Acting: Do you really need to train?

Lets be honest, out there in the big wide world there are thousands upon millions of people all dreaming and wishing they could be on TV or on the big Silver Screen. I have lost count of the amount of young people and actors I have met who dream of being on Eastenders. Yet they do nothing about it, they do not try and start acting training or look into how to become an actor, in fact there are numerous youngsters who think that they are just going to get spotted in the street and somehow end up in a TV programme. Now granted that has happened once or twice in the past but the truth is that to be in the entertainment industry requires work and dedication and the beginnings of this really is in your training.

So what skills do you require to become an actor? Well wikianswers lists 3 skills imperative to becoming a skilled actor.

1. Control of ones emotional state.
2. The ability to project your voice.
3. The ability to memorize long passages of lines.

So lets look at these individually and I will give you some hints on how to do this without training. The control of your emotional state is a relatively important part of acting for TV and Film. Acting for film and tv has in the past hundred years changed the very definition of what acting is, what was once an artform of studying and acting out a feeling or situation has become a snapshot of reality of real emotional responses to scripted situations. This is most easily defined by what has become in many peoples minds the mecca of acting, the pinnacle of artistic legitimacy that is the Method. Championed by actors such as Brando, Hoffman and DeNiro the method evolved from the works of Russian Actor/Director Konstantin Stanislavski and developed by American Teachers like Strasberg and Adler it first permeated the mid 20th centuries Broadway stages before finally bursting through into film and TV. Using emotional recall and visualisation exercises the Method creates real emotion in scenes and really does fit the genre of TV and Film well, after all when you have to do several takes for a scene it makes it easier once you know how to use the method to just express your emotion in short bursts. Of course as well as changing the way acting works it has also really influenced programming, especially Soap Operas. Its made them more emotionally charged. Lets take Eastenders for example, which gets a lot of flack for being miserable and depressing, the recent storyline between Syed and Christian and the fact Syed was getting married would never have been so effective and compelling to watch without the brilliant level of emotion shown by the actors Marc Elliott and John Partridge. Ok so how do you learn how to control your emotions? The best bet is by getting hold of Stanislavski's book The Actor Prepares, or one of Adlers or Strasbergs many books and doing the exercises written within the pages. Then you must practice, practice and practice until it is drilled into your brain. Stanislavski would make his actors work on the true movements of the body part by part, spending up to six months on a single body part. I am not saying you should do this but you really need to know this stuff inside out as a method as a tool and the only way to do it is by practicing.

Number two, projecting your voice. The ability to project your voice without damaging it is vitally important. 99% of actors are out of work and when they are working they should be prepared for anything. If you are commited to being an actor then you cannot say that you will only do TV or Film you have to really be ready to do theatre and with the majority of theatres having between 200-500 seats then you had better know how to project your voice. Also you need to take into account that you need breathe control so you can say long lines. Shouting on stage will leave your voice damaged and you useless as an actor after the first show, if you're lucky and not hoarse by the interval, so you need to learn how the voicebox works. What is my suggestion, well there is a fantastic woman named Cicely Berry who wrote a book 'The Voice and the Actor' which covers warm up exercises, tips on how to project and a fascinating amount of information on how the diaphragm muscle can help your voice. Its one of my favourite books and I seriously reccomend you read it. Again you must study this subject and this book. Starting to see a pattern emerging?

Now wikianswers last point that of memorising lines. I cannot point you to a book on this one, nor can I explain because it is obvious why this is important. All I can say to you really are two things. If you really want to be in Eastenders then you need to learn how to read and remember lines fast. They give you approx 2 days to learn the lines they provide you with, there is barely any rehearsal time and if you can't do it then there are plenty of actors out there who can replace you. Then what do you do? You can do very simple things to expand your memory and mind, always challenge it. Keep the brain working hard, do puzzles, crosswords, play board games that require you to think. Keep it sharp and practice learning passages and it will seem simple after a while.

So what am I saying here? Yes those three things are important and yes you can find it out at home, practice it at home and perfect those techniques at home. Yet there are things that a college/university/drama school will teach you that are vitally important also. Take for example rehearsal etiquette, now I am not saying that there is a standard rehearsal procedure that everyone follows but if nationwide there are young performers being taught the same sort of procedure it will make it easier for companies to get together and work straight away. Rehearsing also slows everything down and by learning this way you will learn more efficiently and pick up more. 30 years ago an actor would be could join their local rep company and work their way up from acting asm to a higher position and improve their skills but nowadays you have to go to an educational facility. Todays training grounds are validated by the government and are monitored closely with a curriculum and much like my point on rehearsal techniques help push the subject and theory behind performing arts to make it a much better experience and give us all a better grounding in the industry. There are other aspects to the educational system that are excellent such as the lessons regarding funding and how to get your start. Before I went to University I would never have thought about how to get money for a theatre project, then i learnt about the Arts Council and it opened a whole new world to me. The list of things you will learn that will help you in your chosen career in University will continue to grow the more you think about them.

In conclusion I never went to a Drama School, I chose Northbrook College in Worthing and its fantastic theatre department at The Southern Arts Centre. Now do I regret going there to train? No, in fact it helped me immensly, I learnt things that I never thought possible about myself, about acting and about the wonderful art that is entertainment. I suppose that doesn't really matter because I got my Degree and I am happy, there are other people who just want to act and thats fine too but don't expect people to take you seriously without a degree or extensive training experience because when I look at the certificate they gave me at the end of my time there I see thousands of hours of experience in a working theatre, hundreds of characters tried and tested, historic events noted and learned from and finally I see proof that no matter what happens I am an actor in every aspect and that nobody can call me a dreamer or deluded or take it away from me because that piece of paper is proof that I have done it. Train for your own good, you will feel much better with the help of seasoned professionals and you might just learn something that will change your life. My last words for you are work hard Eastenders, The RSC, Wicked, Hollywood... they are all attainable as long as you work hard.