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The Training of an Actor: Starting OutDateline: 30th May, 1999 We all know that if you want to be an actor, the best way to start is to go to a Drama School. There are many of these schools across ther UK, although most are in the London area, and the ones which are the best (I'm not including university departments here) are members of the Conference of Drama Schools. If you're interested in finding out more about this aspect of Drama training, then where better to start than our Drama Training Links Library, probably the most comprehensive listing on the Web? (Said he, with becoming modesty!) But what about before then? There are those who make the decision to try for a career in theatre at the age of eighteen or over, but what about those who know theatre is to be their life before then? What opportunities for training are there for them? Pre-16 There are full-time specialist performing arts schools in the UK. Many of them - like the Arts Educational Schools - are private and fee-paying (with fees of more than £7000 a year in some cases), but the government is actively encouraging the growth of specialist schools in the public sector. This programme aims to create specialist schools in the arts, sport, technology and languages. To become a Performing Arts College, for instance, a school has to make a bid to the Department for Education, which involves identifying strengths and weaknesses, producing a three-year development plan for growth in the performing arts curriculum area and in sharing the school's expertise and facilities with the wider community, devising strategies for improving teaching and learning and examination results in the specialist art forms, and finding £50,000 in sponsorship from private sources. It's a long, complex and difficult process (personal experience speaking here, but that's a story for another time - maybe!) and bids can only be submitted once a year. The number of specialist performing arts schools is small - sports and technology are much more popular areas for specialist status - and I suspect that the reason for this is the effect the National Curriculum has had on schools. (For the benefit of those who don't know, the last government introduced a National Curriculum which applies to all schools in the state sector. The NC lays down what must be studied by all children and the percentage of time which must be devoted to the compulsory elements. All children must study English, Maths, Science, Technology (and especially Information and Communications Technology), Humanities (Geography and History), a modern foreign language, Physical Education and games, and Religious Education. The latter has always been compulsory, long before the advent of the NC. Art and Music must be studied up to the age of 14.) As you can imagine, the effect of this has been to exclude Drama from the timetable in most schools. An element of Drama still remains in the English requirements, but forms only a very small part of the vast range covered by that subject. Dance (which includes "social" dance and traditional dance) is an optional part of the PE curriculum. So the majority of 11 to 16 year olds in the UK do not have a "proper" Drama lesson in their school lives: only a very few enlightened schools (like mine) have retained Drama. Hence the smallness of the number of schools applying for Performing Arts College status. In those schools in which Drama is maintained, it is usually possible to take a GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education: the school leaving exam) in Drama or in Expressive Arts. The latter requires work integrating more than one art form: in the syllabus which I use - AQA - students must do two coursework projects and a controlled test (taken over a period of fifteen hours) and must show knowledge and understanding of the traditions and conventions of the art forms as well as practical ability. In common with te Drama syllabus, a lot of written work and documentation to support that practical side is required. However the vast majority of schools do not offer either course. GCSE Dance is offered even less but most schools do offer Music, although it is very much a minority subject. Post-16 Because of the lack of pre-16 qualifications, access to post-16 courses usually depends upon an audition and the achievement of four (five for an A Level course) GCSE at grade C or above. There are three courses and qualifications available at post-16: A Level Theatre Studies, BTEC Performing Arts, and GNVQ in the Performing Arts and Entertainment Industries. A Level is the next step for those who are interested in going on to university to study an academic subject, and is the obvious way forward for anyone wanting to study English, Maths, a Science, History, and so on. However A Level Theatre Studies is not such an obvious way for would-be actors. It is largely a theoretical course (to maintain its academic "respectability") and the practical element can be quite small. It is certainly possible to get a top result in A Level Theatre Studies without ever having appeared in a full-length production in front of an audience. Weird! Much more practical is the BTEC Performing Arts course, of which there are two flavours: the First Diploma (a one-year course for those who do not have the requisite GCSE qualifications) and the National Diploma for those who do. The BTEC National is a very practical modular course with units covering a wide range of areas of the performing arts - Language of the Theatre, Stagecraft, Production Techniques, Arts in Society, Drama, Dance, Movement Studies (a dance-style unit for those not formally trained which includes knowledge of the body, diet etc.), Singing and various music units. (Thanks to Paul Johnson of Great Yarmouth College for this run-down on the BTEC course.) Then there is the GNVQ in the Performing Arts and Entertainment Industries. GNVQ stands for General National Vocational Qualifications and it was intended to replace the BTEC as the qualification of choice. However all the colleges I know took one look at it and voted with their feet. It has three levels - foundation, intermediate and advanced - and is top heavy with Business Studies type units. It is possible, in the foundation course, to get through the whole thing with only one unit which has any relation to performance. So poor has take-up been that the whole thing is being rewritten and is due to be re-launched "soon". It is planned that, like all GNVQ courses, there should be a Part I available for use in schools. This Part I GNVQ has half the units of the full course and is the equivalent of two GCSEs. We have been told that it wil be available in September of this year (or possibly September 2000: it all depends on whom you're talking to). Frankly, unless there have been major changes - like a wholesale rewriting! - I cannot see any school abandoning GCSE in its favour. I certainly won't be. I wrote to them some years ago when the course was first announced, explaining how totally inappropriate it was for the students at whom it was aimed, but they didn't even bother to acknowldge my letter. If that is their attitude to feedback from the practitioners who are to teach their courses, I suspect we still won't be doing GNVQ in September coming (or next year, whichever it turns out to be). 2001 Update - The GNVQ has changed, although at Foundation Level (equivalent to 4 GCSEs at D-G) it is still top-heavy with business related units. The Intermediate Level (4 GCSEs at A-C) is better. The Part I is still not available as far as I know. If it is, they haven't bothered to tell the schools! The USA Is it any wonder that those of us who teach Drama in British secondary schools look at the range of high school programmes in the USA with envy? Here we are, just six months from the new millenium (or eighteen months is you're a mathematical pedant!), and we're still struggling to get our subject into the the twentieth century. At least we can be justifiably proud of our post-18 Drama training, can't we? But that's the subject for a future article. Articles Indices: |
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