
Avoid AMDA at all costs.
Unless you come from an extraordinarily wealthy family, and you will not be paying for a cent of your training, AMDA is far too expensive to make it a viable training option.
Sheridan sounds like a terrific option. It seems like the kind of program where teachers are actually going to know your name, and where you’ll find not just find a training ground, but a community to depend upon as well. Community college is an excellent place to begin feeling out for yourself if a professional acting career is the right road for you.
AMDA leaves you with one decision- complete a degree, regardless of it’s worth, and audition until you drop.
AMDA is costly- and don’t forget, both AMDA campuses are in expensive cities, so not only will you be paying for training, but also for life in a fast and unforgiving metropolis, be it Los Angeles or New York. You should be suspicious of a school that makes it difficult for someone to access how much it costs per year to attend. I just clicked through AMDA’s website for a solid 20 minutes, and found no information about the cost of attendance. That should concern you. That should ring alarms.Sure, you will get exposed to great MT teachers at AMDA. But take a moment to be honest with yourself- are you ready to be exposed to great acting teachers? If there was only one moment in your life where you were going to grow in your craft, would you want that to be now while you’re still figuring yourself out? Wouldn’t you want it later on in life, when you’ve experienced more, when you can bring more life experience to the table? And when you know you’ve gleaned enough knowledge to parse through the experience of training more clearly? Not every 18 year old is going to get into Michigan, and I don’t think being rejected from one of those fancy programs is a barometer of success- believe me, I’ve witnessed how fickle this business can be about training. But if the universe is saying “hey- you’re not ready for this right now, but keep working, and you might be”, why not keep working in a way that financially allows for opportunity for more?
I think any aspiring actor would benefit far more from a cheap liberal arts degree than from a BFA. Without question.
So maybe you transfer from Sheridan to a state college, and you get a BA in Theatre or Math or English with a Pre-Law Emphasis from a school no ones heard of. Save your damn money, and take every damn gig you can book. No one will care where you went to school and for what if you got the goods. You have a much less likely chance of getting to show what you got if you’re shouldering 100k in debt on your back into every audition. And when you feel like your voice has fully matured (which happens usually in your 20s), when you feel like you’ve aged into a type where you are taken seriously, or when you feel like it’s ready for a tune up, why not audition for graduate school, most of which will offer you a hefty scholarship (I’m at a top 10 MFA program currently that costs 50k a year, and 40k of it is paid for with scholarship and teaching assistantships)? Or screw it- go for a super fancy conservatory in your early-to-mid-twenties (like Rada, BoCo, NIDA, Juilliard, or CalArts). I’ve heard of a few friends do this and they’ve had a much more fulfilling and mindful experience.
In an economic downturn, it might be worth it to just move to New York. Apartments will be cheap. Tours will go non-union. The industry will struggle, but if you could maybe pursue a CUNY degree while also auditioning you might strike gold at the right time. Especially if you maybe invested this quarantine time into coding classes, or training in jobs the are online.
Debt is not what you want in our current economic climate. Especially for a mass produced BFA experience. You want your training experience to be special, not something a million people have experienced. AMDA has a slew of successful alums because they graduate HUNDREDS a year. You have so many more options than you think you do. Consider them all. Be your own advocate. Avoid debt unless it’s the greatest school in the world to you.
Updated On: 4/10/20 at 07:14 AM
